The early Pink Floyd albums David Gilmour struggles to like: “It was dreadful”
David Gilmour accumulated an extensive musical catalogue throughout his tenure with Pink Floyd. Joining the band in 1967 as a guitarist and co-lead vocalist when frontman Syd Barrett faced challenges, Gilmour’s arrival significantly eased the impact of his subsequent departure in April 1968.
Gilmour sparked a strong songwriting collaboration alongside bassist and co-vocalist Roger Waters. Along with bandmates, keyboardist Rick Wright and drummer Nick Mason, they embarked on a journey into the future. They transitioned away from their initial explicitly psychedelic phase, eventually arriving at a more intellectual and profound musical landscape.
The transition from their initial phase to the one that peaked with iconic concept albums like 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon was marked by experimentation. The band explored various avenues to perfect their sound and attain the unparalleled success of the 1970s. Naturally, this journey included artistic missteps; nevertheless, by the release of 1971’s Meddle, Pink Floyd had solidified their direction and were poised to enter their most impactful era.
That period wasn’t exactly smooth sailing, though. For every breakthrough moment, there were stretches where the band seemed to be trying ideas simply to see what stuck, pushing themselves into corners that didn’t always yield the results they might have hoped for.
Still, that uncertainty was part of the process. Pink Floyd weren’t interested in playing it safe, even if it meant releasing material that didn’t fully land, and those missteps ended up laying the groundwork for the clarity that would eventually define their most celebrated work.
Although these two are now widely regarded as the band’s most popular and genre-defining, Gilmour has since discussed two other albums within their catalogue that he didn’t particularly care for. In 1970, Atom Heart Mother became Pink Floyd’s fourth album featuring Gilmour. Despite being the third album without Barrett, Gilmour felt the band was still searching for their musical direction. Speaking to Mojo magazine in 2001, he expressed that this phase might have represented the band’s lowest artistic point.
“We didn’t know where we were going in terms of recording,” Gilmour explained. “But we were pretty good live. We were very good at jamming. But we couldn’t translate that onto record. Gradually, a direction revealed itself to us. A line that began with the ‘Saucerful of Secrets’ track all the way to ‘Echoes’, via the long piece ‘Atom Heart Mother’.”
Adding: “That was a good idea but it was dreadful. 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.”
One year before Atom Heart Mother, the band released Ummagumma, an album comprising original studio recordings and live renditions of previously published tracks. Despite the album receiving praise from numerous fans and containing other well-known songs, Gilmour himself isn’t particularly fond of it. In a 2011 interview with Rolling Stone, he discussed that phase of the band, highlighting how often their inspiration didn’t align accurately with their current creative direction.
“We were fairly brave, and would put anything on a record that amused us one way or another. But in some of those moments we were floundering about. [We] didn’t have our forward momentum very clear, and inspiration might have been a bit thin on the ground at times,” Gilmour said.
