Pirate radio and the blues: The music Roger Waters called “the root of everything I do”
When it comes to progressive rock bands, people tend to focus on the ‘progressive’ side of the name and not so much the ‘rock’ side. Which should be just as important, right? The whole point is to push the medium forward and take more diverse influences into the genre. However, if it also does rock and/or roll, then what’s it all for? There are several candidates for the poster children of this phenomenon, but above them all might just be Pink Floyd. At this point, the London prog legends are more myth now than a band.
A collection of anecdotes wrapped around some of the best albums of the 1970s (and 1960s if you’re a die-hard Syd Barrett fan). Their music often gets left behind in the actual legend. Of concerts played in the ruins of Pompeii. Of 14 hours, mostly improvised psychedelic freak-outs at Alexandra Palace. Of albums made entirely out of sampled household noises. Of Roger Waters and David Gilmour somehow failing to kill each other after decades of trying.
All this gets in the way of a fundamental truth about the band that all the myth and legend was built on: Pink Floyd were an excellent rock band above all else. You want riffs? Try ‘Money’, ‘Have a Cigar’, and ‘Not Now, John’. Shout-along chorus? ‘Another Brick in the Wall Part 2’ and ‘Brain Damage’, thank you kindly. Kick-ass solos? Gestures wildly in David Gilmour’s general direction.
The band always had the chops to make their avant-garde ideas palatable for mainstream audiences, and I don’t think that’s the back-handed compliment that many prog-heads would take it as. There are many bands of their ilk that hid a lack of ideas behind meaningless experimentation or pointless instrumental wankery. For Floyd to take those ideas and make not just good music but some of the best-selling records of their time out of them shows a genuine understanding of both parts of the term ‘progressive rock’.
How did this begin for Pink Floyd?
In a way, this makes sense. Pink Floyd were, after all, the thinking man’s choice of 1970s rock superstars. They became one of the world’s biggest bands at the same time Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and The Who were selling out stadiums the world over. In a world of thunderous hard rock, they were something a little subtler, a little more cerebral.
However, all those bands were (more or less) from the same generation. They all had the same musical upbringing, and all the music that Ozzy, Page and Plant were weaned on, Rog, Dave and the gang were too. The best example of this comes from an interview Roger Waters gave to Rolling Stone in 2005, where he was asked what record changed his life as a kid.
Waters answers, “Like everyone else in England, I listened to Radio Luxembourg, a pirate station. They played rock & roll, like Bill Haley and English acts with stupid invented names like Tommy Steele and Billy Fury. Seven or eight years later, the Beatles changed all that. In the meantime I fell in love with Lead Belly, Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, Art Blakey. Monk and Mingus. The blues is at the root of everything I do.”
I think the fact that Floyd still have such a following where other bands of their ilk fell away is testament to that. No matter how prog they got, Pink Floyd never lost sight of being a rock band, which is what makes them still one of the most beloved bands of their generation.
