Pink Floyd - On Thin Ice Documentary (2020) 1965-1985 Psych For The Children Productions

[Music] um [Music] don't talk to me please [Music] first time i met sid was at a saturday morning art class in cambridge when i suppose i was nine or ten and he was eight or nine we became close you know when we were teenagers talking about smoking dope but not doing it most people including myself had certain jealouses of what a bright light he appeared to be he was you know physically beautiful um he witty funny the way he talked the way he walks you know he's i don't want to make this sound like a love song but um he was he was much loved by pretty much everyone around him we always had this notion that when we hit london i knew he was clear he was going to come up to london as well because london was the mecca and that was where one had to be and uh that we would start a band together and as it happened by the time he arrived i was already playing with a few other people so he kind of joined in in fact nick and rick were the sort of permanent ones there were a bunch of other people who were all at the regent street polly one guy who was a tutor there called mike leonard yeah yeah because i was wondering that at what point you departed from it do you know what i mean like because you can hear some of it in the music but then it's sort of it it takes its own life we departed from it when bob close who was the only bloke who could play anything in fact yeah uh he got a big slap on the wrist from his mum and dad he said you've got to go and college sell that bloody strat and get you know get a proper job so the blues guy left yeah and you were left to your own device he was the only one who could play he was really good he can still play plays classical guitar oh really oh he's really good bob close that's with a k k-l-o-s-e did he stay in music or did he did he get out of it and then come back no i think he put he stayed in music as you know something to enjoy for his life but i have no idea what career he pursued yeah well you heard the early things you kind of thought well maybe it's the stones or and you you know you recognize sid's voice roger's voice but um it's not a pink floyd sound yet it needed me to leave to do that you know that was quite an important step the light techniques they're using now are the result of five years research by an architect mike leonard [Music] providing the music a group which features a range of unusual sound effects the pink floyd [Music] well i like sydney it was very i mean the other people have their own characters nick was a bit sort of controlled roger could be a bit solemn and wayward but sid was always very bullied effervescent and buoyant you know and he had this sort of bounce and [Music] enthusiasm [Music] so [Music] i think the way the acts developed in the last six months has been influenced rather a lot by the fact that we've played in ballrooms necessarily because you know this is obviously the first market but i think concerts have given us a chance to realize that maybe the music we play isn't directed at dancing necessarily like normal pop groups it was around the summer of 66. peter and andrew said this group that we want you to hear and here's a tape and i thought they were great arnold lane was produced by joe boyd the song so impressed emi they signed the band and released it as a single moonshine [Music] arnold lane is very much in the tradition of mid-60s english we know america would think of writing about a guy sniffing girls panties you know in backyards i think i actually remember the character he wrote about there was a guy in cambridge who had done just that pinch somebody's washing i don't remember being in the paper i think was somebody we actually knew of yes [Music] [Applause] she wanted to be successful and popular and sid particularly wanted to be a pot star but he wanted to do it in his own way with a cult following building up around pink floyd's fascinating music and light shows an arnold lane a hit record barrett as front man writer and singer was in demand he was also surrounded by a new crowd of dubious friends taking large amounts of mind-altering drugs at his cromwell road flat in west london so even at this early stage of his musical progress sid was causing the other members of pink floyd cause for concern take some of the songs of the first album you know bike i've got a boat you can ride it if you like it's got a basket but all the rings and things to make it look good i'd give it to you if i could but i borrowed it there's something away about the way the lyric attaches to the meter in a very satisfying way but then that gets but i borrowed it kind of kicks it off into there's something very english about that about the completeness of that and yet the fact that it's so unpredictable i think it was the unpredictability of it combined with its simplicity that made it so special [Music] i want to ask one fundamental question of which our televiewers may not be quite aware of the significance of it because we didn't hear a little bit why has it all got to be so terrible now well i don't guess it has to be i mean that's the way we like and we didn't grow and i guess it could be one of the reasons why it is now [Music] you know a lot of the sessions were actually sort of afternoons or mornings or whatever um i don't think we saw the writing on the wall really an album later yes we did [Music] obliged it clear that i'm not here and i never knew and i'm grateful that you [Music] who could be writing this song and um what sid would do is through every run through a rehearsal we were rehearsed we were