PINK FLOYD.  The essays on these singers, producers and musicians.

PINK FLOYD. The essays on these singers, producers and musicians.

ROY ORBISON RAY CHARLES / RADIOHEAD / R.E.M / QUEEN / PUBLIC ENEMY

PRINCE / PINK FLOYD / PHIL SPECTOR / PATTI SMITH / PARLIAMENT AND FUNKADELIC

OTIS REDDING / NIRVANA / NINE INCH NAILS / NEIL YOUNG / MUDDY WATERS

MICHAEL JACKSON / METALLICA / MARVIN GAYE / MADONNA

BOB DYLAN / BO DIDDLEY BLACK SABBATH

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$   By Wayne Coyne   $ 

When I was growing up in the 1970s, Pink Floyd were ever-present. My brothers and my older sister and all their friends constantly played records in their rooms while they smoked pot. Especially Dark Side of the Moon. You heard that every day of your life, for at least three or four years around then.

Turning 14 years old is already a heavy combination of things. For Dark Side of the Moon to be playing in the background during that time was perfect. As you looked deeper into their music, everything you find out leads to something interesting. Pink Floyd were always a group of great creative minds who did whatever the fuck they wanted and didn't worry about all the little rules.

They had an amazing ability to change between records. You don't realize how powerful that is when you're just a listener. But being a person who's made 14 records, you see how big a deal it is. They have a phase one, a phase two, maybe even a phase three and four. A lot of groups — if they're lucky — just have a phase one.

They started out with Syd Barrett writing these whimsical stories, these songs that were kind of surf-rock, kind of R&B, but in his own fucked up way. Later you had Roger Waters evoking these big, universal landscapes of human crises. And Pink Floyd came to embrace this idea of "We can play stadiums and we can fill them up with giant fucking pig balloons." Their music could just always hold that.

Yet, despite all these different pieces moving around, there is a lot of very simple musicality going on. Compared to the prog-rock groups they get thrown in with — King Crimson or Yes or Genesis — their music is actually very simple. You can grasp the chord progressions and melodies the first time you hear them. I love all those other groups but with Pink Floyd I understand the emotion.

Take a song like "Fat Old Sun," from Atom Heart Mother. Living in Oklahoma, I sometimes can't relate when English bands sing about English things. When David Gilmour sings about the sun going down, there's something simple about it. It didn't seem like the sunset was happening in some king's country, in some other world. It seemed like he was singing about me walking in the sunsets in Oklahoma.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Rollingstone


 

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