Soirée Pink Floyd sur Arte, samedi 25 octobre

Zaek a écrit:

Je n'avais jamais vu ce document et j'avoue qu'il est très bien réussi. J'ai partiulièrement aimé le passage sur Have a Cigar dont j'ai appris beaucoup de chose.
Le moment où David et Roger joue WYWH chacun de leur côté (celui qui passe à la fin du zapping d'ailleurs) est assez magique.

Et Roger qui chante faux, quelle horreur...    

La version à deux voix de Have a Cigar est sympa aussi, je ne l'avais jamais entendue

Et quand Gilmour parle de la venue de Syd avec les larmes aux yeux, 40 ans après, un moment très émouvant.

Je l'ai revu avec beaucoup de plaisir, et je l'ai trouvé encore plus émouvant. En effet, à partir du moment où ils expliquent qu'ils reconnaissent Syd, puis toute la fin avec en plus les images de ce live 8 pour lequel tout Floydien ne remerciera jamais assez Bob Geldof d'avoir réussi à nous offrir une dernière montée commune sur scène, avec un Roger sincèrement ému de retrouver les trois autres et qui cite le nom de Syd, parmi tous les absents à qui il dédie Wish you were here. La boucle est bouclée, en somme...

Ol ymp'

Free Four a écrit:

Et Roger qui chante faux, quelle horreur...    

Non, c'est une bande préenregistrée, voyons... Tout le monde sait que Roger chante toujours juste et haut, il n'est qu'à se remémorer la dernière tournée The wall...

Ol ymp'

nico-51 a écrit:

A noter que des extraits de la partie sur "Wish You Were Here" ont été mis dans le zapping de canal+ ce lundi 27 octobre. Un moment fort face au reste !!

Oui j'ai vu ça. Ceci prouve bien que lorsqu'il y a Pink Floyd à la télévision, c'est un événement!
(et ça prouve aussi qu'ils ont bon goût les mecs du zapping!)

Sinon l'émission était vraiment très bien. Je ne l'avais jamais vu et j'ai également appris beaucoup de chose. Notamment sur "Have a Cigar"
Juste un truc, à un moment on interroge un journaliste de l'époque qui apparemment avait assassiné le groupe lors d'un concert.
Et quand un autre journaliste demande à Gilmour si il se souvient de cette critique assassine (qui à en croire les a beaucoup touché), Gilmour répond " comment peut on oublier ça"
Est ce quelqu'un connait cette critique?

Le fameux article de Nick Kent fin 74,  l'article les descendait en flêche et en plus il y avait tout un paragraphe sur les cheveux gras de David, ce qui m' avait permis d'accroître mon vocabulaire.
Voilà l'article sous la main,et le droit de réponse, pas vraiment un droit de réponse car Erskine, estimant avoir des choses à se faire pardonner invita ensuite David à déjeuner pour s'expliquer. Et le titre dit tout de l'ambiance de l'époque:


New Musical Express, November 1974
Floyd Juggernaut:The Road to 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'?
By Nick Kent

On 14nov74, approximately seven thousand people washed their hair and traveled down to the Empire Pool, Wembley, to witness the Pink Floyd live. Almost everyone, that is, except David Gilmour - his hair looked filthy there on stage, seemingly anchored down by a surfeit of scalp grease and tapering off below the shoulders with a spectacular festooning of split ends. Rather like Bill's locks, in fact. Bill was sitting next to me throughout the concert y'see. Said he came from Hayward's Heath, Sussex - and well, he did have something of the patent Gilmour style about him: stringy unwashed hair parted in the middle and furrowed behind the ears, an earnest compliment of peach- fuzz masquerading as facial hair, plimsolls - the lot, in fact, even though his face lacked Gilmour's bully-boy well-formed features, substituting a kind of bleary-eyed doggedness which wrinkled up every time he took a blast off one of a constant series of 'cool jays'.

'Good stuff, this,' Bill muttered. 'We get it from this spade guy, down in Brighton. Straight off the boat it comes.'

Bill said he didn't go much on any other kinds of stimulant. He also didn't like much music. Said it almost boastfully. Only a few albums. And the Floyd of course. 'I've got a good stereo, mind. Big speakers.' So what does he do with it?

