“Never in the same way”: the tunes David Gilmour didn’t consider real Pink Floyd songs
There’s normally a clear dividing line between what people think of when they look at essential pieces of their catalogue. Although fans might flock to whichever record they feel best defines what their favourite act is supposed to be, there are also a handful of times when a song might not go over that well live or rub artists the wrong way when they have to finalise the track listing for their album. A lot of what Pink Floyd did was based on finding their path after a while, but David Gilmour knew that a handful of songs shouldn’t even be counted amongst their main discography.
Given how many lacklustre moments are on some of their early studio albums, though, that’s not a qualification anyone should take lightly. As much as Gilmour was uncomfortable standing in for Syd Barrett on his first go-arounds with the group, records like A Saucerful of Secrets are important bridges throughout their career. But the true mark of that album was how it would end up sounding live.
Compared to Dark Side of the Moon or Animals, the band’s first attempts at getting weird in the studio left much to be desired. Ummagumma will forever be one of the most head-scratching moments in their discography, and while Atom Heart Mother was a step in the right direction, even the band admitted that the album didn’t work out due to them fumbling some pieces behind the scenes.
If they couldn’t get their sound right together, it was usually nice for all of them to recharge their batteries in their solo careers. After all, Gilmour and Richard Wright had some great solo material under their belt before working on The Wall, but when looking at the true dark horses of the band’s work, it all comes back to the music they made for movie soundtracks.
Even though similar albums by the likes of Tom Petty are usually considered downgrades since they’re meant to score a film, Pink Floyd never skimped out for a minute on these records. More is the weaker of their two soundtracks, but ‘The Nile Song’ is one of the finest forays into heavy metal to come out before Black Sabbath walked the Earth, and Obscured By Clouds is outstanding in most regards as well.
They might be placeholders in the minds of some fans in between the classics, but for Gilmour, there was no point in considering any of those songs as significant pieces of their work when talking about their greatest hits, saying, “[That was] good fun. We never categorised film soundtracks in the same way, that’s why they never make it onto collections.” For any Pink Floyd completionist, though, there’s much to glean from the also-rans in the background.
Since this is a group where their live albums are almost as essential as their studio records, a record like Obscured By Clouds needs to be heard by anyone who wants to hear anything in the vein of Meddle. There’s certainly nothing on the same level as ‘Echoes’ here by any stretch, but songs like ‘Burning Bridges’ mark the moment where Gilmour and Wright hit that golden middle ground with their vocal harmonies that would become more prominent on songs like ‘Time’.
So even if they aren’t true Pink Floyd songs by Gilmour’s definition, they help make up the bigger picture of what the band is supposed to be. Anyone can try their hand at getting the gist of Pink Floyd by going to their core studio albums, but there are pieces of their sound that wouldn’t have been born without the transitional records coming first.