miming to seemingly play or something and through the run-throughs he'd be miming away and then they go okay we'll take it because we were taping it and then when they went action he'd stand there like that come cut cut okay we're doing it now guys ready and said go yeah yeah yeah and he did and he'd do it again again until finally we have to say listen he's a bit weird you know i'll mime [Applause] people have different opinions but i think sid was with a group of people who firmly believed take loads of acid and you'll see the truth and all that stuff i believe they were basically spiking him and i think that's the main reason for his mental instability sid's magnetic character did attract a lot of people to him who were frankly not his equal in any way at all and did rather encourage him and provide him with lots of drugs i mean i'm not a doctor so i can't really say what lsd specifically does or what it did to sid or what it exacerbated and said because we were very dependent on him by this time you see he was undergoing all this sort of stress of coming to terms with fame so there's an enormous pressure for like interviews and people recognize him in the street sid what's it all about what does it mean and i think he was just overwhelmed by it [Music] we were recording a radio one show and sid didn't turn up i think it was a friday and when they found sid which i think was a sunday on monday they told us well something's happened to sid then something had happened total difference in the fillmore east or west probably the west when sid literally went on stage and just stared straight into space and detuned all his strings on his guitar and hitting it until it was just this colorful noise and we of course think what can we do what can we do and uh the audience is great we loved it i don't certainly as far as i'm concerned i don't remember being overcome with [Music] compassion the thought of losing the flow of songs was disastrous for us at that point because he was doing most of the writing um so he said why doesn't he just write songs and come and record and we'll go and do gigs but he there's no way we can do that anymore [Music] [Music] [Music] is [Music] vegetable man and scream the last scream were the later songs and they're becoming more and more sort of open source and and more and more naked [Music] and all the lot it's what i've got it's what you see it must be me vegetable man [Music] in spite of sid's problems the band continued their relentless touring across britain with jimi hendrix and the move as part of a rock and roll extravaganza i think we probably exacerbated the problem rather than helped and uh having said that as i say i think there are a number of people who did try and do their best for him and do there were attempts to get him to therapy and and so on we never actually managed to get him through the front door we you know got him to the door a couple of times but never gone through the door i i think someone said that they described all of sid's symptoms to him and he did say something like well are you sure this is sid's problem which maybe was it was a good thing to say [Music] to relieve some of the pressure on sid a decision was taken for live performances another guitarist would join the band freeing barrett to do whatever he liked pink floyd's choice was sid's former busking partner and friend david gilmore things changed when david joined the band i mean he was recruited to try and play sid stuff but david also brought in his unique style into the band [Music] be [Music] me [Music] this is our kind of first attempt at doing anything at all in record covers we try to simulate on the picture a kind of swirling cosmos of images that were supposed to represent a kind of kaleidoscopic feeling of a simulated drug experience i suppose what we felt was the floyd music at the time it wasn't tom jones virulent it was the other end of the spectrum i was living with sid in richmond trying to take care of him i had the horrible thing of having to say to sid sid i'm just going out to get some cigarettes because if i said we're going off to do a gig whatever state he was in he would come and so i had to light him a few likes i'm just popping up and then went off and didn't came back and have you got cigarettes yet this is like four hours later as the days went on these ideas got modified to the point where sid really just stood there for a couple of gigs and didn't do anything and then it was all decided by the band with david now in the band that we'll go without said myself at this time pink floyd's music was starting to pick up drastically interviews were being demanded 24 7 shows were being demanded 24 7. [Music] [Applause] [Music] do you think anyone else is [Applause] [Music] is [Music] do you like arsenal um no why not because um usually the acoustics are bad for performing and they're generally speaking they're temporary scenes also generally speaking they're open air and it tends to get damp you tend to get short circuits and things like that [Applause] [Music] three of you were architects well not well we were three of us were students architects with a small a yeah and how big a pla part does this past play in helping to form your ideas no it's all really then as far as i can see bodies of students all over the world have been protesting about racialism the war in vietnam and their right to have some kind of say in their university or college administration um how did you get to do the score of the movie morning point how did we get they came in right because a lot of people might might relate your music to the movie more and you know