Pink Floyd / David Gilmour discussion thread

Brenda Lewis2 said:I guess that’s really all there is to it. It's not like I haven't listened to them later on, but what Gilmour is putting out these days feels like nothing but pure commercialism.

Sure, it's commercial—but it’s high-end, polished commercialism. That’s exactly why I’m giving it a solid 3.5/5. 😘
And look, you can't exactly claim everything after Syd was garbage. If we're being fair, I think everything up until The Wall holds its own pretty well (though, I don't know, maybe Obscured by Clouds or more ja didn't quite click for me personally). For my money, Meddle and Animals are the absolute peaks! That aggressive tone at the start of Echoes? It hits you like a freight train and just drags you straight into some other dimension. The stuff from the early 70s requires actual patience and a willingness to sit down and listen. Back then, people actually *listened* to music because they weren't constantly distracted by endless TV channels and all these modern gadgets. Nowadays, people have neither the attention span nor the time, so the music has shifted to match that. But hey, that's just my two cents.

Man, I said I wrote about the "Echoes" album, but what I actually meant was "Meddle"... my brain just slipped on "Echoes" because that Gilmour guitar work in that track is absolutely insane... just unreal...

Charles Wells2 said:Listening to music from the early '70s really requires some patience and a genuine willingness to sit down and focus. Back then, people actually listened to records because there wasn't constant television streaming or all those other modern distractions.

🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏 🙏

Kenneth Clark7 said:Man, I said I wrote the "Echoes" album, but what I actually meant was "Meddle." My brain just jumped straight to "Echoes" because that Gilmour guitar work in that track is absolutely insane.

Don't sweat it too much; at the end of the day, "Echoes" is basically a half-album anyway.😉

Honestly, you’d need some serious patience to sit through that whole thing, but in the end, it just kind of fell flat 🙂

Honestly, she hasn't got a clue what she’s talking about—someone clearly fed her some nonsense that Pink Floyd wasn't even worth listening to after the bar era, and please, give me a break! 🙄

paučko said:Look, she honestly hasn't a clue what she's talking about. Someone probably just whispered in her ear that Pink Floyd wasn't any good after Barrett, and she swallowed it whole. Give me a break! 🙄

😘

paučko said:Look, she hasn't got a clue what she's talking about. Someone probably just whispered in her ear that Pink Floyd wasn't any good once they moved past Barrett, and she swallowed it whole. Give me a break. 🙄

Could be... come on, Brenda Lewis2, admit it, you're being way too soft on her. 🙂

Calling something "commercial" is a total non-starter because everything we’ve ever listened to is essentially commercial by definition.

Pink Floyd with Barrett represents one fascinating era, while the Pink Floyd with Waters era is a completely different beast—though there's no denying he was the band's creative engine.
After Waters left, they turned into this sort of abstract machine; still great, still instantly recognizable, but different. Honestly, if David Gilmour could pull off an album this heavy, maybe there was actually enough juice left for a farewell tour. They might have even found a way to make a reunion tour with Waters work.
But they didn't.

I’m totally on the same page as Zachary Bishop82. I mean, what even counts as "selling out"? Once a band jumps from playing tiny clubs to selling out stadiums, they've basically crossed that line already. The masses buy the record they recorded in some sweaty garage, that demand pushes them onto the big stages—because hey, you gotta make money while the iron is hot—and eventually, it becomes physically impossible for them to ever play a small club again. Personally, I think catching a tribute band like "Eclipse" at a local dive bar is wonderful enough, though honestly, having Pink Floyd play a venue like that would probably trigger a riot among the fans...
Even the guys in Pink Floyd themselves have admitted more than once how pointless it feels to play stuff from before Meddle, and there are certain albums where they just can't wrap their heads around why they even bothered recording such nonsense in the first place.
If you ask me, there wasn't much of a leap between the "Delicate Sound of Thunder" tour and the "Pulse" tour. They were essentially playing the exact same set. For someone like me, who hasn't been lucky enough to catch them live since back in '94, it would be absolutely legendary if they just did one massive farewell tour. But I get it... they don't have anything fresh to bring to the table, nothing new to show us, and they either can't recycle the old hits or maybe they just don't feel like playing them anymore...
And making some kind of radical, experimental pivot just to alienate the fanbase? No, that’s just not how this well-oiled machine operates...