'I'll tell you. I mean I like to get really, y'know really stoned - spaced, y'know, and I put on me Floyd...ah, Meddle or Dark Side of the Moon - that track "Great Gig in the Sky", and I'm laying there between the speakers really spaced, getting off on the stereo crossovers.' Stereo crossovers?

'Yeah, y'know, when the sound goes from channel to channel. Phasing and that. Those are the bits I like best.'

Bill's girlfriend 'Jiff' thinks that the Pink Floyd are the best group in the whole world. 'They're taking music to this whole new level. It's really...'Cosmic?

'Yes, that's just what I was going to say.'

'One thing I've always taken into consideration, and which sums up, for me anyway, the fundamental personality crisis inherent in the old Floyd is that Syd was an artist and the other three were all student architects. I think that says an awful lot, particularly when you study the kind of music the Floyd have gone on to play since that time.'

That quote came courtesy of Peter Jenner, who confided the same to me some months ago. I'd almost forgotten it until about halfway through the Floyd's Wembley set, straight after the three new numbers had been performed.

At 7.55 p.m. I'd entered the Empire Pool toting healthy expectations for a thoroughly enjoyable evening of entertainment at the very least, already. At 10.45 p.m. I left the same hall possibly more infuriated over what I'd just witnessed than I can ever remember being over any other similar event. Angry and rather depressed. It was hell. But let's begin at the beginning.

At 8.20 p.m. or thereabouts the four members of Floyd saunter on stage. It is not a spectacular entrance. In fact they wander on rather like four navvies who've just finished their tea break and are about to return slowly to the task of tarring a section of main road. After approximately five minutes of slightly labored tuning up, the band start their first number of the set - a new composition entitled 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond'. It is very slow, rather low on melodic inventiveness, each note hanging in that archetypically ominous stunted fashion that tends to typify the Floyd at their most uninspired. The song itself is duly revealed to be of very slight mettle: the chords used are dull, as is the pace.

The song distinctly lacks 'form'. And then there are the lyrics.

'Come on you raver, you seer of visions / Come on you painter, you piper, you prophet, and shine,' sings Roger Waters at one point, his voice mottled by a slightly squeamish, self-consciousness of timbre, not to mention the fact that he also appears at this point to be somewhat flat. The lyrics are not very good you see. Pretty much like sixth form poetry - prissy, self-conscious and pretentious.

'You were caught in the crossfire of childhood and stardom / Blown on the steel breeze / Come on, you target for far-away laughter / Come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr and shine.'

The song is for and about Syd Barrett. He could have deserved better. The thoroughly unimpressive beginning is duly followed by the second of the three new numbers to be showcased in this section. 'Raving and Drooling' is motivated by a rhythm somewhat akin to that of a human heartbeat with further references gathered from numerous Floyd stylized devices.

Wright drags some suitably Moog-oriented 'primal-screams' from one of a mighty arsenal of keyboard instruments, Waters manipulates a stolid, simplistic bass-pattern, Mason plays one of the two or three standard rhythms he habitually employs - usually incorporating much emphasis on the tom-toms and cymbals - while Gilmour blithely chunks out a 'One of These Days' rhythm stab on his guitar.

The song is again of incredibly minor import, Waters doing his whole 'Careful With That Axe, Eugene' tormented horse-faced routine - 'Raving and drooling I feel on his neck with a scream / He had a whole lotta terminal shock in his eyes / That's what you get for pretending the rest are not real,' etc., etc.

Pretty undistinguished stuff except for the fact that yours truly noted that the first line was wrenched out in much the same way that Barrett sang 'Wolfpack' on his second solo album. Otherwise more identikit Floyd bereft of any real originality or inspired conceptualized cognizance. So then there was 'Gotta Be Crazy', [sic] the magnum opus of this dubious triumvirate for which Waters had regurgitated the old Dark Side of the Moon study of society-and-its-destructive-pressures gruel to even more facile conclusions.

One could of course begin by pointing out that the song features a fairly decent melody - a fetching minor chord progression strummed out by Gilmour who also sings Waters' lyrics - 'You gotta be crazy, you gotta be mean / You gotta keep your kids and your car clean / You gotta keep climbing, you gotta keep fit / You got to keep smiling, you gotta eat shit!'