it was all about drugs and and things like that they asked why did you do the sound checking out another group like let's say someone else you know um well we did it because he wanted us to file they show the horses to use us [Music] [Music] we smile and smile [Music] laughter echoes in your eyes [Music] we climb [Music] food falls softly in the pines [Music] what do you think about like how recording engineers who think this is a good job recording engineers slightly less i know probably almost the same but not quite because they're not quite so personally involved an album for us is you know great achievement for that moment you know album at the moment we've done that and the engineer's done it with us he's starting another one you know like that night i think you're the first group to use quadratic sound in um you know four-channel stereo and um in an audience thing you know and it really sounded great and you get really great effects you know david gets good effects with his guitar and you get good effects with your organ and you get footsteps and everything how do you feel about these effects and reactions to them huh how do you feel nick what crap you wouldn't do again it hasn't been developed up to its fullest yet we're still just learning and trying [Music] uh [Applause] ah [Applause] when pink floyd played belgium on october 25th 1969. frank zappa showed up and surprised pink floyd what frank zappa had to say about this encounter with pink floyd was that was after the mothers of invention had broken up and you know i had i had time on my hands zappa said several years later these people contacted me they offered me ten thousand dollars to be an mc at a festival all expenses paid and i go over there and you know whatever i wanted to do and i said fine so i get there and they neglected to tell me that nobody spoke english frank zappa had no memory of this encounter with pink floyd [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] in the second pink floyd record we did overgrown we had in fact an infinite regression but people when they look at it get confused because the pictures within the picture is more realistic it's only the eye that makes you think there's a dimension there whereas through the garden is a real dimension now then i changed the order of the participants eye the members of the pink floyd revolve around in the second and fourth image the person at the back has his legs apart in the other two images he has them together foreign [Music] is [Music] see the splashing of the kingfisher flashing to the water the green is sliding unseen the trees [Music] laughing as it passes through the endless summer making for the sea in a lazy [Music] in the sunshine [Music] see the splashing of the kingfisher flashing to the water the river of green is sliding unseen beneath the trees [Music] laughing as it passes through the endless summer making for the sea [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] wow [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Applause] so [Applause] it's very difficult to talk about and martial primarily because it's really just a picture it doesn't relate to the music at all what we wanted to do was a nun cover so we went out and shot a cow there seemed to be many ways to take a cow you could do it on extreme wide angles you could solarize it you could freak it out you could change it you could turn it upside down you could mandala you could make it into wallpaper you could do anything somehow what i saw in my mind was the most standard picture of a cow it turned out not to be a flat cover at all it turned out to be remarkably successful i mean when you did stick it in a shop because it hadn't got any writing on because it was a goddamn picture of a goddamn cat doing absolutely nothing at all it was immediately noticeable from all the other pitchers that were trying to be something well when adam hall mother the cow came out in the states they were so overwhelmed by it that i mean they were absolutely surprised they said um you know great we've got to have multi-million dollar spending on this and they promoted it with large um inflatable pink cow adders that went out to all the dealers the record shops i mean in thousands um they blew up pictures 70 yards square on sunset strip of this picture of a cow saying something like the british are coming or something [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] and doubtless the next thing we will do will be very different again [Music] [Music] [Music] manuel irun for carl heinz stockhausen [Applause] [Music] music the pink floyd manager i knew him from days when i was in the agency business and um i called him and asked him if he thought the group would mind a bootleg record was on the market as i'd been offered some um he was quite thrilled at the idea that pink floyd had a bootleg record on the market and said that if there was any complaints he'd let me know and i haven't heard from him since well i can't remember talking to this skeezer at all um no it's not true at all obviously i wouldn't be happy about a bootleg album coming out at least by anybody and if the guy comes onto me um i'll either attempt to tape his conversation and i'll certainly find out more about him get his name and address anyway if you've got it i'd be very happy to take it off you we played a snatch of their bootleg album called pinky it was the first time they'd heard it [Music] well what do you think of that compared with studio recordings it is disgusting and i mean he's just conning everybody all the way along the line that we could do if we choose you know yeah if we