A Saucerful of Sucrets
The Pink Floyd Oddity
by Knickerless Schaffner
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PROLOGUE
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A long, long time ago, back when a trip to the movies only cost a nickel, and industry had some leadership, and the people of this country had some concept of something called a "work ethic", there was a decade called the Forties. And during this particular decade there were five rather unspectacular births, those of five seemingly unspectacular baby boys, who would eventually go on to consume vast amounts of drugs and alcohol, fly airplanes, race cars, and make some rather remarkable record albums along the way. This is their story.
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Chapter 1: THE BIG BONG THEORY
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In late 1965, four London students (Roger "Syd" Barrett, George "Roger" Waters, Rick "George" Wright, and Nick "Spacement" Monitor) fashioned themselves into a band and began performing concerts under the name "The Pink Floyd Sound". This slightly odd name was stolen from a pair of American bluesmen, the infamous Alaska bluesman Mr. Pink Floyd Sound and Mr. The. The name was a result of Barrett's bandmates vetoing a long string of his original ideas: The Beatles, The Sex Pistols, The Sex Beatles, The Beatle Pistols, Pistols, Beatlemania, Herbie the Beatle Bug, Herbie the Love Bug, Capt. Herbie The Love Boat, WHAM!, Syd and the Pistolettes, and The Lavender Lloyd Sound.
These early performances were concerts in name only, due mostly to the fact that at this early stage in their careers all four band members possessed a profound inability to show up on time, if at all. Several early shows are marred only by the fact that the entire band is not present, although ironically (at least judging from recordings of this era) it was precisely this phase of their career that saw their unique style coalesce and their live shows develop most significantly.
To critics and auto mechanics alike, the big question remained: could they play music? It is sometimes difficult to tell as most of their shows in that day consisted of highly inventive and innovative segments of equipment unpacking, instrument tuning, plugging the right cords into the right sockets, and making sure everything was set up and turned on. While it can be said that they did not play actual tunes at this phase in their career, their fans loved it all. Many say this lends credence to the old rumors that Floyd audiences were so high on the drug-du-jour that anything would have been a smash with them. Others say "whatever, think what you want to think."
The band was constantly undergoing personnel changes, and none of the boys had much idea which instruments would even be present at a particular gig, let alone who might be expected to play an instrument should said person actually show up. With time, the quartet settled into a rut (which proved beneficial, if only because it established a little much-needed continuity) in which Syd Barrett would strum violently on a guitar and sing (primarily because he seemed to have the least knack for forgetting lyrics), Waters would hold a bass and sulk, Mason would pound away behind a drum kit, attempting to start and stop at approximately the same time as the rest of the band, and Wright would tinkle on the organ, which often caused Waters to curse violently and spit, especially if the bassist was standing downwind.
As a result, The Pink Floyd Sound was met with a great deal of skepticism by the mainstream media and auto mechanics of the day, a phenomenon which continues to present. (My own auto mechanic only recently commented that he wondered how the band ever got off the ground, after which he told me that he thought my entire exhaust system needed an overhaul which would cost me dearly and take plenty of time, only they couldn't do it right now since they had several cars ahead of me and could I come back tomorrow... oh say, 9-ish, and he'd see; I rebutted that the band was trying something new and were inevitably going to encounter some skepticism and how much did he think that was going to run me because I was short on cash this time of the month; he shrugged and said if Syd hadn't been so unstable then the band could have been as big as The Osmonds and that I was looking at around $700, if I was lucky.)
The Pink Floyd Sound were soon reduced to playing for dolls and stuffed animals at tea parties hosted by Mason's younger sister. It was at these shows that The Floyd (especially Wright) first began aqcuiring a penchant for the frilly, flowered, not-at-all-gay outfits which they would wear for several more years--in the sense, of course, that they would change those clothes over the period of several years, not in the sense that they wore the SAME outfits for several years. That would naturally be disgusting, and only David Gilmour did that, as well as Roger Waters and Rick Wright. Nick probably did too.
