Pink Floyd – Atom Heart Mother (1970)

I remember clearly the first time I heard this record, it was in school at the age of 16 in a music class. Our substitute teacher played it while he spoke very philosophically about music for us. The music fitted very well with his words and he had certainly planned this carefully. I was in awe of the music and found it extraordinary beautiful. Afterwards, I heard him say it was Pink Floyd who were performing the music, a fact that made me surprised, I had heard The Wall and The Final Cut, but I had no idea that the band had done music like this. Or that they had done anything except those two albums. A new world opened up.

One of my classmates were equally charmed by the music and began to discuss music with the teacher after class was finished. After a while he decided to follow the substitute teacher home to check out some albums. In the teenager's world, there was only one interpretation of this and my classmate was for the rest of his school years looked upon as a might-be-homosexual and also got to hear this quite often (even though it was always said with a smile). It didn’t make things easier for him that he once also asked to borrow a mouth spray from a classmate with the words "Can I get sprayed in the mouth?".

Oh, sweet memories, but let’s head back to the album. In the music class we heard the album's A-side which consists of a 23-minute song divided into shorter sections, the piece I then found so wonderful. There are wind instruments, choirs and sections for orchestra. The band usually keep themselves in the background. The B-side contains four tracks where each member, except Nick Mason, has written one each. The final song is a collaboration between all four and again, is a long (instrumental) track divided into a few shorter sections.

It’s was always the A-side of the album that attracted me most. Largely because it offers some variation – there are bombastic parts mixed with very beautiful, almost fragile, parts. This was for a long time a favorite piece to listen to at bedtime, in bed with headphones and the lights turned off. Night Music.

The B-side contains more "normal" music and of the four different songs I prefer Roger Waters and David Gilmour's contributions (If resp. Fat Old Sun).

The album cover features a cow, the reason for this was that Pink Floyd were tired of the images that were associated with the psychedelic space rock which they had hitherto represented. Therefore, they wanted an ordinary plain cover. Storm Thorgeson, who designed the cover, went out to the countryside and photographed the first cow he saw, which then got be on the cover. The name of the album is from a newspaper headline on an article about a woman who had gotten a nuclear-powered pacemaker.

Pink Floyd actually did a tour where they brought a full orchestra and a choir to perform Atom Heart Mother. The tour of course lost money and they therefore scaled down the track for live performances - made it shorter without choir and orchestra. Pink Floyd performed Atom Heart Mother at concerts until 1972.

As I mentioned, I've always liked (and still like) this album. But not everyone does:

"Atom Heart Mother is a good case, I think, for being thrown into the dustbin and never listened to by anyone ever again!... It was pretty kind of pompous, it wasn't really about anything."

/ Roger Waters — Rock Over London Radio Station - 15 March 1985, for broadcast 7 April/14 April 1985.

"[Atom Heart Mother] 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 - Mojo Magazine - October 2001

"I wouldn't dream of performing anything that embarrassed me. If somebody said to me now: "Right...here's a million pounds, go out and play 'Atom Heart Mother'", I'd say: "You must be fucking joking...I'm not playing that rubbish!". 'Cos then I really would be embarrassed."

/ Roger Waters — interviewed by Richard Skinner - BBC Radio 1 - originally broadcast: Saturday 9 June 1984

But who cares what these men say?

 

Favourite tracks

Atom Heart Mother

Fat Old Sun

If

 

Tracklist

Side A

1. "Atom Heart Mother"  23:44

 

Side B

1. "If"  4:31

2. "Summer '68"  5:29

4. "Fat Old Sun"  5:22

5. "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast"  13:00