Boy, what an indictment on the whole bourgeois high-pressured schism of our time! But then again, who better than the Floyd to commandeer such a grievous lambasting of the aforementioned lifestyle when after all I can't think of another rock group who live a more desperately bourgeois existence in the privacy of their own homes.

And whaddyamean, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones... Water's hasn't even begun yet! I mean, here he is concluding this mighty epic with a potent line of bland psychological causes for his hapless victim's doomed condition - 'Who was born in a house full of pain / Who was sent out to play on his own' - when only a few verses prior to this he avidly gloats over the poor bastard's decline and fall - 'And when you lose control, you'll reap the harvest you have sown...So have a good drown and you'll go down alone.' There's obviously something here that doesn't, how you say, correlate. Not to mention a very perverse sense of morality at work. So there are the lyrics - which I personally find quite offensive - and I still haven't mentioned the song's musical construction beyond that pleasing opening strum section which I forgot to mention sounded like the kind of chord structure the old Wyatt-Hopper- Ratledge Soft Machine used to do way back when.

Unfortunately, the Floyd, as always, let the song sprawl out to last twice as long as it should, summoning the aid of some of the most labored bouts of aural padding imaginable. I mean, the very least one would expect from a song like this would be a tight, incisive structure, but then again incisiveness has never been something the post-Syd Floyd have prided themselves on, and so one has to wade through labored sections of indolent musical driftwood before lo, the plot is resumed and one is sent careering back to our Roger's bloated denunciation:

'Gotta be sure, you gotta be quick / Gotta divide the tame from the sick / Gotta some of us docile and fit / You gotta keep everyone buying this shit.'

'Buying this shit'???

Explain Mr. Waters, if you please. The song ends, as I stated earlier on, with a mildly potent 'J'accuse' blast of postured psychological cause-and-effect ranting, leaving the audience with a twenty-minute interval in order to gather themselves for a further assault.

The second half is, of course, taken up by the whole Dark Side of the Moon presentation. Visuals for the new numbers had been muted to a minimum: two sets of spotlights tastefully flanking the stage throughout, while three mirror-balls were put into operation during 'Raving and Drooling'. But Dark Side was to be graced by the projection of a special film made as a visual compliment to the music. Again the Floyd light into the first section of the effort. More assured...but God, they look so uninspired.

Wright's solo Moog doodling signals the first reel of the film being unleashed on the audience - random shots of a plane taking off, viewed from the cockpit, a garish cartoon segment of touchdown on an alien planet ending with a section of total incendiary destruction.

S'all right mind you. Very obvious and that, but it keeps you engaged if not enthralled. It's only when you're informed by an intimate of the Floyd's entourage that the likes of Lindsay Anderson and Nicholas Roeg - i.e., the best film directors in the country - were at the outset interested in helping out on the film until they actually came up against the Floyd and immediately made their excuses in order to opt out that it all starts to fall into perspective again.

It's also around this time that you start realizing how incredibly limited the band seem to be as musicians. As a rhythm section, Mason and Waters are perhaps the dullest I've ever witness fill a large auditorium, the former going through his tedious tricks most of the time, and falling apart at those unscripted junctures when the band are forced to involve themselves at attempts at spontaneity (these junctures of course are very few and far between, due to the situation of the whole show being molded around the constrictive dictates of the visual presentation which depends ultimately on stop-gap timing).

Waters is not a very imaginative bass player, and doesn't improve things by incorporating a tone akin to the dull atonal thud one gets when hitting the strings of a piano with a rubber hammer. Wright is merely an adequate keyboard player, and always seems uncomfortable when forced to take action (at one point he attempted some gospel-tinged pianistics to compliment the fine performance of Vanetta Fields and Carlena Williams' 'Great Gig in the Sky' segment and muffed it badly).

The weakness creates numerous watersheds in the music which just scream for some inspired interjection, whether in the form of a Ratledge- styled piece of inspired doodling or even one of those quasi- Herbie Hancock soft-jazz flurries which every young dolt in an up-and-coming progressive unit seems perfectly adept at pulling off these days. Wright really hasn't improved that much since the old Floyd days; only the arsenal of keyboards has been added to.

Finally there's Gilmour - who, although an adequate guitarist, projects little personality in his playing, well doused in his solos are in the blues guitar school traditions.