Rick Wright commented, "It's not that we don't want to change our clothes or nuffin', it's just that some bugger's scampered off wif 'em and there ain't no more 'round. I s'pose I could nip off 'round the corner to shops and pick up some more only I'm short a few pence and can't see doin' it. Besides, my lawn needs to be watered and I have to pull a few weeds."
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Chapter 2: HEROES FOR GOATS
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Soon, however, the band was in high demand amongst the denizens of the London Underground, a youth culture which shared the Floyd's love for tacky clothing, and which misinterpreted their gross musical inadequacies as wild experimentation. Despite recent findings which suggest that the only songs the band ever attempted to perform during this period were "Louie, Louie," "The Theme to Bonanza" and "Chopsticks," Pink The Floyd (as the group was now called) was thus inspired to continue performing long, spaced-out, not-at-all-gay instrumental jams which apparently sounded much like conventional music if you were taking as much LSD as their audiences--that being in the sense of taking as much LSD as the average attendee in the audience and not as much as the WHOLE audience.
Don "Root-canal" Cervix, one of the early roadies for Pink the Floyd recalled one such "jam" in the March 1968 issue of Rolling Stone: "Yeah, I think I recall one such 'jam' in the March 1968 issue of Rolling Stone where they played 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' over and over and over again for like... fuck, 3-and-a-half hours straight! I remember being backstage and just wanting to claw me own fuckin' eyes out. It was incredibly blood irritating. I really thought it was unfair to the audience--most of whom were auto mechanics out on vacation anyway, just trying to have a good time and then this happens. I mean, blimey... I'm not even bloody British and I'm talking like one--that's how badly I was affected by it, mate."
It was also during this period that the band began using complex light projections in conjunction with its performances. Peter "Molar" Wynne Willson, a roommate of Barrett's, devised elaborate banks of lighting, draped sheets behind the band to serve as a crude screen, and experimented with a variety of oils, paints, foodstuffs, little bits of cloth, old douche bags, new douche bags, dead animals, fried chicken, pants, different pants, severed limbs, stolen credit cards, and carrots which could be mixed together and projected onto the band. More often than not, however, Willson and his girlfriend Susie "Incisor" Gawler-Wright and his other girlfriend Jenny "Toothache" Spencer would pass out behind the control desk, leaving the carefully-designed lightshow materials heating under the lights until the only images projected were random blobs of color. While the avant-garde patrons of London's Underground clubs found Willson's visuals evocative and moving, Roger "Bridge-work" Waters called it, "a load of bollocks, really. Nothing at all to do with the music. Just a bit of green eye shadow and applesauce swirling about. Not the sort of thing you'd want to see on a full stomach... and that being not, in the sense of seeing it literally on a full stomach... er, you know what I mean. Ahem... did Rick show up for this gig or is he still watering his lawn?"
But perhaps the most important innovation in the band's history came when Barrett, during one of his many drug-induced "trips", had the idea to "write" and "perform" "actual" _songs_. Though it "seemed" extremely unconventional "to" the Underground "crowd," the idea caught on, "and" in 1967 the Floyd "had" their first hit single, "Arnold Lawn". Penned by Barrett, the song describes the misadventures of a young lawn care technician, and is loosely based on actual events involving Rick Wright. As Waters recounts, "Susie and Peter were sharing a flat with Syd at the time, and some bugger was always coming 'round at night and clipping the hedge and pulling weeds and what not. Anyway, one night there was a bit of a ruckus outside the window and Syd looked out and saw Rick right there, with a big weed eater. He called out and Rick dropped it and ran off. Later that week, Susie and Peter popped 'round to Rick's flat and found that Rick had quite a collection of frilly undies as well. Oh! Eh... I didn't mean to say that. I was talking about his lawn care fetish and not the fact that he wears women's undergarments... eh... which he doesn't."
Mason adds, "Originally the song went 'Richard Wright/ Liked the tight panties' and went on from there. Lucky for him, the BBC--which was run at that time by extremely conservative, cross-dressing management--took exception and made us re-do the whole thing so that's where Syd changed it to all that bollocks about mowing the lawn and such." The single, which peaked at number 422 in the UK, was backed by "Candy and a Marijuana Joint", Barrett's ode to the sweet treats he used to enjoy as a lad in his Cambridgeshire home.
