The heavy style David Gilmour said Roger Waters got to before John Lennon
If you want layered music, you should listen to Pink Floyd. Their catalogue tells two stories, one of the tales entwined within their well-thought-out concepts, and another in the form of personal endeavour.
While the band may not realise it, and fans might not discuss enough, the track ‘Atom Heart Mother’ from the album of the same name was a huge turning point for the band. It didn’t fall victim to the classic trap that so much psychedelic music did, which revolved around being experimental for the sake of being experimental. Instead, it kept that classic psychedelic sound, but also allowed the band to expand on different themes that presented themselves within the track. In this case, an awful western.
“We all thought the same thing which was that it sounds like a theme from some awful western,” said Roger Waters when discussing the first time the band heard the riff that would make up the foundation of the track, “It had that kind of… Slight pastiche, heroic, plodding quality to it… Of horses silhouetted against the sunset.”
After picking up on this apparent theme that was presenting itself, the band decided to lean into it. There was a hidden story buried somewhere in this track, and Pink Floyd took it upon themselves to bring it out. How? Well, they did so by adding horns, strings and different voices in a bid to really enhance this western style that was shrouding the track.
Leaning into this story-driven element of the song foreshadowed the albums that Pink Floyd would become most recognised for. Records like Dark Side of The Moon take that initial idea of ‘Atom Heart Mother’ and expand upon it further, not only leaning into a song thematically, but actually creating a story surrounding it. Pink Floyd would have to tap into different emotions, sounds, and effects in order to bring these stories to life, and this meant straddling a line between the real world and fiction.
While there was certainly a storytelling element embedded into the bands most prolific work, it would be naive to assume that nothing in those songs stems from the real lives of the men who made them. David Gilmour once highlighted a very particular element of Roger Waters performing which he thought was linked to his real life, and that was his screams of anguish that could be heard on some tracks. These were more than a sonic addition to a good song, they were a release of emotion in the most raw-sounding way possible.
“Roger had certainly taken to leaping around, thrashing his bass and gurning a bit,” said Gilmour, “Then there was the dramatic striking of the gong and the screaming in ‘Careful With That Axe’. Roger had discovered letting his pain out.”
Gilmour was a big fan of this aspect of Waters, admitting that not only did it add to Pink Floyd’s songs, but it was also massively ahead of its time. He recalled John Lennon doing something similar with John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, which was largely inspired by Arthur Janov. While Gilmour liked this side of Lennon, he attested that it was Waters who arrived at that self-contained and exciting sound first.
“I know that John Lennon did that whole Arthur ‘Primal Scream’ Janov album, which Roger was very keen on,” recalled Gilmour, “But he was screaming long before Lennon ever got to Janov.”
