The show that Roger Waters was “embarrassed” by
Like most moments in history, many of Pink Floyd‘s milestones are ones they had no idea they’d still be talking about years later. But, in the early 1970s, despite the success of their previous albums, they faced another pressure of having painted themselves into a corner, becoming the band that does little outside artistic concepts and full-length albums.
Thus, not only did they find themselves in the throes of broader uncertainty at the tail-end of an era defined by its own counterculture, but it also meant having to look elsewhere to keep the magic alive and somehow maintain relevance beyond being that band. For instance, going into the ’70s, years following their stint with Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd had suffered from a lack of hits, one of the last being ‘See Emily Play’ from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
According to Nick Mason, they’d become “an albums band” because people were only drawn in by singles, and if Pink Floyd didn’t have any hit singles, they weren’t seen as a group that could be the kind to release chart-toppers every now and then and engage audiences in different ways. This wasn’t a bad thing, per se, but it did create a sort of barrier that pushed Pink Floyd in a specific direction, like you could only know and appreciate their music if you had the time and energy to do so.
As a response to this, they started thinking outside the box. After A Saucerful Of Secrets, they ventured into new territory with the soundtrack for Barbet Schroeder’s More, and upped the ante on off-kilter, abstract-quality performances, like their one at London’s Royal Festival Hall and Royal Albert Hall for ‘The Final Lunacy’ of their The Man and the Journey concerts. Looking at recollections from those in the audience, it seemed more like a tongue-in-cheek musical skit than a real performance.
During a performance of the instrumental ‘Work’, Rick Wright started hammering some wood together in an attempt at making a table, but one of the legs fell off, causing the audience to erupt in laughter. According to Nick Mason, describing the moment to Louder, “One of us held a leg, and another banged a nail in.” Roger Waters was a little more impassioned in his views, saying, “Some might say it was experimental, but, looking back it was pretty embarrassing.”
He added: “To be honest, we probably did all this improvisation because we hadn’t yet come up with constructive songs to perform.”
Nonetheless, some recall this moment as the best performance they ever did, probably because there was a broader rawness in the air despite the strange energy, despite the fact that this was undeniably a version of Floyd that had its feelers out, reaching for something that would signpost a new, exciting chapter beyond the ground they’d already broken. It was the kind of innovative push that followed into Atom Heart Mother, where their music suddenly had a place for unconventional sounds like the sound of milk pouring.
Although Mason insists they were still trying to find their direction, these were the seeds for what bred artistic excellence in the years that followed, not just with boundary-pushing but establishing broader historical moments they’d discuss for countless years to come, like Live At Pompeii. “We were wise long after the event,” Mason recalled, noting the poignancy of one of the biggest, most eye-opening experiences in music history.
