David Gilmour on early Floyd Albums

As I said before, many artists look back on their early work with disdain.

What surprised me about the interview segments of the 70-74 Genesis box set was that Gabriel seemed to be the only one that still thinks that stuff is any good.  Banks and Rutherford (and even Collins), while not saying it was crap, seemed to have low opinions of that stuff overall.  We all know what Rick Wakeman thinks of Tales as well.

So I think this is pretty common.  In the case of Gilmour, their most popular work by far was Dark Side and after.  It's only natural that they are going to think they "got it right" only after that point since they became filthy rich and had massive success.  Personally, I think they were far more interesting before that.  They were not as good instrumentalists perhaps, but they didn't know "the rules" of writing music, so were able to come up with more interesting and original ideas.  It didn't always work, of course.  I always found a comment by Waters interesting, about AHM, that "it wasn't about anything".  Did it need to be?  Does music have to be "about" something?  Personally, I don't think it does in order to be good or great.

Like I said, once they found their successful "formula", each album was very similar, from Dark Side on.  I don't see many people pointing this out in reviews or on this thread, but there really is a lot of similarity with each album after Dark Side.  It IS a good formula, and I like those albums, I just found them much more "progressive" before that (see what I did there?  )





Edited by infandous - April 24 2012 at 09:39

Atom Heart Mother and Ummagumma have always been my two favourite albums.  DG is entitled to his opinion, of course, but he's entitled to be wrong.

Nogbad_The_Bad wrote: The Ummagumma live album is one of my post played favorites.

I love it too! Astromine domine is fab!

I agree with him for the most part.  I did start getting really quite interested around echoes.

Progosopher wrote: Soooo, are you looking for agreement or disagreement, or just seeing how people respond?  Artists often have a very different experience of their music than their listeners, which often involving production standards.  He may be commenting on the fact that these recordings did not sound exactly like what he and the rest of the band envisioned. Myself, I do not regard either album as Floyd greats, and agree with him to a certain extent.

^  I see what you did there.  Summer of 69 is by Canada's very own Bryan Adams! 

infandous wrote: =Though I'd have to say that Summer '69 is the best of side two of that album, Fat Old Sun second.

spknoevl wrote: Gotta agree with Gilmour's assessment.  Much of the material is really self-indulgent and pays little interest in actual songwriting.  It's experimental, but alot of it I find unlistenable these days.  Perhaps those albums are a micrcosm of the times:  I liked them back in the days when I was doing drugs

 

I would never pretend to know what an artist is thinking or trying to say.......I see and read some of these interviews especially on the PF documentaries and such and I take their comments at face value. If David says they did not like it then I believe they did not like it........Which again is sad when back in those days studio time was precious for a band just getting going, they are not making money and I have to think you always want to put your best foot forward as a young band.

Catcher10 wrote: I find his comments actually funny......Almost every interview I have read or seen on TV, the band members usually are beating themselves up. They self criticize more than any artist I know, but I always see this smurk on their faces whilst they talk......Like saying "ahhh were just joshing you...". If he is 100% being truthful, then that is too bad that he did not have a good time doing these records, and maybe back then they did not like them, but I have to think eventually they must have liked them.   If not then I suppose it could be a reason for their dislike of one another and eventual collapse and internal strife. There is a definate line between bands that enjoy each other, like their work usually versus bands that self criticize too much and hate each other.   In this case the albums are just OK to me...but they have a place of importance in rock history.

I'm pretty sure this is only in retrospect.  At the time of creating those albums, they generally seemed happy with them.  Though no doubt, much like Genesis, the huge popularity of their latter material made their less popular, more underground stuff, seem less "good" to them later on.  I think any artist looking back, is going to see their earlier stuff as somewhat naive and searching.  They were young and trying to define themselves as a band and as individual musicians.  I discovered the early albums after discovering the later, more popular ones.  To this day I much prefer the early experimental stuff, because from Piper through Meddle, every album was so different from the last.  After Dark Side, it all sounds the same really.  Really, really good, but quite similar in style and approach.