The Pink Floyd album that made Roger Waters’ wife “burst into tears”
When you consider many bands from the 1960s and ‘70s, the one who changed the most and grew into their style over time is Pink Floyd. They transformed dramatically over their time as a group, and it wasn’t until they entered the realm of heavily intricate and layered concept albums that the band came into their own. Now, there isn’t a rock fan in the world who hasn’t heard of them, but it was a tumultuous ride to get there.
Jimi Hendrix spoke out about Pink Floyd occasionally, dismissing their music as something that relies on presence more than sound. “Here’s one thing I hate, man,” he said when discussing the new developing scene that Floyd was a part of, “When these cats say, ‘Look at the band. They’re playing psychedelic music!’ All they’re doing is flashing lights on them and playing ‘Johnny B Goode’ with the wrong chords. It’s terrible.”
The group themselves even admit to writing some bad songs, especially after Syd Barrett initially left. As Roger Waters and David Gilmour tried to embody his sound, they came up with ‘Point Me At The Sky’, a track that has since been widely criticised as one of the band’s worst outings and, as Waters puts it, “One notable failure when Syd left the band”.
It took time for Pink Floyd to come into their own. They managed to obtain moderate success as their ability as musicians and a live act was undeniable, but it was years before they put something together that they knew they could buy into and that they thought would propel them to legendary status.
This came with their album Dark Side of the Moon, which has since been heralded on more than one occasion as one of the best records ever made. When Waters was asked if they knew it would be as successful as it was, he said he always knew the band were onto something. Whether he thought the record would reach the heights it did remains to be seen, but when he took a first pressing home to his wife, her reaction was all he needed.
“When we’d finished making it, I took a quarter inch home, and I played it to my then wife, and she burst into tears,” he recalled, “I thought, well, she feels the same way I do. This, we finally cracked it. So, it’s at that point, which was 1973, where I felt, we’ve been at this since 1965, so it was eight years later, during those eight years we have honed our craft to the point where we’re capable of making a piece of work that is homogenous and well-crafted and well put together.”
It’s tough to say whether any of them thought it would become such an iconic album, as can anybody really predict such a massive level of success in anything they do? What they did know, however, was that they had made something they could be proud of. “You know,” he concluded, “If we were cabinet makers, we could stand back now and look at that cabinet, or the chair, or whatever, and go, you know what, that is well made”.