Here again a lack of inspiration fails to perceive vast holes in the music which could so easily be cemented in by some tasteful rhythm work or a short, tight solo such as he is capable of.

So anyway the Floyd battle on with their films (more obvious footage of currency for 'Money' plus some shots of 'political leaders' for 'Brain Damage' - is this a political statement, boys?) and their tapes and their perfect PA system, and the audience are loving it.

Those still awake, that is. Our Mr Erskine was being flanked by somnambulant corpses on his side of the fence while I noticed a few bedraggled-looking souls dozing off in my corner. Even our old mate Bill - remember him? - was rendered inert for some ten minutes until the applause for 'Money' brought him around.

Finally the Moon set is completed and the band walk off to ecstatic applause. They eventually return for an encore - no 'thank-yous' or anything...I mean that would be just too much to ask, now wouldn't it - and the band do 'Echoes'.

Visuals are now relegated to luminous green orbs of circular light projected on the big screen (they never seem to really be spinning properly), while towards the end the band's ankles are engulfed in - wait for it - 'dry ice'.

The above constituted what could easily be the most boring concert I've ever been forced to sit through for review purposes. Mind you, the Floyd's themselves were reportedly none too enamored by the event either: apparently there was a nasty fight between the band after the set which culminated in a sound man being sacked and some guy from Island Studios being brought in at short notice to replace him. Having been informed of this, we decided to curb our venom long enough to give the band a second chance and go back on the Friday night. This time the sound had indeed improved beyond all recognition and the first half went pretty smoothly until there arose some 'contretemps' betwixt Roger Waters at this most morose and someone who dared yelled "Get on with it!' during yet more labored tuning up in order to preface 'Gotta be Crazy'. [sic]

'We're going as fast as we can,' muttered Waters derisively, sounding amazed that this young upstart actually dare criticize them. If that weren't bad enough, someone yelped out, of all things, '1967,' straight afterwards.

This was too much for Waters. 'It's not 1967, it's 1974,' he snapped back. Anyway, Friday's show still pinpointed how poor the band are at jamming or really sustaining either drama or dramatics, flailing around to little avail in their attempts to pad out what are at the best of times minor works. And the band's musicianship was, as before, questionably mediocre.

OK, boys, now this is really going to hurt.

What the two Floyd shows I witnessed on Thursday and Friday amounted to in the final analysis was not merely a kind of utterly morose laziness which is ultimately even more obnoxious than callow superstar 'flash', but a pallid excuse for creative music which comes dangerously close to the Orwellian mean for a facile, soulless music that would doubtless rule the airwaves and moreover be touted as fine art in the latter's version of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

David Bowie, on his "Diamond Dogs", unwittingly (as far as I can see, anyway) hit upon something which totally invalidates the rest of his similarly facile theorizing on a computerized cruel future planet when he plays, of all things, 'Rebel Rebel.'

'Rebel Rebel', you see, is the ultimate identikit diluted series of computerized rock gestures - the mechanical Stones riff, the brainless lyrics - real Nineteen Eighty Four rock. The Pink Floyd are even closer to that, though. Over the last few years the band have in fact come to establish themselves as the total antithesis of what they started out representing: the whole Brave New World school of rock musicianship which broke loose back in '66-'67 and brought about real masterpieces like Eight Miles High, Revolver and Piper at the Gates of Dawn.

The Floyd in fact seem so incredibly tired and seemingly bereft of true creative ideas one wonders if they really care about their music anymore. I mean, one can easily envisage a Floyd concert in the future consisting of the band simply wandering on stage, setting all their tapes into action, putting their instruments on remote control and then walking off behind the amps in order to talk about football or play billiards. I'd almost prefer to see them do that. At least it would be honest.

Still, the Floyd can content themselves on one score. They are definitely the quintessential English band. No other combine quite sums up the rampant sense of doomed mediocrity inherent in this country's current outlook right now. 'Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.' Just delete 'quiet desperation' (Thoreau, for one, will be pleased) and choose your own depreciative little phrase as an amendment and we've got it all pigeonholed very nicely, thank you, squire. And there's absolutely nothing 'cosmic' about any of it, really, now is there?

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Dirty Hair Denied
(January 1975)
By P. Erskine

Interviewed:
David Gilmour - DG

"Hi Dave, have you washed your hair?"

"No." Gilmour flashes a thin-lipped grin as he takes his seat.