Following the modest boost in popularity due to the record's success, Pink The Floyd went about their business becoming the darlings of the Underground scene. They played several legendary shows at Underground "happenings", including the "14-Minute Technicolor Dream" (from which an up-and-coming Andrew Lloyd Webber would later steal the title of his future theatrical musical "Joseph and the 14-Minute Technicolor Dream", sparking a resentment and loathing in the heart of Roger Waters which would remain for minutes) and "Gays for Mames", at which the Floyd unveiled their next single, entitled "See Emily Pray". Upon the single's release, the BBC, Radio London and the British Society of Auto Mechanics immediately announced boycotts, assuming that the Floyd had turned its attention from transvestism to prayer, an equally sordid subject; once they chose to actually listen to the record, the ban was repealed and the record shot up the charts to #206 in the UK. (This prompted a then very young looking Dick Clark to say, "Pink...who?") Thus Pink The Floyd became bona fide pop stars.
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Chapter 3: POKER AT THE GATES OF DAWN
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Meanwhile, the Floyd also released their first LP, entitled "Poker at the Gates of Dawn". According to Syd, "The original title of that album was supposed to be 'Liquor in the Front and Poker at the Gates of Dawn' but Roger said it was too long and it was a load of bollocks. So I shortened it a bit. I also beat the shit out of Roger, which made me feel better. Of course, then I had to take an antacid hit."
Consisting primarily of Barrett-penned pop tunes, the album belies the fact that Syd's genius was being seriously hampered by the copious amounts of Pepto Bismol that were being fed to him. The next single, an annoying little ditty called "Apples and Other Apples", however, left little doubt that something was wrong. Barrett's rapid decline over the next few months are highly suspect of conspiracy. Were Barrett's "friends" merely fellow "peptos" who were paid by the BBC to keep their new pop icon money-man in a creative stupor long enough to squeeze a few more pounds out of the golden goose? Or was a New World Order looking to create a high-profile antacid casualty who could serve as a patsy for an upcoming plot? Or, as the upcoming Oliver Stone film suggests, was Barrett the victim of Nazi nuns working with autistic mutants from Neptune? Enquiring minds want to know.
Theories abound, but the only sad truth is that Syd Barrett was soon incapable of performing onstage, writing new songs, or replacing that failing clutch in his mum's car.
Despite the theories, one incident towers above all others in the surprisingly large canon of Floyd legends. It happened one night, before one particularly difficult show in New St. Bridgefordshireington-Upon-the-Marsh at the now demolished FYU club. Beyond his dressing room, the crazed crowd hooted and howled for the band to make its entrance. Syd sat backstage, oblivious, pondering his own predicament when the absurdly wonderful idea of smearing an entire bottle of Maalox into his hair came to him. When he hit the stage (alone, because the others hadn't quite been able to make it there that night) the lights over the stage heated the liquid until it was evaporating into the air. Many members of the audience that night who ingested the fumes found that their heartburn, indigestion, nausea, upset stomach and diarrhea with associated abdominal cramps were soon soothed by the substance's protective coating action.
After the show, one groupie got Syd's attention long enough to ask if the "pink" part of Pink The Floyd came from the color of Pepto Bismol which she thought was "so groovy." Syd looked aghast and replied flatly, "I'd tell you only it's none of your bismuth."
Waters, eager to become an influential international rock asshole so he could take over the world and reign supreme over his minions, wanted Barrett and his freakish "pepto" friends out of the picture entirely. To this end, the band asked Syd's boyhood friend David Gilmour to join the band and pick up the sizeable slack left by Barrett's increasing dependence on antacids. Gilmour's own band, Bullshitt, had been unsuccessful in its attempts to show up on time for any of their own gigs, so Gilmour felt right at home in his new job.