chose the live recording it would be a far superior quality than that [Music] their reactions weren't perhaps so surprising producing pop music today is sophisticated and expensive [Music] the pink floyd's new album is costing more than fifteen thousand pounds to produce the stereo and balance had to be exactly right for the demanding tastes of their audiences bootlegs can not only damage their bank accounts they can also affect a group's musical reputation if bootleggers are to survive and prosper they know they must improve the quality of their records [Music] yeah we've uh practically finished it except for four days of reduction can we get that what's this called we don't know how different is it going to be to adam her mother it's going to be very very different but quite how it's impossible to say it won't happen i can tell you that at this point it will sound a bit as if it has got the choir on it wouldn't have it won't have a real [Music] [Music] more [Music] again [Music] yeah well uh are you doing a whole uh sound tip like more yeah exclusively for an album the film is finished why did you came here and friends to to do it and the films in france let's go super high now no i mean we're doing different material nowadays we've got a whole new piece together which is i was quite surprised when i was waiting in the stairs [Music] um probably i mean there's all kinds of things you know there's all kinds of things wrong with all the systems [Music] uh i mean everything that now you'd fail her to suddenly stop turning america off [Music] yesterday movie scores of people come along unless we finally have our breakdown of course yeah one day or a couple of days see the thing is you get you know you reach a point where there's hundreds of people asking you is [Music] are we rehearsing no we're recording we're making a ground phone and a film soundtrack [Music] you can get your hands on whatever [Music] everybody's [Music] waiting for me [Music] is don't expect me to stay [Music] [Music] a [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] so [Music] [Applause] so so so [Music] so [Music] ah [Music] [Music] uh [Music] what's this film you've been working on you ought to know you're the director rock and roll oops um well tell us a bit about it pull yourself together david i can't oh dear god terrible it's a film being made in pompeii mostly in italy and it's about the pink floyd of course are you fairly happy about the film what do you mean happy well i mean do you feel that um it's going in in a direction which is which is interesting or not what do you mean interesting hello mom [Music] of course just the oysters are good aren't they yeah yes there's good oysters here aren't there yes yes it's good oysters here seems to be the right season of year a bit of grit the oyster's all right the oysters are very good yes this time of year well they're fragrances well i don't know what nationality they are i like to think that oysters transcend national barriers adrian and it's a danger that we could become slaves with all our equipment and in the past we have been but what we're trying to do is to sort it all out so that we're not but i i agree i mean it's a danger it worries me sometimes that we have this to match equipment and you can hide behind it if i heard somebody saying that i'd like to say okay well you know if we were at a gig it'd be quite nice sometimes to say okay go there it is get stuck in in fact you can open the show it's going to be 4 000 people in here in half an hour get up there and knock them out man and they'd then say oh but um we don't know the equipment and we'd need time to rehearse and vote and so we say yeah so did we about four or five years [Music] [Music] we breathe [Music] don't be afraid [Music] you've made a lot of money working with the floyd um depends who you compare it to really before working yourself oh yeah before working with him i was very very poultry sort of amount of [Music] earnings the work is done you are making those albums that you think oh this is everlasting stuff i don't think you think well about that when you're a kid in your 20s you know longevity in pop music in in the terms of me as a 20 whatever i was 27 year old on the dark side of the moon was measured in maybe five possibly ten years when you went in to make dark side did you did you have it envisioned at all oh we're going to make this big political philosophical you know what it what it became you know i can't remember the exact point where things changed i mean as soon as roger came in with the idea of its central themes of how the pressures of modern life can affect your sanity it started taking a shape from then on i would say the album was definitely helped in quite a big way by money being the single and money was really the obvious choice while we were on tour the record was going up the billboard shot like that and it eventually hit number one [Music] we were touring we went and toured you know and there was a big there was a big big buzz going on our line of progress in america we were moving up and selling out quite good large places you know selling a lot of tickets the workloads shot up the tours shot up i went on to write wish you were here so you know come in here dear boy have a cigar you're gonna go far it was all that by the way which one's pink [Music] [Applause] the voice is all over the record i wrote a number of questions on a set of cards on a set of white cards like that and then we set up a microphone in studio three at abbey road and the cards were just sitting there on a music stand and they were questions like when was the last time