Did Pink Floyd rip off The Kinks in 1970?
Pink Floyd had an unmistakable uniqueness to everything they did, which felt like it couldn’t have come from another band on the planet.
When they reached their apex, every note they produced seemed like it was meticulously considered, rather than off-the-cuff moments that were born out of jam sessions. With that in mind, it seems ludicrous to ever throw the word ‘unoriginal’ and Pink Floyd in the same conversation.
However, every band has to start from somewhere, and nobody, even the great David Gilmour, came out of the womb as the finished article. Just like mere mortals, he took inspiration from what was going on elsewhere, which he embedded into his own artistry, once stating of his guitar playing, “I copied – don’t be afraid to copy – and eventually something that I suppose that I would call my own appeared.”
Once his own style developed, Gilmour wasn’t in the art of copying what others were doing. Nevertheless, if you listen to a specific band on repeat, that obsession is naturally going to find its way into your work on a subconscious level.
For Gilmour, it was his love of The Kinks that accidentally stumbled into his own work in 1970 on Pink Floyd’s ‘Fat Old Sun’ from Atom Heart Mother.
Gilmour doesn’t need much of an opportunity to speak about his adoration for the group. He has a particularly soft place in his heart for ‘Waterloo Sunset’, once describing it on Desert Island Discs as the perfect song to listen to while sat “on a lovely warm beach, to listen to this in ‘somewhere else’ sunset, and missing London would be a wonderful moment”.
‘Waterloo Sunset’ evokes intense memories of the place he’s called home for the majority of his life, and even if he’s on a beach on the other side of the world, if Gilmour closes his eyes, he’s back on the Thames.
Additionally, during the premiere of his concert film, Remember That Night – Live At The Royal Albert Hall, Gilmour said: “For me, the perfect pop song is ‘Waterloo Sunset’ by the Kinks. I would have loved to have written that.” Given the breadth of music Gilmour has given the world with Pink Floyd, the fact that he still wishes he had ‘Waterloo Sunset’ in his arsenal says everything about his appreciation.
In an interview with Uncut in 2015, Gilmour was reflecting upon his back catalogue and spoke about the influence The Kinks have had upon his songwriting, confessing that ‘Fat Old Sun’ was straight out of the Ray Davies playbook.
“It’s one of those songs where the whole thing fell together very easily,” Gilmour explained. “I remember thinking at the time, ‘What have I ripped this off? I’m sure it’s by the Kinks or someone…’ But since whenever it was – 1968, ’69 – no one has ever yet said, ‘It’s exactly like this.’ it’s a nice lyric, I’m very happy with that.”
While Atom Heart Mother is a derided album by most, including Gilmour himself, who once said it “was a good idea but it was dreadful”, he does still appreciate ‘Fat Old Sun’. In an interview with BBC Radio 2 in 2002, he described the track as “fantastically overlooked”.
Sadly for Gilmour, it seems that his bandmates didn’t feel quite the same way about ‘Fat Old Sun’. In the same interview, Gilmour revealed he “tried very hard” to convince his bandmates to put it on their greatest hits album, Echoes, but they “weren’t having it”.
Despite what others may think, Gilmour remains hugely proud of ‘Fat Old Sun’ and is not afraid to give The Kinks their rightful credit for their inspiration. Besides, Gilmour wasn’t the first or last person to attempt to channel their inner Ray Davies, who will still be inspiring others for decades to come.
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