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Title: 'We were awful': Pink Floyd's Waters on band's early days
Source:
Yahoo
URL Source: https://celebrity.yahoo.com/news/we ... ands-early-days-150059179.html
Published: May 28, 2015
Author: Edward Baran
Post Date: 2015-05-29 11:10:04 by Orwellian Nightmare
Keywords: None
Views: 6127
Comments: 34
By Edward Baran LONDON (Reuters) - Pink Floyd founding members Roger Waters and Nick Mason joked while unveiling a memorial plaque on Thursday that they were so bad at first that they wouldn't have passed an audition on a talent show. The pair, together with the late Richard Wright, formed the group while studying architecture at the former Regent Street Polytechnic in central London between 1962 and 1965. The psychedelic and progressive rock band went on to become one of the most commercially successful groups in popular music. Returning to the site of the polytechnic to unveil the plaque, they talked about their time as students and about the early days of Pink Floyd. Asked how good the group was when it started out, drummer Mason said: "Put it like this: if we'd gone up for ‘Britain's Got Talent’, I don't think we would have made it past the audition stage. We weren't terribly good." "We were effing awful," added Waters, Pink Floyd's bassist and the band's main lyricist during their peak years. Pink Floyd, which racked up record sales exceeding 250 million, had an initial line-up that included guitarist and songwriter Syd Barrett, another student, who left in 1968. Lead guitarist David Gilmour became the fifth member in late 1967.
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 17.
#1. To: Orwellian Nightmare (#0)
He is the guy that slowly went crazy if I recall. They wrote several hit songs about him (the lunatic is in my head)....
'Wish you were here ' was about Syd Barrett too.
No. It was about his dad.
Wish You Were Here" is the title track on Pink Floyd's 1975 album Wish You Were Here. Its lyrics encompass Roger Waters' feelings of alienation from other people. Like most of the album, it refers to former Pink Floyd member Syd Barrett and his breakdown. David Gilmour and Waters collaborated to write the music. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wish_You_Were_Here_(Pink_Floyd_song)
Ya maybe most of the album, but not that one. Wish You Were Here is about his father. Wikipedia notwithstanding.
It's not a big issue to me . I have gone through 2 albums ,a cassette tape ,and a cd of the album .I like it better than Dark Side . I think you are correct that Water's father was in his mind when some of the lyrics were written . Anyway ,this is my last link ;since Wiki is automatically dismissed . Wish You Were Here, like the record that precedes it, is a concept album. Revolving around the central theme of absence, Waters’ lyrics illustrate the difference between the group’s early years – when Pink Floyd was a band of brothers, making music for a small but devoted audience – and the present. The guys had become multi-millionaires in the wake of Dark Side’s success, but they’d also become cash cows for a corporate label, and the camaraderie that once existed between them had grown strained. Tying the song cycle together are two compositions about Syd Barrett: the nine-part opus “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” and the short, haunting title track. “Wish You Were Here” opens up with a distant chord progression from Gilmour’s 12-string acoustic guitar, processed to sound as though it’s emanating from a car stereo. The sound crackles and pops, and when a second guitar swoops into the mix, the disparity between both parts is thrown into sharp relief. The second guitar is loud and blemish-free; the first is just a ghost, a pale shadow of what it must’ve sounded like when it was originally recorded. By 1975, Syd Barrett had become a pale shadow of his former self, too. When he made a surprise visit to Abbey Road on June 5, stumbling into the studio while engineer Brian Humphries tweaked the final mix of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” he’d put on so much weight that the others didn’t recognize him for several minutes. He’d shaved his head, too, along with his eyebrows. It pained Waters to see his friend so lost, so detached, so disengaged from the world around him. “Wish You Were Here” deals with that mental inability – the refusal, even – to engage with reality, and it served as much as a rallying for Waters as a sad tribute to Barrett’s better days. “All [my] songs are encouraging me; I guess I write them for me,” Waters explains during a new documentary, Pink Floyd: The Story Of Wish You Were Here. “It’s to encourage myself not to accept a lead role in a cage, but to go on demanding of myself that I keep auditioning for the walk-on part in the war, ‘cause that’s where I want to be. I wanna be in the trenches. I don’t want to be at headquarters; I don’t wanna be sitting in a hotel somewhere. I wanna be engaged.” http://www.americansongwriter.com/2012/08/behind-the-song-pink-floyds-wish-you- were-here/
#19. To: tomder55 (#17)
I think it's a good point that part of the lyrics can be about syd and part about his dad. Why not? A song about all different people he wished were still around. I like establishing fan bonafides by how many versions of an album you've worn out! Excellent creditials, sir.
Good post... People couldn't wait for the follow up to Dark Side. This is just me, but I found the lyrics to 'Wishing You Were Here' to be *too* cynical and dark....and introspective -- without any sense of the whimsy or humor of Dark Side. Musically I also thought it fell short...but that happens often of the subsequent album of a band's breakout masterpiece. Almost impossible to re-create a Mona Lisa. Noticed this phenomena with Boston, Bad Company, Foreigner.....and...with....Spinal Tap ;-)
I also think it's a bit futile for us to say we (or anyone, wikipedia) know anything about the whys and wherefores of these songs. I think waters has had so many interviews and questions about it all for the last forty years he doesn't even care if he gives the true answer. I think he, and all these old stars, are bored of it all and just make stuff up they find interesting. Most of them put a lot less effort into this music than it seems. Probably not in PF's case but lots of others. Bowie and zeppelin come to mind.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latesthad an initial line-up that included guitarist and songwriter Syd Barrett, another student, who left in 1968.
#2. To: Pericles (#1)
#10. To: tomder55 (#2)
#11. To: Biff Tannen (#10)
#13. To: tomder55 (#11)
#17. To: Biff Tannen (#13)
(Edited)
Replies to Comment # 17.
#21. To: tomder55 (#17)
#22. To: tomder55, Dead Culture Watch (#17)
Wish You Were Here, like the record that precedes it, is a concept album. Wish You Were Here, like the record that precedes it ['Dark Side of the Moon'], is a concept album. Revolving around the central theme of absence, Waters’ lyrics illustrate the difference between the group’s early years – when Pink Floyd was a band of brothers, making music for a small but devoted audience – and the present. The guys had become multi-millionaires in the wake of Dark Side’s success, but they’d also become cash cows for a corporate label, and the camaraderie that once existed between them had grown strained.
#23. To: tomder55 (#17)
End Trace Mode for Comment # 17.
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