Since 1967 when Pink Floyd released their debut album “The Piper At the Gates of Dawn”, the band recorded 15 studio albums. Those records had songs that helped them to become one of the best-selling groups of all time, with an estimated amount of more than 250 million records sold worldwide. Even though the entire discography is loved and praised by the fans of the band, the guitarist and singer David Gilmour believes that one song from them is overlooked.
Rock and Roll Garage selected what the musician said about that track and the album on which the song is featured.
The Pink Floyd song that David Gilmour said is overlooked
David Gilmour first joined the band in 1967 and quickly became a crucial element in the evolution of their sound. In 1970 the band recorded the album “Atom Heart Mother”, which became their first album to reach number in the United Kingdom charts.
In an interview with Prog in 2022, David Gilmour talked about the album and said that the song “Fat Old Sun” should get more recognition. “It’s fantastically overlooked”. The musician said that he wanted the song to be featured on their 2001 compilation album “Echoes”. However, his band members didn’t agree with it. “(I) Tried very hard to push the others. But they weren’t having it.”
After the tour that promoted the album in the early 70s, the song was not featured many times on the band’s live concerts. But David Gilmour performed the track several times over the decades on his solo career shows.
But doesn’t like “Atom Heart Mother”
Even though Gilmour thinks that “Fat Old Sun” is an overlooked track, he doesn’t feel the same way about the album “Atom Heart Mother”. When he talked with Mojo magazine in 2001 he even said that it was Pink Floyd’s lowest point artistically.
“We didn’t know where we were going in terms of recording. But we were pretty good live. We were very good at jamming. But we couldn’t translate that onto record. Gradually, a direction revealed itself to us. A line that began with the ‘Saucerful of Secrets’ track all the way to ‘Echoes’, via the long piece ‘Atom Heart Mother’”.
David Gilmour continued:
“That was a good idea. But it was dreadful. I listened to that album recently. God, it’s shit, possibly our lowest point artistically. ‘Atom Heart Mother’ sounds like we didn’t have any idea between us. But we became much more prolific after it,” David Gilmour said.
Besides “Fat Old Sun”, the record also has other famous tracks like “Summer ’68” and “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast”. In 2008, David Gilmour still had the same opinion album the album. He told The Word magazine that it was “absolute crap”. “All I’ve ever tried to do is play music I like listening to. Some of it now, like ‘Atom Heart Mother’, strikes me as absolute crap. I no longer want or have to play stuff I don’t enjoy”. Pink Floyd’s ex-bassist and singer Roger Waters also doesn’t like the album. The singer and bassist had said many times they could have done better.
It was possibily influenced by The Kinks
Every musician is influenced by music they hear and love, so it’s different when it comes to David Gilmour. When talking about “Fat Old Sun” in an interview with Uncut in 2017, he recalled he probably was inpired by The Kinks when he helped to composed the track.
“It’s one of those songs where the whole thing fell together very easily. I remember thinking at the time, ‘What have I ripped this off? I’m sure it’s by the Kinks or someone.’ But since whenever it was – 1968, ’69 – no one has ever yet said, ‘It’s exactly like this.’ It’s a nice lyric, I’m very happy with that,” David Gilmour said. The guitarist and singer is a huge fan of The Kinks and already picked the song “Waterloo Sunset” as one of his favorites of all time.