The singer David Gilmour said could be “a big pain in the arse”
Becoming a member of Pink Floyd wasn’t going to come easy for David Gilmour when he first started playing with them.
He already had to worry about filling the shoes of their frontman as best he could, and while he did end up finding his own voice in the group after a few albums, there would always be a sense of melancholy behind it, knowing that Syd Barrett wasn’t there anymore. He was going to do everything he could to make sure that Floyd was the best band they could be, but that did mean having to deal with more than a few headaches when working with some of the new talent as well.
Then again, a lot of Floyd’s first albums without Barrett were about them trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t. There was a lot of trial and error to everything they did, and while Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother aren’t looked back on all that fondly by the other members of the band, they were at least baby steps for them, eventually landing on something like ‘Echoes’ later down the line.
But their brand of forward-looking rock and roll wasn’t always what the fans wanted to hear. Sure, there were people still clamouring for the days when Barrett made those psychedelic masterpieces, but the band had no interest in making those jumps again. They still wanted to take their audience on a journey, and that couldn’t really be said for what was happening out of the glam scene coming out at the time.
Anyone could have appreciated what David Bowie was doing, but when Gilmour could appreciate what Marc Bolan was doing, he remembered him being a bit of a nuisance when he first saw him, saying, “Bolan used to hang around in our office and sit on the floor, strumming his guitar, flirting with our secretary, June, who, of course, he later married. He was a great Syd fan. I was quite fond of him. He was a big pain in the arse, of course, very full of himself. I always liked that thing where he called himself the Bolan child, this magical, mythical name.”
If you weren’t ready for someone that was decked out in glitter trying to be one of the biggest names in music, though, chances are you would have found Bolan a bit grating too. T Rex was much more folksy than what they ultimately became, but when you look at Bolan’s career trajectory, he seemed to be willing to finish what Barrett had started when looking at a few of his records.
He was nowhere near as eclectic as Barrett when he made his records, but there are pieces of records like Electric Warrior that are certainly indebted to Barrett’s memory. The songs about traveling through the cosmos is definitely inspired by The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and while he wasn’t going to make the same strange melodies that Barrett could, Bolan was like the strange amalgamation of Barrett, Bowie, and an old blues guitarist all wrapped up into one whenever he sang.
It was very entertaining, but Gilmour knew that Floyd was destined for much more adventurous things. They were still looking to give their audience something to remember with their fantastic light shows, but a lot of their songs were about far more personal matters and trying to empathise with their fellow man rather than making uip fanciful stories that seemed like rock and roll nursery rhymes.
But despite Bolan not being around for very long, it was nice knowing there was someone out there willing to take Barrett’s music further. He never had the chance to capitalise on his momentum after bowing out of music, so getting someone like Bolan to come out of the woodwork was another example of Barrett living on through the kids that he inspired along the way.
