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Days in the Life: Pink Floyd at 40

Pink Floyd band members
  • Posted at 3:45pm
  • 29 November 2007
  • by SarahDempster-RT

Order! Order! The concluding episode of Days in the Life: Pink Floyd at 40 was an exercise in aggravation. Invisible gavels hovered over every grumble, gripe, moan, tut, tsk and sigh. Being posh, however, the band was at pains to ensure its incessant squabbling remained reasonably restrained.

One assumes this was something to do with not wanting to get any port on its cravat. Or, indeed, not wanting to find any lawsuits in its mailbox. Either way, it was all grimacing self-control and simmering passive aggression round Floyd's way.

"I was never friends with Dave or Rick," sighed field marshal Roger Waters of his former band-mates. "I mean, I didn't mind them…" He drifted off, the implication (to wit: Friends? With that shower? Hahahahahaha!) hanging in the air like the smell of something significant. The others were no less forthcoming.

"He was being bullish," mumbled private Rick Wright of Waters's notoriously dictatorial behaviour during the recording of The Wall, the 1979 concept album (the concept being, in essence, Roger Waters) that would effectively topple the final brick from their Wall of Tenuous Solidarity.

As befits such curmudgeonry, each member of the band appeared to have been interviewed in a different location, presumably because certain factions (ie Roger Waters) had refused to appear in the same room as certain other factions (ie everyone else), on the grounds of hating their guts.

Said sites appeared to have been chosen for their disparity and unusualness. Hence, Dave Gilmour (guitars, singing, bone-dry wit) sounded as if he was sitting on some manner of water-based vessel (probably a barge). Rick Wright (keyboards, emotional wobbliness) appeared to be permanently in the middle of just finishing a Digestive, or some other denture-placating soft biscuit, in a quiet front room.

Nick Mason (drums, vaguely withering nobility) had obviously been interviewed under his duvet, by torchlight, between chapters of Tom Brown's Schooldays. Roger Waters (bass, singing, concepts, visions, general omniscience/egomania), meanwhile, was almost certainly sitting in a Little Chef.

From these peculiar - and doubtless symbolic - locales, the band talked about poor old Wright being asked to leave the band ("it was a very emotional time for me"), their feelings on punk ("pomp rock, I think they called us. I think it's quite a good title," chuckled Gilmour) and the frequent charges of excess that have been levelled at them ("OK, we had a giant pig and it exploded at one point, but there was a REASON for it," harrumphed a typically defensive Waters).

And then there was the music. Which was great. Especially Sheep, from 1977's "politicised" Animals, which features sheep noises and some of Waters's least annoying lyrics and is, to these ears at least, the greatest Pink Floyd song ever recorded. Even the stuff from 1987's A Momentary Lapse of Reason sounded fantastic, despite Gilmour admitting he was tempted to remix the album in order to "sort of remove the 80s from it I s'pose, heh heh!"

It all ended, naturally, with the inevitable post-them-being-brilliant-at-Live-Earth question: will there ever be another full Pink Floyd reunion?

"It will absolutely depend on whether Roger and Dave see any benefits in working together," grumped Mason, grumpily. Which was as good as saying, "No! Not ever! Not in, like, a kerzillion years! So there! Now, are you going to allow me to return to my book, or shall I be forced to release the hounds?"

B****r.

Days in the Life: Pink Floyd at 40 (Saturday 24 November, 8:00pm, BBC Radio 2).

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