The fall of Pink Floyd

The Final Cut I found to be an album worth revisiting and re thinking. Waters did not intend it to be a poor album. A lot of the music is different with Kamen taking Wrights role (keys to orchestra.) DG does get five solos on the album which is probably about par. Merging sax and strings is fairly different. The thing is it's not meant as na easy ride; it is supposed to be a challenge. However it strikes the general public perhaps progressive rock listeners will approach it from fresh angles. Waters did offer to do it as asolo album which the others decided against. The writing problem would emerge on the next album which fares very poorly among PA polls.

As for Momentary Lapse the lack of either an underlying theme or great tunes plus a grating 80s production did not help it. Though I think Sorrow rates fairly high. This 80s production style was also affecting Waters' KAOS album at the time - and pretty much everyone in the popular music recording sphere in the 80s.

He said Lapse was a good forgery. With all the extensive writing going on to get something out a good reproduction / forgery is not too bad a thing.

To me PF were going through the same problem as Yes were in 1980. Without their lyricst and voice they were trying to make what would be seen as a typical Yes album (PF one in this case.) So Drama and Momentary Lapse get low ratings as they are ot really organic processes (from the heart) and the mechanics of the albums are too evident. Final Cut gets a pasting because the mechanics are just not really rock. There's 1940s pop themes which suit the album but not a rock fan. It does not push the rock fan buttons.

BUt Waters only ever made one concession to commerciality well two perhaps. One is the sonic engineering of Dark Side; a group decision anyway. And Another Brick 2 (which was based on his idea but to which he acceded after Ezrin got his way. Since then he has anything remotely commercial. Take Another Brick and Dark Side away and he is quite a challenge. Really DG and Co were on a hiding to nothing as their essence was there in the challenging ideas of Waters.'

So can rock fans meet this challenge? What will they do? Oh, the usual...

After all most people go / went  to a PF concert as a soundtrack to getting high not to assess nuances of performance.

DSOTM was made very deliberately within the preferred db range of aural perception. That is why it's popular - the sound of the thing is, um, right on the money.

Pink Floyd never fell. They altered course a number of times. Not many bands changed direction so much and still stayed fashionable. I think their adherance to playing their vision is the difference between rock and it's perenially argumentative audience - present company not excluded!! all good clean fun....) and pop (playing to a fickle market.)

lazland wrote: silverpot wrote: harmonium.ro wrote: Jester is confusing accesible and clear with commercial and plain.  Some people also confuse commersial with high album sales. Just because Pink Floyd sold loads of records doesn't mean that the music is bad in any way. Or, that they ever tried to please the masses. They did the kind of music they, themselves, wanted to listen to. The record company had no say in the process of making that music, it was up against the very stubborn integrity of Gilmour and Waters.    Absolutely right. A great post

+1. I did not add this idea to my post because Dean has already said it in this thread in a way that I could never outdo:

Dean wrote: The_Jester wrote: For me, the fall of Pink Floyd began when they became more comercial. It began to become comercial when Dark Side of the Moon was realesed. Even if there were good albums including Dark Side of the Moon after it, the band started to make comercial things and lead to the fall of Pink Floyd. Another curious notion. Commerciality has always been the "bane" of Progressive Rock and "serious" musicians, but commercial success isn't the same as "selling-out". If what they produced was of little or no artistic merit, or failed to progress, be ground-breaking or experimental then I would have no alternative but to agree with you. But that isn't quite the case with Floyd - it is hard to describe a nine-part 26 minute "song", or an album with three tracks over 10 minutes, each as being in any way commercial. The Wall may have produced Another Brick In The Wall Part 2, but as an album in its entirety is it far from being commercial (musically or critically) or even that accessible. If you want to measure Floyd by the radio-play of two hit singles then so be it, but I struggle to see how that can reflect on the albums that they were lifted from.   If you are simply slating the chart success of DSotM as indication of their commercial saleability then that's also appears curious, since it was not their first bite at album chart success either - Atom Heart Mother got to No 1 in the UK (DSotM never did). With the exception of Ummagumma all Floyd albums upto and including DSotM contained short "pop" songs together with longer experimental tracks. Dark Side Of The Moon wasn't such a radical departure for them (compare it to the "soundtrack" albums like More or Obscured By Clouds for example).

silverpot wrote: harmonium.ro wrote: Jester is confusing accesible and clear with commercial and plain.  Some people also confuse commersial with high album sales. Just because Pink Floyd sold loads of records doesn't mean that the music is bad in any way. Or, that they ever tried to please the masses. They did the kind of music they, themselves, wanted to listen to. The record company had no say in the process of making that music, it was up against the very stubborn integrity of Gilmour and Waters.

Absolutely right. A great post

harmonium.ro wrote:

Bring back Heligoland...please!

Jester is confusing accesible and clear with commercial and plain. 

The Wall...commercial? Not sure i agree.

I am fairly sure the labels did not control the Floyd, it was more the era. When they merged into the 90s the music scene had dissipated, at least the type of music that Pink Floyd was playing. All bands had to change or adapt to the new style. Pink Floyd refused to do this and suffered as a result. I remember clearly when Division Bell was released how everyone was so excited about this new journey for the band. I ree,br the huge diorama displays in the shops of the talking statue heads, and even the High Hopes clip was being played a lot on TV. After I heard this I thought it was a masterpiece tracks and knew i would soon have this album, though I was bitterly disappointed at The Final Cut.

Edited by AtomicCrimsonRush - December 11 2010 at 04:56

The_Jester wrote: But it's more comercial, they became controlled by the labels.

And the proof of that is?