Pink Floyd Atom Heart Mother Documentary (Inc.. Zabriskie Point and Ron Geesin's The Body)

[Music] thank you [Music] it's November 1969. Italian film director Michelangelo Antonio is listening to Pink Floyd's recently released umagoma album the filmmaker is searching for soundtrack music that would appeal to a youth Market on hearing the album's live version of purple with arachi Eugene he promptly invited the band along with Road manager Peter watts and Roadie Allen Styles always a Rome to record music for his latest movie sub-brisky points a rambling counterculture cash in set in th

e California desert thank you [Music] from the resulting sessions there are over 30 separate pieces of music in circulation and more thought to be still unreleased although many of these tracks are simply alternative versions of the same basic songs the music was released both officially and unofficially over many years under a variety of different song titles [Music] the names given to these tracks like fingles cave and benoni will long fall to be the invention of bootleggers however these name

s which were based on Ancient mythology were written on tapes that the band gave to a radio DJ called Don Hall [Music] he also worked as the musical advisor swantonioni for the zabriskie film hold broadcast these tracks on his Californian radio show and this was the source of many of the bootlegs including the much-looked Omi Adelphi [Music] thered [Music] it's DJ Hall's voice incidentally that can be heard talking at the start of the heartbeat pigmeat song we're taking our nags Ace yeah and mak

e a damn good Target to themselves let them have it [Music] Florida holiday a color TV [Music] the man spends a month in Rome working on the new tracks written in a softer more contrified flavor that the band was starting to favor more around this time as they started to distance themselves from their psychedelic past [Music] the director was still unsure as to what tracks he would use until only a few days before the film's February Premiere ultimately despite a full album's worth of tracks onl

y for three completed Floyd songs were included in the film and its resulting soundtrack album the banders claim that the director scale back their input because he didn't want their name overshadowing his the film by the way was a commercial disaster and has regularly voted one of the worst ever another project that didn't materialize around this time was the band soundtrack to a cartoon called The Adventures of Rollo the cartoon featured artwork by illustrator Alan Aldrich famous for this wond

erful interpretations of Beatles songs the cartoon centered around a boy who flew around outer space collecting animals for a zoo the bank was still referencing this cartoon as late as April 1970 so they must have been well committed to it a pilot episode of the cartoon was known to have been made and it did feature the band's music it's unsure however if these were newly created tracks or simply existing ones [Music] the next soundtrack work that the band got involved with would be an education

al biology film called the body foreign film to watch it's full of wonderful ideas and some astonishing camera work [Music] [Music] its music is largely created by Roger Waters an experimental musician Ron Geeson although the other Floyd members do play on the album as do some of the atom hot mother musicians good the band befriended ronkies and aguiro sawalia and the omagumma track several species of small fairy animals builds all the Hallmarks of his avant-garde music concrete soundscapes wow

and indeed he is after all Scottish who are once known as the picks you know the ones with the small fairy animals in the cave were grooving with [Music] if you get past the farting in the belching of the first track this album is a Hidden Gem and very much the missing link between umaguma and atom heart mother with his first invitation for us to breathe in the air this album reveals waters's developing interest in lyrics about the cycle of Life a concept that he toyed with over the previous yea

r with the day in the life of a man Suites [Music] and Happy Days in a 1969 interview Waters references that the band were planning to record a cycle of Life peace in December of that year but with so many concurrent projects running around this time it's hard to know what if anything this ended up being there's another song that focused on the fragility of human life it was played by the band for almost three years but yet never fully realized as a fully produced release this is the embryo [Mus

ic] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] started Life as a tender acoustic number noted for its release on a harvest records compilation LP without the band's concerns a much heavier version would feature in the band's live shows around this time often as a show opener it's baffling to understand why this track was never featured on either omagumma atom heart or even metal although its screaming guitar mid section did eventually find its way into echoes [Music] here I go I will see the sunshi

ne [Music] as 1970 arrived the band turned in yet another Direction one that would redefine them and lay the foundation blocks for their phenomenal future I originally titled the amazing pudding this track first premiered as early as the 17th of January 1970 while the band were just concluding work on the zabriski soundtrack it was played in France a few days later where Dave Gilmore described the track and flew in French no less as something they had written only last week now considering the s

ong's complexity and length I suspect that this is an exaggerated claim and it's more likely that the song was well developed whilst they were in Rome especially when one considers that it started Life as a Gilmore Melody he called theme for an imaginary Western [Music] thank you considering that it's a rescue point is set in a desert it's highly probable that Gilmore had the film's imagery in his mind when initially sketching the main atom half theme out the original of which was played more in

a style that evoked the kind of Italian spaghetti westerns that were popular around this time [Music] this opening was originally called core to exist with Nick Mason's drums very much driving the whole piece there were sections in the original where short drum solos appear as if the kind of makeshift placeholders as if the band didn't quite know what to put in its place at that time foreign was recorded in March but the band felt dissatisfied with it leaving geese in to develop the track as he

