The album Roger Waters thought was “completely impossible” to play live
Pink Floyd never really made things easy for themselves as a group, and seeing as their entire ethos as a band throughout their existence was to push music in directions that no other band had dared to achieve, they were always going to find themselves hitting stumbling blocks when they’d made things too tough for themselves to surmount. Whether under the guidance of Syd Barrett, Roger Waters, or David Gilmour, Floyd’s adventurousness and ambition were always front and centre of their identity as a group.
Many will think of Pink Floyd as having been an exceptional live band, always somehow managing to make their already epic compositions even more grandiose in a live environment, and their ability to stun audiences with such boldly experimental performances has always been celebrated. For example, their Live at Pompeii performance in 1972 is often regarded as one of the finest live recordings by any group and is wholly indicative of their talent as a live act.
However, it was on record that they were arguably able to push themselves further. With fewer constraints than on stage, they would utilise the studio to its full extent to deliver one formidable record after another. It didn’t matter whether this was sonic adventurousness or bringing forth lofty concepts for their releases; Pink Floyd were always looking to rise to the challenge of bettering themselves with every studio release.
This was present right from the band’s inception in 1965, with their first handful of early singles and their first two albums, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and A Saucerful of Secrets, being some of the most audacious psychedelic rock releases of the era. With Barrett’s unique approach and the adept musicianship of the rest of the band, their early work was always dazzling.
As impressive as it might have been, bassist Waters knew that this would eventually cause the band problems in a live environment. In a 1967 interview with Melody Maker shortly after the release of their debut album, he discussed how the band was struggling to find a way to emulate their studio sound in a live capacity. He knew that the songs were stunning, but he also acknowledged that they would be a near-insurmountable challenge to replicate.
“We still do ‘Arnold Layne’ and struggle through ‘Emily’ occasionally,” he confessed, referring to two of their early singles. “We don’t think it’s dishonest because we can’t play live what we play on records.” While going on to cite The Beatles’ ‘A Day in the Life’ as being an example of a fantastic song that cannot be recreated live, Waters then claimed that some of the material from Piper was “completely impossible to do live.”
“We’ve got the recording side together and not the playing side,” asserted Waters. “So what we’ve got to do now is get together a stage act that has nothing to do with our records, things like ‘Interstellar Overdrive’, which is beautiful, and instrumentals that are much easier to play.”
Despite all of this talk of simplifying things, Floyd would arguably go on to make their live performances equally as complex as their studio recordings. So much for “impossible”.