you were violent you know and then were you in the right and we got i got everybody that i could think of henry mccullough yeah henry and his wife had had a terrible fight the night before and they backed us and henry said were you in the right and that was henry says i don't know i was really drunk at the time i certainly wasn't the right when the great economic collapse happens it's going to happen right across the board i don't think rock and roll will go first i mean the market at the moment in rock and roll is expanding at a phenomenal rate people are constantly saying you know rock's dying you know every six months somebody says it with them with enormous conviction it's not gonna happen [Music] unfortunately really we we mark a sort of era i mean we were in danger in becoming um a relic of the past and for some people we represent their childhood of 1967 i mean the underground in london the free concert in hyde park and so on [Music] you make the dark side of the moon you realized all your wildest dreams fame fortune one of the biggest selling records of all time one of the greatest albums of all time and then you go into make wish you were here what was the the mood of the band then were you all thinking oh this is great we've got it down we know exactly what we're doing all engines full steam ahead no very much not like that we were clueless for a long time we were faffing about blindly trying to find a way forward and that sort of blindly wandering about not knowing what the fact we were doing was what helped to create what came you know with shining crazy diamond to hold that wish we hear [Music] roger particularly when we got to the studio wanted to drop the one that became dogs which is called you got to be crazy at the time and the one that became sheep and i didn't want that to happen and we had some arguing about that for a while but he was right and i was wrong not the first time and we went on with shine on you crazy dan split it into to open and close the album seemed to work the famous cover of the two businessmen shaking hands and one of them's getting burned did the band give storm any specific direction a storm came in as he would on every album and spent time with us while we were recording and would talk to us about what the album was about and what we were trying to get to and as the sort of theme of the album was absence storm went away and thought about absence and so you have a person swimming with an absence of water and a body in a suit with an absence of the body and a person diving into water with an absence of splash i wondered perchance if you were also singing maybe a little bit for yourselves did you feel you were perhaps trapped in your own machine yeah i think i think you'd have to ask what you're really but i would say yes and we're just the year before you know two years before the big time if you like with with dark side of the moon that meant having a lot more contact with the machinery of um the rock and roll business with meeting all the people involved with it like your good self [Music] [Music] my memory is that i came into the studio and there was this guy standing there in a gabardine raincoat and a large large bloke and i had no idea who it was and surprisingly no one's saying who's that person what's he doing wandering around all our gear and looking in the studio and then then him coming into the control room and standing around and how remarkable how long it was before anyone actually woke up finally i think it was david who said uh nick you know recognize him and i looked and i think i either shrugged my shoulders or at some point dave put me out to my misery and said it's it's it and we just stood there or sat there and just saw a shell shot basically and then until somebody thought something to say to him and then we were all unbelievably shocked at his appearance i mean i didn't recognize him but it was um pretty pretty affecting really i mean roger and dave cried you know this slim elegant if bedraggled and dazed person that i'd last seen had turned rather balloon shaped and no eyebrows not much hair [Music] there is the photograph of him in the studio at the time and uh you if you looked at sid in early 67 and said then it was so different it was a great loss um and you know the imagining what he would have gone on to do is speculating on that if you like is his he could have become so great [Music] you shine like the sun and when i'm singing you know shine on them [Music] sits right there all the time obviously because you know the song is just absolutely about him you know it's a really good song it describes it describes how i experienced his disintegration and it describes as well the great desire i had then and still have now and the passion i have to celebrate him and his talent and his humanity and to express the love that i have for him [Music] if you don't care what happened to me [Music] and i didn't care for you we would zigzag away through the bottom with pain occasionally glancing up through the rain wondering which of the bug is to blame and watching for pigs on the wings [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you know that i care what happens to you [Music] and i know that you care [Music] for me too so i don't feel alone on the way to the storm [Music] now that i've found somewhere safe to bury my bones and any fool knows a dog needs a home a shelter from pigs on the wing [Music] let it be said that although the violence is tempered with um sadness and even a smidgen of compassion here and there it is a very violent album the sound of the album is certainly um a lot different from