saw fit [Music] next we have breast milky with a geese and flavored cello now replacing Wright's original organ solo [Music] by all accounts the actual recording of the orchestral Parts was a disaster was greased with open disdain from deliberately uncooperative performers who openly mocked his lack of experience and his avant-garde approach in the end it was choir Master John Aldis who stepped in to conduct and arrange things in some ways all this is a kind of unsung hero of this piece as he e

nded up softening the more aggressive edges the Geeson had originally planned foreign [Music] adds a female choir with Gilmore and Wright once treated ghostly Coral lines [Music] the live performances of the track over 1970 and 71 were equally problematic for the band due to them having different choirs and orchestras for most nights with local musicians being hired to perform the piece [Music] thank you [Music] originally titled split knees funky dong is a sequence that would more or less be re

peated in metal the following year but here giesian Arts acquire chanting abstract words some people have interpreted these as being food names that have been sang in a slightly exaggerated Scottish accent see what you think [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] The Surreal mind your throats please is very much a geese in peace with right adding bursts of melaton to create the sound of passing trains crisscrossing and Gathering speed like on the London Underground [Applause] [Music] your title was the

tubular Journey it's the voice of Nick Mason though who not only calls for silence in the studio but also informs us that this is an important announcement before the train Hells in through our minds thank you the final emergence section is a somewhat disjointed and sloppy attempt to intertwine the various musical themes over each other the piece does however regain its focus just in time for the Glorious finale and the reprise of the original father shall theme it wasn't until a day before its

performance in Hyde Park that the piece was finally christened atom heart mother the title coming from a newspaper article published in the London evening standard the article was about a woman who had been fitted with an atomic-powered pacemaker it apparently did its job and she led to a ripe old age of 88. he was Ron Geeson that told Rogers to find the new title in the paper and it's interesting to consider some of the other headlines in that Edition that could have caused his einstead foreig

n spoke favorably about this piece at the time and it became an established part of this set over the next year or so however over time all concerned have gradually distanced themselves from it and now view it as a kind of failed experiment for fans however the Swiss has a life and personality all of its own and it's just as Innovative and risk-taking as anything else that the band has created before or since [Applause] it was well liked Enough by filmmaker Stanley Kubrick who asked Waters perso

nally if he could use the piece in his Clockwork Orange film Kubrick has refused on the grounds that he wanted to edit the piece and use it as only he saw fit with no input from the band the atom Heart cover along with other Prague rock albums can be briefly spotted in the film as Alex peruses the Chelsea drugstore record shop in search of two Horror Show devotchkas [Music] personally I think that the gambles are hand over a partially completed tractor geese and paid off and we are left with a u

nique Triumph an original and glorious epic that combines Beauty and Menace In equal measure [Music] thank you side two of the album is structured in a similar way to omakoma with each band member having creative control over one of the four tracks first up is Roger Waters with if a reflective ballad in an understated acoustic style that he was favoring a lot around this time go and [Music] ruins please don't put your wires in my brain the introspective lyrics are delivered in a hushed whisper a

nd they had our first real indication of the emotional depth that Waters with later layer his tracks with with references to going and saying why is in brains the distance between friends and not talking to someone as much as you should do this track is almost certainly worse as his first meditation on his ex-band mate Sid Barrett [Music] good man foreign [Music] was recorded at Abbey Road Barrett was also there creating his second solo album with Gilmore in Wright lending him more than a helpin

g hand the feelings of regrets and guilt are perhaps a reflection of how warzers were starting to perceive his relationship with Sid who by now was starting to unravel at an alarming rate apparently Barrett would sneak into the studio and spy on Floyd whilst they were recording perhaps wondering if he too could join in with the game personally with the repetitious lyrics I've always thought that this song slightly outstays its welcome and would have been more effective if it had been cut shorter

or even split up in a similar way that pigs on a wing would later be used on animals [Music] when Barrett's departure became Eminence the band's management had high hopes that Rick Wright would replace him as the band's Chief songwriter the fact that it took him over a year to complete this song Perhaps suggests why this didn't happen this jaunty number was originally called One Night Stand and it centers around the passing romances that the band would encounter through life on the road when on

e considers that the summer of 1968 is when Sid Barrett left the band I've always felt that the how do you feel question is probably directed towards him [Music] this much love song is a real highlight of side too and it's a shame that this side of the band and Rick's writing in general weren't heard more the song was light enough by the Brazilian national bank to use in a TV commercial in the early 70s the advert received massive exposure for years and was played prior to their main Evening New

s broadcasts you really get the sense that rice is enjoying himself playing this track and as their piano skips along you feel rights love of the Beach Boys and the Beatles with a summery Penny Lane quality to it there's something basis whether or not the brass parts are real instruments or a melotron but with this recording date overlapping the atom heart mother strike it's probable that the brass section was played by the same musicians also goodbye to you [Music] the spine tingling ending of