And if *he* can find any split ends in here (lifting clump of hair) then..."The what, DAVE?"

But he's already scanning the menu and doesn't hear. His free hand, however, is worrying over a plastic teaspoon. Unconsciously, he gradually crushes it, letting the pieces slip through his fingers and fall onto the table top. Gilmour is nothing if not self-controlled. Placid, even. But not quite. His anger is of the sullen, smoldering variety and yet the weird thing is that even during such moments he'll often make way for a broad smile which can be utterly disarming because it might, just might, be a harbinger of doom, the herald for a personal close-up of one of the robust Gilmour flails. Although I can't imagine it ever happening. He is angry, though. He told me so on the phone a couple of minutes after he'd read the piece.

"I've just read the piece," he said, "and I'm very angry about it." The 'piece' in question - an action replay for those who missed it - appeared in the 23/11/74 NME issue, written by myself and Mr. Kent in direct response to our witnessing the Floyd on the first two nights of their four-day residency at Wembley. I'm afraid we were a little rude about them. Mr. Kent wrote an extended review-cum-critique, and I, through the back door, managed to secure an audience with Gilmour in which I confronted him with the accusations to be aired in the piece. The overall intention, see, had been, in the words of the introductory blurb, 'to get Floyd back into perspective', a sentiment which Gilmour himself says he thoroughly condones. It was the approach that riled him.

Ultimately the phone call resulted in myself inviting Gilmour for lunch - partly as a placatory gesture, partly to prove that Kent and myself could, and would, stand by what'd been written and mainly because a re-match might prove to be interesting. The axis of the criticism in the piece lay upon the fact (self-confessed by Gilmour) that on two consecutive nights the Pink Floyd made music of such low quality that it cast rather anvil-like aspersions on (a) their motivations (b) their overall musicianship (c) the feeling engendered by them in their audiences (both short and long term) and admirers - one of whom, Sunday Times critic Derek Jewell, pulled out some florid prose in an appraisal of the debut Thursday night gig (described subsequently by Gilmour as "probably the worst we've done on the whole tour").

Jewell wrote: "Richly they merit their place among the symphonic overlords of today's popular hierarchy...they reeled off, apparently effortlessly, a performance with musical textures so ravishing and visual accompaniment so surprising that, for once, the thunderous standing ovation was completely justified." Such bland acceptance irritates the band, says Gilmour, equally, if not more so than its denigrators. "I don't think anyone on our level feels deserving of that kind of superhuman adulation number,' he claims, hacking at a piece of steak."

"But then a lot of them probably dig it. Sure, I'm cynical of our position. I don't think we deserve it. But I'm no more cynical of our position than I am of anyone else's on our level. I mean...to try and maintain your perspective on what you are is totally different."

The lyrics of "Gotta Be Crazy" - as Nick Kent pointed out - reveal a very great deal of cynicism, particularly the line 'Gotta keep people buying this shit', which is tantamount to a sneer at the audience.

" Mmm. Yeah. It is possibly a sneer...but not at the audience as a whole, but at the type of adulation bands like us get. I mean I think there is something wrong with that...people needing hero figures like that, thinking that rock musicians have all the answers." [DG]

But don't you think that while not really being responsible for that element, the fact that it hasn't been challenged means that bands like the Floyd, through neglect, are helping compound it?

"Yes. Probably. But I think we're less guilty than most. I mean, we've made conscious attempts at fighting it." [DG] Such as?

"In things we've said in interviews and things like that. We've always said that we don't believe in that whole number, but it's very hard to get away from the image people put on you." [DG]

How large a proportion of record buyers and concert goers buy music papers though? A question in fact neglect to add. Still seems a bit lame, though, eh? One would've thought that a couple of really fined honed satires would at least help... but then, really, how concerned are bands about these kinds of things? Motives-schmotives. It helps sell records. And you don't gnaw the digits that feed you.

Anyway, we're messing around here. To the specifics. Gilmour is raking through the apposite issue as he eats. He's inclined towards the John Peel reaction (thinly disguised in his mildly self-congratulatory 'Diary of the Domestic' unfolded each week in Sounds) that the piece was 'hysterical', overly personal and laced with supposed inaccuracies. The first eleven of Kent's opening paragraphs make Gilmour particularly mad. He claims that description of his personal appearance and that of a member of the audience (and his attitudes) is totally superfluous...

