Roger Waters and David Gilmour were a crucial part of Pink Floyd‘s success and without one of them, the band certainly wouldn’t sound the same. With the release of albums like “Dark Side of The Moon” (1973), “Wish You Were” (1975), “Animals” (1977) and “The Wall” (1979), they became one of the most influential bands of all time.
Those albums are considered perfect but Gilmour and Waters worked together on other albums and there is one they were never satisfied with.
The album David Gilmour and Roger Waters were never satisfied with
It was not actually a Pink Floyd album but a Syd Barrett album. That’s right, Roger Waters and David Gilmour helped Syd Barrett to record his two only solo studio albums. But the two were not satisfied with the result of “Madcap Laughs”, the first one, released in 1970. The musician was fired from the band due to his increasing mental health problems but they helped on his solo career. He recalled that in an interview with John Edginton back in 2006 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
“He was trying to make a record with Malcolm Jones and they spent an awful long time on it. At some point it seem like it was being closed down by EMI. (So) he asked me and Roger to help him to get it finished. It seemed to me that would be a good way to try to help him get back on his feet. But it didn’t work from that point of view because he came into the studio completely out of it on quite a few occasions.”
He continued:
“It was very, very hard to get anything done (on Madcap Laughs). There are some wonderful songs in there, they’re really interesting. He didn’t seemed to have to search for a melody or for a word. They just seem to be there, just seemed to come very easily to him. The nightmare actually was trying to make the record.”
“It was truly difficult to do in a very short period of time that EMI sort of gave us to try to get it done. Malcolm Jones in fact, did a very, very good job of getting the first few tracks done. (…) I think (the album) has got its charm and the songs are very, very good. But I don’t think any of us were very satisfied with it,” David Gilmour said.
Some of the most famous songs of that record are “Terrapin”, “Dark Globe”, “Here I Go” and “Octopus”. Gilmour played the bass guitar, 12-string acoustic guitar and drums on the track “Octopus”. Waters only helped as a producer.
Besides them, were also part of the record the musicians Jerry Shirley, Willie Wilson, Robert Wyatt, Hugh Hopper and Mike Ratledge.
Gilmour has no idea how Barrett felt about those two albums
Not long after those two albums, Barrett’s mother asked the Pink Floyd members to not visit or talk with the musician because anything that reminded him of the band would make him go into a mental crisis. So they had no contact with him for the rest of his life.
In an interview with Guitar Heroes Magazine in 1983, Gilmour recalled that Barrrett only said something about those two albums after they finished recording the last one “Barrett” (1970).
“It was hell. But you know, we always felt that there was a talent there. It was just a matter of trying to get it out onto record so that people would hear it, and of course Syd didn’t make that any easier for us. There were various techniques we had to invent for trying to get the stuff recorded. It was very very difficult; not really very rewarding. And I’ve no idea how Syd felt about it most of the time.”
He continued:
“The only thing he ever said about it was at the end of the second album, when we’d finished. We were going up the lift in his block of flats in Earls Court. He turned round to me and he said, ‘Thanks, thanks very much.’ And that’s the only expression of approval or disapproval of anything that I got out of him through two albums I think.”
“I’ve no idea if they were how he wanted them to be. But as he didn’t offer opinions, we had to take it onto ourselves to decide how it should be. Which is quite a normal thing with producers. But it wasn’t because we were trying to assert that on him. It’s just there wasn’t anything coming from him to tell us how he thought it should be,” David Gilmour said.