Here’s a little something about Syd.
On June 5, 1975, while they were tracking vocals for "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" (which, let's be real, is all about him), Syd Barrett just wandered right into the studio during a Pink Floyd session. He was pretty heavily overweight by then and had shaved off his eyebrows, so honestly, nobody even recognized him at first. He walked up to Richard Wright and asked him when he’d finally get a chance to play guitar again. Then Waters turned to him and asked what he thought of the track, and Syd just goes, "It's a bit boring," turns around, and vanishes. He just walked all the way back home to Cambridge... where he’s lived for the last 30 years.
For those entire 30 years, Syd refused to say a single word about Pink Floyd, right up until three years ago when he watched that BBC documentary about himself for the very first time. His only comment? He told his sister it was "too much noise."

In the intervening years, Syd became quite ill, battling Hepatitis C and diabetes, which nearly cost him his sight. By 2001, they had released the compilation "The Best of Syd Barrett."

Yeah, look—he put out a few solo records after leaving Pink Floyd, so it's not like he just vanished into thin air the second he walked out. I’ve never actually sat down and listened to those solo albums myself, but I'm pretty sure they aren't exactly impossible to find, download, or buy. So, really, Brenda Lewis2 could have easily kept up.

Well, look, this has already been brought up before

So, what exactly are you asking when you wonder what happened to Syd?

redcrane28 said:Yeah, he released a few solo albums after leaving Pink Floyd, so it’s not like he just buried himself alive the second he walked out. I’ve never actually listened to those solo records, but I'm pretty sure they aren't exactly impossible to find, download, or buy. So, Miss Brenda Lewis2 could have easily kept up with him.

Look, if we're being realistic—he left Pink Floyd back in 1968 after contributing nothing but 'Jugaband blues' to 'A Saucerful of Secrets'—and then he only put out two albums after that...
The first one was recorded throughout '68 and '69, produced by Waters and David Gilmour, and it was called 'The Madcap Laughs'.
The second one came out in 1970, also produced by David Gilmour, titled 'Barrett'!
He managed to scrape by all these years on royalties because whenever Pink Floyd released something complicated, David Gilmour would insist on throwing in something from the Syd era just so Syd would get a cut too. For example, on the 'Pulse' album, they included 'Astronomy Domine' just as a nod to that...

So, regarding those sessions for the Barrett solo stuff—since we’re already digging through the deep archives of Pink Floyd history—David Gilmour once mentioned that it was easily one of the most grueling jobs he ever had to deal with. Apparently, he had to record those Barrett tracks over and over again because Syd was constantly fixated on these abstract details, never quite satisfied with anything... it sounds like they were barely scraping by to finish the albums, and David was definitely losing his mind a little bit in the process.

When you start looking at how acid use can trigger schizophrenia, Barrett is obviously the face everyone associates with that tragedy, but there’s a whole list of others too... you've got Tom Hall, the drummer for The Elevator Boys, then Arthur Lee from Love, Peter Green during those early Fleetwood Mac days, and of course, the legendary Brian Jones. Even the singer from The Elevator Boys, Rocky Ericson, ended up in a psychiatric ward.

I have this one memory of a quote I read somewhere—I honestly can't recall where now—but I think it was Richard Wright saying that the rest of the Pink Floyd guys never even touched LSD themselves. It's a hard pill to swallow, though... just feels a bit unlikely if you ask me. 😉

Since we’re already talking about Syd, we might as well mention how a whole bunch of artists have released albums heavily inspired by him; I’m talking about folks like Robyn Hitchcock, Julian Cope, Kevin Ayers, Levitation, Blur, The Shins, Octopus, Codeine, Martin Newell, and plenty of others...

I’ve always looked up to David Gilmour as my absolute idol, and I have such a deep affection for this album! There’s just something about it... specifically that instrumental track, Castellorizon. Every time I listen to it, I feel like I'm being wrapped in that unmistakable, quintessential Pink Floyd sound!!

Something new's up.