As a side note, Gilmour's ex-bandmates bore him little or no grudge although Steven Simpson later commented in the March 1968 Rolling Stone, "No... I haven't a grudge except that I'd like to rip his fuckin' head off... I'd do it wif me own hands and then I'd pluck his fingernails off and I'd run his lifeless body over with a steamroller. Apart from that, no grudge." Years later, to make amends, Gilmour gave drummer John "Willie" Wilson a gig with the Floyd's "surrogate band" on The Wall tour, while Bullshitt bassist Ricky Wills was doomed to work with Foreigner, The Osmonds, and Peter Frampton, (for which he never forgave Gilmour).
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Chapter 4: A SAUCERFUL OF SUCRETS
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Over the next few months, Pink The Floyd found themselves being pushed to record another single. New manager Steve O'Rourke was repeatedly saying, "How would you boys like to have another hit song? It would be so nice," to which Roger Waters repeatedly replied, "Why don't you go 'round and fuck yourself, Steve?" And thus began the band's famous no-singles policy, which they promptly forgot whenever the cash flow got a little tight.
The group's next foray into the studio resulted in "A Saucerful of Sucrets", a new LP which promised to uphold the drug-orientated image the band had carefully cultivated over the years. Two of the tracks would become staples of the Barrett-less Floyd's live set: "Set the Controls for the Heart of Philadelphia", which featured Waters' plagiarism of ancient Chinese poetry (like Chao Deh Zao Pollywollydoodle Dong Deng Ding Zhaong's "The Princess and The Dragon in Philadelphia,") and the title track, in which the band demonstrated on record the kind of noise which had made them famous among the pepto-crazed auto mechanics of the Underground.
The album's final track, a Barrett composition entitled "Jughead Blues", is notable for the presence of a Salivation Army band which was brought in and instructed to play "whatever you like" The bandleader, unaccustomed to such artistic freedom and worried that such debauchery might lead to corruption of his trombone player (a flaky sort who was always reading seditious newspapers like USA Today) instead chose to sneak out of the studio and assassinate Robert Kennedy. The Salivation Army band, whose extreme lack of musical ability made the still-inexperienced Floyd look like the Boston Pops, was both out of tune and out of synch. Syd was fooled into believing that the band was following his instructions; he thanked them warmly and sent each band member home with a small sack of chicken wings. And an observant Roger Waters would hire many of these same musicians to recreate that cluelessly out-of-tune sound for live performances of the "Atom Head Mother Suite" in years to come.
For the rest of that year, and a good portion of the next, the band floundered while searching for direction. In April of 1969 they began performances of a crudely-fashioned concept piece entitled "More Furious Madness from the Massed Gadgets of Auximenes", Auximenes being the name of a Greek prostitute Waters had met during a recent Mediterranean tour. The piece was divided into two halves--"The Man", which portrayed a day in the life of an average Englishman, and "The Journey", which consisted of "Finding My Keys", "Asking Directions pt. 1", "Tollbooths and a Turnabout", “Asking Directions pt. 2", "The Petrol Station Lavatory", "Asking Directions Parts pt. 3-5", "Stopping for a Guinness", and so on. Unfortunately for current-day Floyd collectors, the work was abandoned after a few poorly-attended performances and was lost forever.
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Chapter 5: YET ANOTHER FRIGGIN' MOVIE
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1969 also brought about the release of a third studio album, this time the soundtrack to Barbet Schroeder's depressingly low-budget B film entitled "S'Mores". Despite the fact that the Floyd spoke nary a lick of the director's bizarre mix of Japanese, French, and binary, the band was eager to combine their music with film.
Roger Waters agreed to collaborate with avant-garde composer and social deviant Ron Geesin on the soundtrack for a fantasy snuff film called "Seven Dwarfs in Penis-Land", to be produced by Welch filmaker extraordinaire Ffylgian Smryllwynnen. Several tracks were recorded, such as "Lick Your Partners", "Piddle in Perspex", and the film's title theme, but Waters blanched when he saw the preliminary cut of the film and demanded that Reel 7 be removed. When Smryllynnen refused, Waters walked away from the project for good.