the track sees the tone shift completely as white bits are melancholic fur well to one of his one-night stands Charlotte Pringle may have been memorable enough to recall in the song but really she's just like all the other girls and you get the feeling that it's her that shedding the teeth at the end of the song I'm Not Rick [Music] Dave Gilmore's side two offering opens with church bells ringing the melody known as the grandchild casters is common in most English churches and one that Gilmore w

ould have heard a lot growing up around Cambridge [Music] it's generally thought that only Human Rights appear on this track with Gilmore playing both the bass and drum Parts something that he would later claim to regret and rightly so as the track does have a lightweight and clumsy quality to it with more than its first share of missed drum beats the track was much improved however when it was performed live with the whole band I think far more personality and solidity to it will be extended by

up to 10 minutes with an expanded sing to me organ Solo in the middle [Music] [Applause] [Music] strange [Music] see to me [Music] Gilmore grew up in a wonderful part of the world with his child at home being directly opposite the huge grantchester Meadows a beautiful grass area with the lazy cam River Meandering through it strumming along without occur there's a fragility on almost whisper to Gilmore's voice as if not to wake the listeners relax Slumber as day turns to dusk then I worked to hu

rt him you know me Johnson what are you still there I'm done already had a sleeve so I was ready [Music] the strange numbers perhaps the last remnants of the aborted the man the journey idea which featured an after work tea break in which the band would be served Refreshments on stage by their Roadie Allen Stiles it was largely driven by Nick Mason who recorded Alan eating his breakfast at his home in what would be the Forerunner for the band's abandoned household objects project in which everyd

ay items will be used to create instrumentation the example here being Ireland's match strikes are like the gas oven becoming a percussion Beast foreign [Music] versions of this track would be the band listening in a tongue-in-cheek manner to family favorite radio DJ Jimmy young something that they would revisit later in the 1974 shows so they're all sitting nothing coming to be home Avic pen a Poise William I can see right or will Jolly well time has not treated this track kindly and the novelt

y of the spoken word loops and the stereo pound sound effects become somewhat tiresome with repeated listening well a nice touch though is that on early pressings the dripping tap at the end was cut into the runoff Groove so it played indefinitely the music however is a pure delighting and it's separated into three parts each has a warm comforting glow evocative of sleepy Sunday morning the middle Sunny Side Up section is the developments of a Gilmore piece called rain in the country that was pl

anned for the zabriskie movie The Baseline of which would be recycled into the funky dong section of the atom half of the suite the other two sections are in a similarly relaxed and playful mood and it's generally fought due to the recording date coinciding with the body that is Dave Gilmore and not Roger Waters playing bass here it's unsure that the Morning Glory relates to waking up with the old Dawn Hall or the morning glory plant the Seas of which are hallucigenic as a lazy afternoon nap it'

s a slink off the excessors of side one the second half of atom heart mother works wonderfully [Music] the album was released in October of 1970. some nine months after the initial atom Hearts Suites was first played live the reviews at the time were largely positive and the general consensus being that the band had found a new Direction a level of maturity after several years in the wilderness it reached number 55 in the U.S charts and the top 10 of most European countries however it was a home

that it gave the band their first number one foreign it's a kind of anti-cover and it reflects the band's desire to distance itself from the space rock psychobelia that they were associated with the idea came to design the storm Ferguson from Andy warhol's cow wallpaper print it was photographed at kits and farm in The Potter's bar barnas area midway between London and Cambridge the cow was apparently identified by the farmer as being Lulu well referred and I can't help thinking that this is a

tall story with the owner hoping he could cash in on royalties or something two alternative covers that were full to be presented to the band or whatever woman in an art deco hallway this ended up being used on a principal Edward's Magic Theater album the other was a diving man that ended up on a Def Leppard album now the diving man idea was apparently confirmed by the official band management however considering that this idea was Central to the Wish You Were Here theme I cannot think of that t

hey've got something muddled up any other cover is simply unimaginable it's perfect and among the best of their many great artworks in many ways that's the start of a new Floyd one that was developing its own identity one that was fun and quirky and unpredictable the cow seems to be looking at us with a combination of both boredom content Intrigue and threat emotions have sung the whole album up in many ways in my mind the acoustic aspects of this record create images of broad Summer Meadows and

playful sunlight in the English Countryside that I adore yet the Ethereal choir and bold orchestration cast shadows and brings looming clouds to the horizon along with Lulu belder also lurks in these fields and mad cap Scotsman following around annoying Everyone by throwing notes everywhere and waking people up blowing his trumpet had some hard mother may not be everyone's cup of Breakfast tea but for me it's home if somebody said to me now you know here's a million pounds go out and play atom

heart mother I'd say You must joking