The three Pink Floyd albums David Gilmour will always regret: “Our lowest point artistically”
Pink Floyd are afforded something of an unparalleled reputation within musical history. From their early days as harbingers of psychedelic experimentation, to the colossal success of albums like The Dark Side of the Moon, and even recent efforts like the anti-war single ‘Hey, Hey, Rise Up’, the band have enjoyed an incredibly diverse, enduring, and beloved career.
Nevertheless, the endless infighting within the band, along with some of their more misguided musical efforts, has been the root of some regret for songwriter David Gilmour.
When Pink Floyd first emerged from London in 1965, Gilmour was not in the picture. At that time, the pioneering psychedelic outfit was under the leadership of the artistic visionary Syd Barrett, who was also responsible for the bulk of the band’s songwriting. It was only slightly before the frontman was unceremoniously booted out of the group, as a result of his deteriorating mental health and increased dependency on psychedelic substances, that Gilmour joined the ranks of Floyd.
In the wake of Barrett’s departure from the group, Roger Waters stepped up to the plate to lead Pink Floyd, but they struggled to find their feet immediately after the loss of their primary songwriter. Although the first few releases during this period have since been adopted as fan favourites by cult followings, the band themselves readily admitted that works like Ummagumma didn’t exactly go to plan. In fact, that album remains one of the most regrettable records for David Gilmour.
“Well, we’d decided to make the damn album, and each of us to do a piece of music on our own,” Gilmour recalled to Sounds Guitar Heroes back in 1983. His personal contribution came in the form of ‘The Narrow Way’, which certainly isn’t one of his finest efforts. “It was just desperation, really, trying to think of something to do, to write by myself,” he claimed. “I’d never written anything before, I just went into a studio and started waffling about, tacking bits and pieces together. I haven’t heard it in years. I’ve no idea what it’s like.”
Ummagumma is a difficult record to entirely enjoy if you were a part of the band. After Syd Barrett was forced out of the group following his battles with substance abuse and growing mental health issues, Pink Floyd struggled to harmonise with one another in their new structure. It’s something that can be easily heard in the album, which sees the now-four members of the group allowing their own experimentation to supersede the pursuit of the band’s success.
Ummagumma is not the only Pink Floyd record that Gilmour looks back on with ire. The album’s follow-up, Atom Heart Mother, similarly failed to earn the respect of the guitarist, despite now being hailed as a cult masterpiece. “Atom Heart Mother was a good idea, but it was dreadful,” he declared in a 2001 edition of Mojo.
Even in the decades since its original release, Gilmour has not warmed to the album. “I listened to that album recently: God, it’s shit, possibly our lowest point artistically,” he shared. “It sounds like we didn’t have any idea between us, but we became much more prolific after it.” It’s fair to say that, if anybody else made those claims, the legions of Pink Floyd fans would be calling for blood, but it is difficult to disagree with Gilmour given his essential position in creating the record in the first place.
The truth is Atom Heart Mother has plenty of brihgt moments. As well as the transportation title track, a song that takes over the entire side one of the album, is enough to assert its place in the top ten of the band’s feature-length releases, the rest of the album is brightly polished, too. They had moved away from the band’s incendiary moments and were now beginning to construct songs to deliberately engage with the intellect of rock.
Eventually, Pink Floyd hit their stride in the post-Barrett days, creating albums like The Dark Side of the Moon, which were both artistically fulfilling and commercially successful. Although the arguments between Wates and Gilmour continued to intensify through this successful period, nobody could denounce the quality of the material at that time. However, that all changed during the 1980s when Waters left the group, leaving Gilmour to pick up the slack.
Admittedly, Gilmour’s time at the head of the band produced some pretty commendable efforts. However, the guitarist has been less than complimentary about the band’s final studio album, The Endless River, released in 2014. Largely composed of ambient instrumental efforts recorded decades prior, the album failed to live up to the expectations garnered by Pink Floyd up to that point.
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, Gilmour spoke of his regret over the album. “I’ll tell you: When we did that album, there was a thing that Andy Jackson, our engineer, had put together called The Big Spliff – a collection of all these bits and pieces of jams that was out there on bootlegs. A lot of fans wanted this stuff that we’d done in that time, and we thought we’d give it to them,” he shared.
“My mistake, I suppose, was in being bullied by the record company to have it out as a properly paid-for Pink Floyd record,” the guitarist admitted. “It should have been clear what it was. It was never intended to be the follow-up to The Division Bell. But, you know, it’s never too late to get caught in one of these traps again.”
So, while Pink Floyd undoubtedly created some of the greatest rock albums of all time, it is easy to see why David Gilmour harbours some regret over a handful of the band’s more misguided efforts and missteps – even if some of those records have since amassed a cult following among fans of the band.