In October the Floyd released "Oogabooga", a double album that was both their best and worst outing to date. The live disc included brilliant renditions of four of their best known numbers, in full-fledged psychedelic splendor. The live shows still consisted of spacey noises and cryptic lyrics whispered over a single chord, as the band was still fairly inept at putting notes together into an actual melody. These weaknesses became frightfully clear on the live disc, in which each member was given half of a side to fill with solo compositions. Gilmour took the assignment seriously and wrote a fairly passable song entitled "The Narrow Way", but Mason was content to throw tennis balls at his drums for ten minutes and call it modern art. Wright, who sat down with a bottle of Scotch and a book of poetry to write serious modern music, ended up extremely drunk and only managed to pound his head on the piano a bit. And while Roger Waters obviously took the opportunity to write songs more seriously than the others, his masterpiece, a poignant tribute to his dead father entitled "Dance of the Soldiers," was sadly deleted by an unknown engineer just before the album was pressed. The new cut was mostly some strange squeakings and gigglings recorded when Gilmour and Mason found a bit of high-quality hash in a coat closet. Roger, clearly under the influence of alcohol and some second-hand smoke, ends the track with some angry ranting.
By 1970 the band was desparate to shed its drugged-up, spaced-out image. This was the year in which Pink The Floyd officially dropped the "The", definite articles being all the rage in the Underground scene. Roger Waters adopted a new "look": impossibly tight t-shirts and a largish nose which could be inflated as a stage prop during concerts. David Gilmour gave up shampoo for Lent that year, and by Easter several squirrels, a small family of Cambodian refugees, and a newt had taken up residence in his increasingly matted, dirty coiffure. It was at this time when Nick Mason entered his"hat period", while Rick Wright began accessorizing with a variety of progressively stranger (and considerably more awkward) gardening tools.
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Chapter 6: A BRUSH (AND FLOSS) WITH DEATH
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When the Floyd released its next album, "Atom Head Mother", it was met with no critical acclaim whatsoever, largely due to the fact that the band neglected to put its name on the album cover. The album's initial lack of sales were furthered by the cover art, which showed nothing but a cow in a Lessex field. Roger Waters had his doubts about the drab imagery, and according to interviews from the period would have been content to replace the cover with a photograph of his ego, which at the time was not much larger than the cow anyway. Rick Wright reportedly went into quite a state over the unkempt field itself, and wanted to reshoot the entire thing in his backyard, perhaps with the band accompanying the cow in evening gowns (that is, the band, not the cow, would be wearing the dresses--not that this is a much better image).
And as if the band's artistic and musical problems weren't enough, shortly after the release of "Atom Head Mother" the band came very close to a genuine disaster. At a dinner party during a tour of Southern Europe, The Who's Roger Daltrey mistook Rick Wright for an overdressed St. Bernard, then proceeded to blow his nose in Wright's culottes, ruining a perfectly good suede-handled spade. Sensing Wright's indignation, Roger Waters handed the camshaft he was inspecting to Keith Moon and began to bully Daltrey around the room. But when Pete Townshend joined the fray, Waters found himself outnumbered and overpowered. Distracted and awed by the sheer enormity of Townshend's nose (which Melody Maker had recently named "one of the five greatest schnozzolas of post-war England", must to Waters' chagrin), Waters fell helpless as he was tossed out the window.
Having suffered a severe concussion, Waters slipped into a coma, and was pronounced braindead at the scene. Thinking quickly, Gilmour and Mason carried Roger's lifeless form back upstairs (prompting Gilmour to comment, "Steve, you puddingheaded jobbernowl, why did you book us into the 10th bloody floor? You should be carrying this fat fuck!") and packed him in ice in the bathtub. O'Rourke called in the region's foremost authority on cloning, a Turkish racketeer from Ankara, and in a record-breaking 72-hour procedure they had cloned Waters' brain from a few skin cells found under Daltrey's fingernails. Although over the next few years he would show an unhealthy fixation on pigs and a speech impediment, Roger Waters was back in business.
