More Pink Floyd Solo
The essential solo albums from Syd, David, Nick and Rick…
SYD BARRETT
The Madcap Laughs Harvest, January 1970
“Utter chaos” is engineer Peter Mew’s verdict on recording Barrett’s solo debut, taped between May 1968 and July 1969. Barrett’s state of mind was to blame, though neither EMI nor Waters and Gilmour, who produced several tracks, knew what to do with him. A fragile uncertainty grips every song. The Soft Machine struggle in vain to follow the erratic changes on Octopus, while Barrett himself has difficulty in remembering anything on If It’s In You. (MP)
RON GEESIN, ROGER WATERS
Music From The Body Harvest, November 1970
If Waters wasn’t influenced by Scottish maverick Ron Geesin on Several Species Of Small Furry Animals… from Ummagumma then their commonality is a strange coincidence. This collaboration (for a documentary) is essentially divided between Furry Animalsstyle sound effect japes from Geesin and Ummagumma’s Grantchester Meadowns-type acoustic pastorals from Waters. With Geesin contributing to Atom Heart Mother, this is the link-piece between the two albums. Still enjoyable, it’s rendered nigh essential for Give Birth To A Smile, featuring an uncredited Floyd and a troupe of female backing singers – a dress rehearsal for Eclipse. (TM)
SYD BARRETT Barrett
Harvest, November 1970
More orderly than The Madcap Laughs, this still owes almost as much to producer David Gilmour’s polished backings as it does to Barrett’s increasingly wandering musie. “It was murder,” Gilmour admitted later, though on the evidence of the blissful opener, Baby Lemonade, you’d hardly have thought so. Barrett’s erraticism is more obvious on Dominoes, which plays out without the frontman at all, the devil-voiced Maisie, and the stream-of-consciousness segue of Waving My Hands In The Air/I Never Lied To You. The album concludes, appropriately enough, with a nurser y rhyme, Effer vescing Elephant. (MP)
RICK WRIGHT
Wet Dream
Harvest, September 1978
While Waters was busy getting bitter building his Wall, and Gilmour was regrouping his old band Bullitt for his debut solo record, Rick Wright made an album that was greeted with one rather long sneer by the rock cognoscenti. Stuck in the most torpid stretches of Floyd’s back catalogue, Wet Dream, is a pleasant enough holiday record. Written at his villa in Rhodes, with wife Juliette contributing some lyrics and tracks titled Mediterranean C and Pink’s Song, it provided direct contrast to the hard-edged sullenness of Animals. Funky Deux nods to the groove on Echoes. (DE)
DAVID GILMOUR
David Gilmour Harvest, May 1978
While a Gilmour solo album between the Waters-dominated Animals and The Wall suggests a compositional overflow, there are only three original songs here, alongside three instrumentals, two co-writes and a cover of No Way Out Of Here, by far the album’s best track. The lovely ballad So Far Away runs it close, though, and the whole affair is highly listenable. As such it’s the direct link (via
Gilmour’s second solo set, About Face) between the Floyd of Wish You Were Here and A Momentary Lapse Of Reason. (TM)
NICK MASON
Fictitious Sports Columbia, May 1981
Nick Mason’s solo album doesn’t actually contain a single Mason composition. In reality, it is a solo album by his pal, American jazz-fusion keyboardist/vocalist Carla Bley with Mason on drums and guest vocals by mutual friend Robert Wyatt. Bley’s self-consciously wacky work is a largely uninviting prospect, with the exception of Hot River, the one track that justifies Mason’s name on the cover. (TM)
ZEE
Identity
Harvest, April 1984
Identity underlined Rick Wright’s search for one, after splitting acrimoniously with Waters during
the making of The Wall in 1979. The keyboard player meandered out of his semi-retirement in Greece to explore the possibilities of the Fairlight computer, with multiinstrumentalist Dave ‘Dee’ Harris from the post-futurist group Fashion. The two duly embarked on updating Floyd for the synthesizer generation, though the sound is more Harris’s than Wright’s. Confusion, which became the lead single, was just that. “An experiment that didn’t work out”, as Wright was to lament later. (DE)
DAVID GILMOUR
About Face Harvest, March 1984
As easy-going as his ’78 debut, About Face was a non-concept album that proved a musical taster for the Waters-less Pink Floyd’s A Momentary Lapse Of Reason three years later. Just like that record, About Face’s ’80s production gloss and use of burbling Fairlight’s means it hasn’t aged so well. Still, Until We Sleep is a crowd-pleasing echo of his old band’s murk and menace, though it’s on the gentler songs that his pleasing timbre works best, especially the Pete Townshendwritten All Lovers Are Deranged, and Love On The Air, the closest Pink Floyd or any of their ilk ever came to US radio-pleasing soft rock. (MB)
MASON & FENN
Profiles EMI, July 1985
Taking a break from his motor racing and free jazz activities, Nick Mason found time to set up a production company called Bamboo Music with ex-10cc guitarist Rick Fenn. After gaining success in writing jingles for bands and cigarettes, the duo decided to cut an album. Recorded at Britannia Row, the record is akin to a pleasant collection of mid-’80s advertising music. Fenn obviously enjoys the upper hand, and David Gilmour’s vocals are most welcome on the album’s slender lead single, Lie For A Lie. (DE)
RICK WRIGHT
Broken China EMI, October 1996
Wright finally served up a quiet triumph, continuing on from his confident, fully fledged return on 1994’s The Division Bell. And it’s a concept album, divided into four sections, exploring clinical depression. Written with post-Waters Floyd collaborator Anthony Moore, it’s not as good as it would like to be, but Sinead O’Connor does a haunting and spirited turn on Reaching For The Rail and Breakthrough. While not exactly long on laughs, the mid-tempo arrangements are redolent of the sinister Meddle-era Floyd and hold up to repeated playing. Check it out. (DE)
DAVID GILMOUR
On An Island EMI, March 2006
Sleepy ballads, psychedelic flashbacks and long, winding guitar solos inform Gilmour’s first solo album since 1984. It’s an exploration of lost youth and a meditation on the ageing process, but “a happy album” according to its creator. David Crosby, Graham Nash and Rick Wright are among the extended supporting cast. (MB)
DAVID GILMOUR
Rattle That Lock Columbia, September 2015
Gilmour’s fourth album came with PR-friendly listening notes outlining the concept of its 10 tracks, which represent thoughts and emotions that occur during the course of one day. The lightness of touch makes for an absorbing, adult listening experience, with Gilmour’s heart-stopping guitar punctuation still present (look no further than the opening mood piece, 5AM, for proof). Escaping the weight of legacy, it operates in the here and now in a serene, triumphant manner. (PA)
Words: Toby Manning, Mark Paytress, Daryl Easlea, Mark Blake, Phil Alexander
“While not exactly long on laughs, Broken China is redolent of Meddle-era Floyd and holds up to repeated playing.”