The Pink Floyd album David Gilmour thought sounded too weak: “Seems like a daft thing to say”
Every musician is bound to be critical of some of their most high-profile releases. Those are the ones that have the most ears on them throughout rock history, and even if you’re proud of what you accomplished on that one particular record, it can get a bit distracting when some spots aren’t as fleshed out as you want them to be. Although Pink Floyd always worked to ensure that everything was as meticulously crafted as possible, that didn’t mean David Gilmour couldn’t have his issues with them, either.
From the moment Gilmour joined the band, though, he had already had some reservations about their releases. They were among some of the most inventive acts of their time, but there were always going to be flimsy moments when they had to react to Syd Barrett losing his mind and needing to be kicked out of the group. So, if they couldn’t make psychedelic rock like they used to, they would spend the rest of their career progressing in other ways.
Even though A Saucerful of Secrets does a great job at blending both of their styles together, they would have to spend a lot more time together before they started gelling. Since the label needed more material, that meant figuring it out as they went along, like deciding to make an entire album’s worth of avant-garde pieces on Ummagumma or working with musicians that weren’t as experienced as they thought on Atom Heart Mother.
While the thought of playing the latter record was enough for Gilmour and Roger Waters to break out in a cold sweat, Meddle again put them on stable ground. ‘Echoes’ had finally given them the vehicle to work with, and if that was the beginning of Waters toying with the idea of empathy, Dark Side of the Moon was when he finally realised that he could get through to people if he used the right kind of idea.
“I remember bitching on myself at the time…”
david gilmour
Set around the concept of what makes people crazy, Dark Side of the Moon remains one of the most life-affirming albums in the band’s body of work, dealing with topics like time and money and how we should all have some sort of respect for our fellow man since we’re all going through this life together. The concept itself might be airtight, but Gilmour knew there would always be a certain downhill slide if they tried to top it.
Gilmour was always proud of capturing something that magical on tape with Wish You Were Here, but he knew that some pieces didn’t have the same punch as he would have hoped, saying, “I remember bitching on myself at the time, after Dark Side of the Moon, about how I thought that musically some of the vehicles within it are a little weak. It seems like a daft thing to say about an album that’s done that well, really. But, I still think that the balance, moving back towards sort of more instrumental passages and some of those spacier things, was a good thing to do.”
And especially coming after their magnum opus, this was the best way of introducing fans to another side of themselves. Whereas Waters’ lyrics were the central focus of the former album, this was when they could make their statements purely through music, with ‘Shine on You Crazy Diamond’ capturing every piece of their experience with Barrett and remembering the dear friend that they lost along the way.
Even though Gilmour has a few reservations about how Wish You Were Here may have turned out, it’s actually a much better encapsulation of what the band is about than Dark Side of the Moon. The prism may always be their grand statement to the world, but if that was looking at Pink Floyd as musical magicians, this was the first record where we got to hear the people behind all of those studio effects.