"Muddle", as the Floyd's next album came to be known (due to the fact that this was its title) was certainly the group's most accomplished and listenable work yet. The opening cut was a driving instrumental jam entitled "One of These Days", and was fondly dedicated by Roger to Pete Townshend (the original title was "One of These Days I'm Going to Cut Off That Honker of Yours and Shove It Down Your Throat and Out Your Arse, You Bloody Crank); live performances of the era featured Roger performing a variety of unspeakable (though not-at-all gay) acts on a life-size inflatable Townshend doll, and subsequently the band was banned from performances in Nebraska and certain conservative rural counties in Alabama.
Other standouts from the album include "San Tropez" and "Seamus", a stirring pair of lyrical and musical masterworks which deal with the heavily-veiled themes of loneliness, dismemberment, sado-masochism, and organic herbicides. Side 2 consisted of a 25-minute piece, aptly entitled "Evita and the Amazing Technicolor Albatross," which told the story of a disfigured man who lived in an opera house with 2 dozen cats and uses his talents to help a young Argentinian woman become an superstar messianic figure. World-famous composer and twit Viscount Andrew F. Loyd Webber later recalled, "Muddle, I didn't much care for that album. I think I only played the first side of it, and never even bothered to listen to side 2 at all. And 4 out of 5 lawyers agree."
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Chapter 7: SONGS FROM THE DANK SIDE
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Clearly inspired by the advances made on "Muddle", Roger Waters, his ego inflating at heretofore unimaginable rates, decided to take his manhood firmly in hand and lead the band in a bold new direction. The result was "The Dank Side of the Moon", a concept suite dealing with the pressures of modern life and the various ways in which a young boy could debase himself if he really wanted to, I mean _really_ put his mind to it. The Floyd honed the hour-long piece for months on the road, then they finally decided to take to the concert halls where the audiences were (resulting in the band being later for gigs--by several weeks in some cases--than it ever had before).
Yet before "Dank Side" would be committed to record, the Floyd popped into the studio to record the soundtrack for yet another bad art film, a touching story about a Scotch-Irish clown entitled "Absurd McCloud". But the most important Floydian film of the year was easily "Live and Pompous" a concert film shot in an empty amphitheater. The band had sold out the show to be filmed, but had surprised the audience and camera crews by showing up a full week early. They were so early, in fact, that while the roadies set up the equipment the band went off for a quick drink at a nearby pub, thus providing additional footage of the group at leisure. Notable scenes include Gilmour rooting about under the benches for a wad of chewing gun, Wright inspecting the pub's ferns and begonias, and giving instructions to the confused barmaids about proper lighting and chemical fertilizers. But perhaps the most telling vignette is in the dressing rooms, as a fastidious Nick Mason goes about performing his pre-show toilet, and is seen to comment "I like my toothpaste without the Crest," flashing a devilishly-yellowed grin.
The film also shows the band putting the finishing touches on "Dank Side of the Moon" in the studio, and it is no surprise that the album was an instant number one. From the opening heartbeats, to the mysterious clanking of Rick's garden hoes, to the haunting final line ("There's no dank side of the moon, really; matter of fact it's green cheese") the album packs a solid wallop. Not surprisingly, one of the most striking aspects of the album is the use of spoken dialogue, which was specially gathered by the band for use on the record. Incidentally, the first voice on the album belongs to Wings' Paul McCartney, who says, "I've been mad for fucking years, absolutely years. Working with bandsaws.. I mean, crikey! What a bloody load of yonks!"
"Dank Side" went on to be an enormous smash hit, outselling The Carpenters' Reunion album by a half-dozen, and just narrowly missing the mark set by the Fine Young Cannibals' debut LP. In live performances, few shows were better conceived or more warmly received. They sold-out venues nearly three-times faster than The Who's 3rd Farewell Tour, and the midnight concert debut in New York's Radio City Music Hall set attendance records which went unmatched until CATS.
PART 2 - Chapter 8: THE ROADIE SPEAKS