A Pinker Shade of Floyd
Like a family bonded by the death of one of its members, Pink Floyd was for most of its career a band with an absence at its center. That absence would be Syd Barrett, the charismatic singer who wrote most of the band's first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which has just been reissued as a three-CD album. The group's longtime art associate, Storm Thorgerson designed the handsome package, which celebrates the album's fortieth anniversary. The first two CDs present Piper in its original mono version and subsequent stereo remix; the third contains all of Pink Floyd's 1967 singles, included non-album tracks "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play." It's still a great and wonderfully weird sounding rock album, and Eric Szulczewski wrote a terrific essay in Inside Pulse about how Piper producer Norman Smith created such a rich sound in mono. Anyone who's only heard Dark Side of the Moon and later Pink Floyd ought to give it a read. And a listen. Syd Barrett's eventual slide into pharmaceutically enhanced instability and eventual seclusion, prior to his death by pancreatic cancer in 2006, is chronicled in The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story DVD.
Barrett's mental dissolution inspired some of Pink Floyd's greatest music, especially the album (and track) Wish You Were Here and "Shine on You Crazy Diamond." Versions of both can be heard on Floyd guitarist David Gilmour's remarkable new concert DVD, Remember That Night: Live at the Royal Albert Hall. Gilmour, who was brought into the band in 1968 as Barrett's replacement, gradually evolved into its co-leader, along with Roger Waters; their clashing personalities eventually led to the group's split, although they both continued to play much of the same Floyd material in their solo shows. Gilmour's is a humdinger, too. There's a clear, cool magisterial authority to all his Pink Floyd music. David Crosby and Graham Nash provide sweet backing harmonies on a few songs, and David Bowie makes Dark Side's "Comfortably Numb" and "Arnold Layne" his own. Much of the show consists Gilmour's elegant 2006 solo album On an Island in its entirety. Pink Floyd's reputation for excess is reflected in a second DVD containing hours of extra music and documentary footage. Roger Waters even makes a brief surprise appearance, although no one appears particularly delighted by the encounter. Gilmour discusses the falling out in an interview with Rolling Stone's Rock & Roll Daily and, in this case at least, absence has apparently not made his heart grow fonder.