11 Apr 2013 01:18:31
Well, neither had I, to be honest, with odd exceptions. When John Lydon, Rotten as was, wore a Pink Floyd T-shirt with the words "I hate" written by him above the band's name, that was the law as far as I was concerned. And it seemed to me that both their Syd Barrett and post-Syd music was pretty much wholly anticipated by the Beatles' "The Fool on the Hill" and "I Want You (She's So Heavy)", respectively. And yet that Geldof quote comes on page 382 of this book, and I had read the preceding 381 pages. Clearly, you don't enjoy a nearly 400-page biography of a band whose music you don't, at some level, like, or consider important. Then again, there are plenty of instances in these pages when the band themselves express dissatisfaction with their music – my favourite being that the working title for the song "See‑Saw" (from their second album, A Saucerful of Secrets) was "The Most Boring Song I've Ever Heard Bar Two".
And yet, even though their music polarises audiences, you have to either love them, or dismiss them, completely – they are still part of the collective consciousness. The title of Saucerful ..., as the rock critic Ian MacDonald pertinently observed, managed to combine brilliantly references to UFOs and the Mad Hatter's tea party; in other words, declaring themselves – now that the Beatles had gone back to the boogie-woogie piano of "Hey Bulldog" and "Lady Madonna" – the omphalos and cynosure of English psychedelia. The psychedelia withered away pretty quickly, to be replaced largely by Waters's hectoring – for want of a better word. Look at him clowning around on the "Arnold Layne" promo film and then contemplate his later rage, gloominess, or resignation; the names he calls Mary Whitehouse on Animals, say, (and note his savage swipe in "Pigs" at Thatcher two years before she came to power), or the lyric "hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way" from The Dark Side of the Moon. Which, as you will know, was pipped to the number one slot in Radio 2's poll of listeners' favourite albums by Duran Duran, Keane and Coldplay. Yes, this is the worst kind of company, but it's the only album in the top five I'd ever want to listen to (the fifth is by Dido, for crying out loud). If it is not exactly the most feelgood party record you've ever heard, it works perfectly on its own terms, ends superbly, and, with 10 tracks on it, is positively sprightly when you compare it with some of their other work, whose length, you feel, was constrained only by the limited amount of vinyl on one side of an album.
The book itself is dutiful, and thorough (it's been revised and expanded from its 2007 printing in order to take into account a further on-stage reunion, and the death of their keyboard player, Richard Wright). I have been assured by sources close to the band (to use the evasive language of the lobby correspondent) that the book's air of authoritative omniscience is not necessarily to be taken at face value. Then again, it's the only proper biography we have, it paints a picture of a generation, helps us some way towards understanding the decline and enigma of Syd Barrett, and gives us a picture of a band which, although trapped by their own devices into becoming the most lumbering of rock behemoths, at least were one of the few of their vintage who carried on giving a shit.