anything else that you've ever done is this something that happens in the studio that you know the raunchy aspect of it sort of changes and and becomes something else when you when you start working on it you see what i mean it it removes its shape certainly not for dogs that was it was very clear what dogs was going to be like except for the middle section you know with the synthesizers and the dogs through the vocoder you know that bit in the middle of dogs it was we were quite clear what that was gonna sound like really i know why you know there are obviously things that developed in the studio like i don't know the sound behind the guitar so that's those two kind of up very up tempo solos of dave's there's one in the first half and one in the second half with lots of tomtoms in the background you know those sounds developed while we were recording it but basically we knew what the arrangement was going to be more or less anyway and we knew what it was going to sound like before we started because we've been doing it live with slightly different words and in a shorter form than it is now for a long time and uh the same with sheep pigs had never been done before and that did change a lot because when we started recording it was only you know a song sung to a strummed acoustic guitar so that grew a lot well the idea for the war came from ten years of touring with rockshares i think particularly the last few years when in 75 and in 77 we were playing to very large audiences some of whom were our old audience who came who'd come to hear what we wanted to play but most of whom were only there for the beer in big stadiums and uh consequently it became rather an alienating experience doing the shows and i became very conscious of a war between us and our audience and so this record started out as being uh expression of those feelings but it goes i think a little bit deeper than that because it the record actually seems to start at the beginning of the character's life the story has been developed considerably since then this was two years ago i started to write it and now it's partly about a show situation a live show situation in fact the album starts off in a live show and then it um flashes back and traces a story of a character if you like of pink himself whoever he may be [Music] i mean sid appears in the wall a lot you know which is where you know in the movie where the cigarette burns down between the fingers well i i i went into the room and saw that [Music] my friendship with him and his illness combined yeah provide a an enormous opportunity for grief it's sad it's very sad i'm still very sad about it [Music] time [Music] one you stupid [ __ ] why doesn't anybody else in here with fireworks just [ __ ] off and let the rest of it get on with it [Music] so yeah i thought you might like to go to the show tell me [Music] behind these cold eyes really almost painfully tactful about the situation with pink floyd have you been a bit more outspoken about it in terms of whether there is a future i don't see any future for the band why because we don't want to work together anymore do you want to elaborate on that no really okay the band always was sort of thought of as your band in a way do you think that was very difficult for the others you'd have to ask them that but for you even to be aware of that kind of problem and that kind of tension yeah of course it's difficult yeah of course it is if you've got something that's pretending to be a group and that many years ago probably was when it slowly becomes one person's work then of course it's very difficult for [Music] everybody [Music] basis roger waters fired right during the production of the wall my feelings about playing to audiences and reaction from audiences was very different to his he was invited back when the band reformed without waters for the 1987 album of momentary land [Music] in my rearview mirror the sun's going down sinking behind [Music] all bridges good things that we have left and done [Music] and i saw the premonitions confirmed suspicions of the holocaust to come the rusty wire that holds the car that keeps the anger in [Music] gives way and suddenly it's day again [Music] the sun is in the east even though the day is done two suns in the sunset [Music] could be the human race [Music] with your fears [Applause] and you'll never see their faces [Applause] [Music] sid barrett one of the founding members of pink floyd has died at the age of 16. from the band described him as a guiding light who leaves a legacy which continues to inspire right of pink floyd died monday of cancer in britain he was 65. wright met roger waters nick mason and the late sid barrett of college and the four men formed floyd in 1965. wright's keyboard was an integral part of the group's signature psychedelic sound [Music] you and i in place wasting time on dominoes a day so dark so warm life that comes on you and i and i know [Music] today breaking the darkness [Music] is the one [Music] [Music] is [Music] you

Channel: Psych For The Children

Views: 366,892

Rating: 4.9254227 out of 5

Keywords: Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett, Roger waters, Nick Mason, Richard Wright, David Gilmour

Id: osR4wcZ4Hnw

Length: 89min 17sec (5357 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 26 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/dwdukc]

Very cool, thank you. There were some clips that I had not seen before. I was especially interested in David's comment that they would not be political because the members all had their own political ideals and therefore the band couldn't be about one message.