Pink Floyd/Trivia

"David Gilmour regarding Atom Heart Mother and Ummagumma: "I think both are pretty horrible. Well, the live disc of Ummagumma might be all right, but even that isn't recorded well."
 * Artist Disillusionment: Waters went through a big bout of this during the In The Flesh tour supporting Animals, as their new arena audiences would constantly yell (even during the quieter numbers), spend the entire set waiting for their big hits and otherwise be disruptive, in contrast to the previous audiences they were used to (which would only applaud at the end of songs); this came against a background of relations within the band beginning to collapse (Roger would travel to the venue separately and leave immediately afterwards). The culmination of this came on the final show on 6 July 1977 in Montreal, where Waters stopped during "Pigs on the Wing (Part II)" to deliver this blistering tirade, and at the end spat in the face of a particularly disruptive fan he'd been irritated by (inspiring The Wall).
 * Creator Backlash/Old Shame: Gilmour hated The Final Cut, partly because some of the tracks on that album were rejected songs from The Wall, though he admitted that he liked one or two songs from that album, one of them being "The Fletcher Memorial Home", which has appeared on the band's greatest hits albums Echoes and A Foot in the Door.
 * Dave and Roger have also gone on record as hating Atom Heart Mother. They're not particularly fond of Ummagumma either. Actually, they tend to think very poorly of their "apprenticeship" period in general (the period between Syd leaving and either Meddle or Dark Side).

Roger Waters: "Atom Heart Mother is a good case, I think, for being thrown into the dustbin and never listened to by anyone ever again!... It was pretty kind of pompous, it wasn't really about anything."

David Gilmour, asked about Atom Heart Mother in 2001: "I listened to that album recently: God, it's shit, possibly our lowest point artistically. Atom Heart Mother sounds like we didn't have any idea between us, but we became much more prolific after it.""


 * In a BBC Radio 1 interview in June 1984, Waters reiterated his feeling that Atom Heart Mother is "rubbish" and would never play it even if offered insane amounts of money. Wright simply stated "I like it."
 * Gilmour has recently lightened up a bit concerning both albums. He considered putting one of his songs from Atom Heart Mother, "Fat Old Sun", into the compilation Echoes, and at a 2008 concert at the Royal Concert of Music, he performed Atom Heart Mother's title suite with the suite's co-writer Ron Geesin and a choir.
 * On the matter of early singles, Roger Waters has said that "Apples and Oranges" "is a fucking good song" but was "destroyed by the production", and commenting on "It Would Be So Nice" (their first release without Syd), said "No one ever heard it because it was such a lousy record". Mason was less polite, calling it "fucking awful".
 * He Also Did: At some point between WYWH and Animals, Gilmour took a break from being completely awesome in Pink Floyd to help Kate Bush jump-start her career.
 * Hipgnosis: This legendary studio is best known for their long association with Pink Floyd, which includes the majority of the band's album covers.
 * One of Us: What, you think the Doctor Who theme got onto "One of These Days" on its own? "Sheep" also seems to be influenced by it.
 * The Pete Best: Bob Klose, guitarist and co-founding member of the band, quit the band in 1965 due to pressure from his parents and teachers, before the band had become underground stars and well before they were signed to EMI.
 * Then there's the members of all the pre-Floyd bands featuring Roger Waters and Nick Mason, like Sigma 6 and The Screaming Abdabs. Vocalists Keith Noble and Clive Metcalfe left to form their own band early in the band's history, and their replacement, Chris Dennis, was also an RAF technician and got posted overseas.
 * Troubled Production: Wish You Were Here, The Wall, The Final Cut, and A Momentary Lapse of Reason.
 * What Could Have Been: Household Objects, the original follow-up to The Dark Side of the Moon, an album recorded entirely on such items as pieces of string and kitchen appliances. After several months with only eighteen minutes of material to show for it, the band scrapped the project (the only bit that survived, music played on tuned glasses of water, was used as the intro to "Shine On You Crazy Diamond").
 * "Okay, let's see. We could make an album that's both an homage to Syd and a bold, scathing attack on the oppressive, soul-sucking music industry...or we could make an album comprised entirely of whatever noises we can coax out of various household materials. What do you think?"
 * Another possible followup to Dark Side was the soundtrack to the Alejandro Jodorowsky directed Dune film, which was originally going to be in collaboration with the bands Magma and Henry Cow before it was decided that the Floyd would have done all the music.
 * The Beach Boys were originally scheduled to add backing vocals to "The Show Must Go On", but Waters cancelled the session at the last possible minute and settled for just Bruce Johnston and Toni Tennille.
 * Any reunion plans set in motion after Live 8 were canceled after Rick Wright passed away.
 * The Final Cut was originally going to be a soundtrack to The Wall film, tentatively called "Spare Bricks" and would have been the home of the new song featured in the film, "When The Tigers Broke Free". The Falklands War just changed that.
 * In 1978, Roger sent cassette demos of two projects which were to be the followup to Animals to the band and Bob Ezrin, asking which project they wanted to make. One, The Wall, was chosen. The other, The Pros And Cons Of Hitchhiking, was not. Later on, Pros And Cons became Roger's first true solo album in 1984.