“We’ll do long things then”: The song that made Pink Floyd give up making singles
For anyone hoping to get a hit on the charts, the singles market is practically the only outlet for success. Although there are many people who are embracing the album medium in the age of streaming in an attempt to get the playlist hits, fans are far more interested in listening to a breezy four minutes of music than devoting over half an hour’s worth of time to a couple of tunes that speak to each other. That medium does lend itself to the most thoughtful forms of expression, and it was clear that Pink Floyd were not going to be making their living off of being a singles act.
Because, really, was there any point in hoping for anyone to cut down one of the band’s epics to a three-minute pop jam? Many of Floyd’s fans were interested in taking the journey on Dark Side of the Moon, and despite ‘Money’ getting a lot of airplay, its success on the charts wasn’t always their priority. It was about how it fits in the context of the record, especially going into the existential dread of ‘Us and Them’.
That said, some of their singles did eventually give up the biggest successes of their career. No matter how long the band agonised over getting the right running order and performances down for The Wall, ‘Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)’ was a good way for radio to set the scene for the record, telling the story of Pink’s childhood in school and learning about the horrors of the world through his headmaster.
If the band had stuck with what they were doing on tunes like ‘See Emily Play’, though, they would have been a much different group. Syd Barrett may not have been meant to stay with the band for too long, but the whimsical side of his songwriting was far more engaging than any other psychedelic group at the time, especially with his mix of modern rock and the fantastical lyricism that he picked up from literature.
So when Barrett left, any chance of them making a record like that was a pipe dream. They tried their best to hold things together on A Saucerful of Secrets, but listening to their subsequent singles, a tune like ‘Point Me At the Sky’ was a disaster, failing to land anywhere on the charts and being one of their last-ditch efforts to hang onto the roots that were planted while Barrett was in the band.
“Point Me At the Sky’ was one miserable failure. We couldn’t do it, and eventually, we just gave up.”
Roger Waters
For Waters, ‘Point Me At the Sky’ left enough of a crater for them to rethink their entire approach to what they were doing, saying, “‘Point Me At the Sky’ was one miserable failure. We couldn’t do it, and eventually, we just gave up and said, ‘Well, we can’t do that. We’ll do long things then.‘” They did find their groove, but even getting long jams organised was bound to take a while.
‘Careful With That Axe Eugene’ and ‘Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun’ were steps in the right direction, but by the time they started working on Ummagumma and pieces of Atom Heart Mother, it was clear that they still needed some guidance, especially since the back half of the latter record features a song that consists of what can only be described as ASMR of their roadie figuring out what he’s going to have for breakfast.
The singles were out of the question, but at that point, who the hell cared? Most of Pink Floyd considered themselves musicians in every sense of the word, and if they weren’t going to make singles in the traditional way everyone else did, they were going to hone their craft until the mainstream came to them.
