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Home arrow Interviews arrow Pink Floyd band interviews arrow August 15th 1971 - GTK, Australia
August 15th 1971 - GTK, Australia Print E-mail

This interview was originally screened on the GTK (Get To Know) program along with the more easily attainable Careful With That Axe, Eugene clip. It was transcribed by Guy Hughes for Brain Damage.

Int: How did Pink Floyd set out? Were you originally a rock band and moved into the electronic thing? How did it all begin?

David Gilmour: Hard to remember.

Roger Waters: Yes, gosh, it was a long time ago. We just played for fun when we were at college.

Rick Wright: We played for fun...and we played R&B, The Rolling Stones numbers, [all of them:] Bo Diddley, [Rick:] like all groups used to in those days. It developed from there but again it wasn't a conscious development.

Int: How tightly written are your compositions? Do you do a lot of improvisation when you go into the studio? When you're recording?

Rick: We do a lot of improvisation in rehearsals, and generally from the rehearsals we then go into the studios knowing something, sometimes, I mean "A Saucerful Of Secrets" was comple...started completely in the studio from scratch.

Int: It must be really tedious, not tedious, but a really slow way to create because you all work together don't you.

Rick: Yep. [General agreement] A very long process.

Int: Is there some tremendous musical rapport between the four of you? David?

David: ["Yes" prompt from the others as the cameraman takes ages to put the camera on David] Um, I think on stage there is, yes. It often doesn't really work quite that way in the studio. It's not down to a musical rapport between us, it's individual people working. [Voice in the background: "It's a scuffle, it's quite a battle really"]

Roger: It's a matter of finding common ground and everybody...everybody in the band has the power of veto almost. I mean if somebody is enthusiastic about something, if somebody else is...arggh...then the person you know, you know the veto tends to be the stronger force in fact; so it gets elbowed.

Int: Do you draw any of your musical influence at all from someone like Stockhausen?

Rick: For me, all influences are totally subconscious. I think. I'm not really aware of where they're coming from, but I know that it's happening. It's got to happen.

David: But we are very into sort of timeless, ageless, spacious sorts of moods in our music. Very often atmospheric, not really occult, I wouldn't say.

Int: Do you use a lot of tapes during performances playing over your performances? You must have sound engineers working with you during performances.

At this point Rick and David talk over each other...

David: We don't actually have sound engineers [Rick: "We don't use a lot of tapes in fact"] We have a couple of Robos. We don't use a lot of tapes. [Rick: "We use tapes for dramatic effect"] There's no music.

Rick: At certain pointsin the concert a tape will be played.

Nick: Nearly everything we use on stage is very unsophisticated. I mean we don't have a...

Rick: There are certain myths about Pink Floyd, one of which is that we have loads of electronic equipment. [Roger: "Which is how we get the sound which is nothing to do with it"] Which isn't true. We have one guitar, one bass, one set of drums and one organ, plus some echo units, which is basically all we have.

Roger: There's only one thing that you couldn't go into any record...any music shop and buy that we use and that's our quadrophonic pan pot system. But everything else...practically every group that's working uses.

Int: Do you want to move into any sort of theatrical field at all, you know where you may have more singers and dancers and a whole theatrical thing?

Rick: Yes.

Nick: Yes, but we don't really know what we want to do. There's a very vague concept of what we'd like to do in terms of theatre that's known amongst ourselves as "the theatre project".

Rick: Yes, but there's a very strong feeling that we should do it.

Roger (? off camera): Yes, but we don't quite know how we are going to get about doing it.

Int: Are you working on an album at present?

Rick: Yeah, we've practically finished it except for four days of production when we get back.

Int: And what's this called?

Roger: Ahhh...

David: That's a matter of some dispute! [General laughter]

Rick: We don't know.

Int: How different is it going to be to "Atom Heart Mother"?

David: It's going to be very, very different. But quite how is impossible to say.

Nick: It won't have a choir and orchestra on it. I can tell you that at this point.

David: It will sound a bit as if it has got a choir on it. [Nick: "But it won't have"] It won't have a real choir, it will have our multi-tracked choir.

 
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