"I don't see any of it being in any way relevant," says Gilmour in that sullen/placid tone of voice that could be either. Or both. "So there's a guy like that in the audience. So what? There were probably others like him, but you find people like that at any concert - but then Kent probably set out to find one and he did."

I assure him that our approach was in no way premeditated. There was no question of a pre-planned axe-job on anyone's part.

'Well, I just don't believe it of Nick Kent. I really don't. He's still involved with Syd Barrett and the whole 1967 thing. I don't even know if he ever saw the Floyd with Syd.'

"He goes on about Syd too much and yet, as far as I can see, there's no relevance in talking about Syd in reviewing one of our concerts."

'But one of the new songs is about him.'

"Yes, but that's all. In the beginning the songs were all his and they were brilliant. No one disputes that. But I don't think the actual sound of the whole band stems from Syd. I think it stems just as much from Rick. I mean, Syd's thing was short songs."

As for hair-washing. Well, the subject got short shrift. I think, though, that dressing especially for a gig is something that Gilmour subconsciously associates with 'showbusiness' - about which more later. Meanwhile subsequent conversation with Carlena Williams, one of the Blackberries, the two black back-up chicks they hired for the tour, Carlena expressed delight at the opening paras. 'Sheeut!' she observed daintily. 'When Ah saw that bit about Dave's hair, Ah jus' cracked up. Ah had t'read it y'know?' Back to Syd.

"The band just before Syd departed had got into a totally impossible situation. No one wanted to book them. After the success of the summer of '67 the band sank like a stone; the gigs they were doing at the time were all empty because they were so bad. The only way out was to get rid of Syd, so they asked me to join and got rid of Syd..." This, by the way, is also Gilmour's comeback to my assertion that: 'It's almost as if the Floyd, having loafed about half-seriously as the Architectural Abdabs [sic], garnered their personae from Barrett and, when he dropped out, for want of anything better to do, clung on to the momentum he provided.'

Says Gilmour: "By the time Syd left the ball had definitely stopped rolling. We had to start it all over again. Saucerful of Secrets, the first album without him, was the start back on the road to some kind of return. It was the album we began building from. The whole conception of Saucerful of Secrets has nothing to do with what Syd believed in or liked. We continued playing some of his songs because none of us was getting good enough material fast enough to be able to do without them --which also, therefore, meant that I had to fit in with his style to an extent because his songs were so rigidly structured around it." "Oh, and by the way, the band, when I joined, never ever said, "Play like Syd Barrett...that was the very last thing they wanted."

This had been part of a quote I'd happened across while writing up the original interview. It came courtesy of former Floyd manager Pete Jenner. It had appeared as part of M. Kent's epic Syd Barrett piece last March and, to my knowledge, hasn't been contested then. I presumed it to be accurate. Another part of the same quote had claimed that Syd's guitar technique of using slide and echo boxes was of his own invention. My quote had been 'the familiar slide and echo boxes were purely of Syd's invention' which, in retrospect, was, perhaps, a bit strong. Gilmour, anyway, hotly denies this. "Why didn't you ask me about things like that during the interview?" he asks, righteously indignant.

"The facts of the matter are that I was using an echo box years before Syd was. I also used slide. I also taught Syd quite a lot about guitar. I mean, people saying that I pinched his style, when our backgrounds are so similar...yet we spent a lot of times as teenagers listening to the same music. Our influences are pretty much the same - and I was a couple of streets ahead of him at the time and was teaching him to play Stones riffs every lunchtime for a year at technical college. That kind of thing's bound to get my back up - especially if you don't check it."

"I don't want to go into print saying that I taught Syd Barrett everything he knows, 'cos it's patently untrue, but there are one or two things in Syd's style that I know came from me." In the original, I had prefaced these suggestions by intimating that as a guitarist Gilmour appears to lack any immediately identifiable personality. The word I used was 'malleable'. He says he actually feels that such a word applied to his style(s) is a compliment. Most guitarists, he claims, are pretty narrow -minded, restricting their possible range of operations. In that case, he could be accused of spreading himself too thinly - i.e., capable of most things, but not particularly outstanding at any one thing. Or is that the way he's intending it? "No. But I work within my limitations. But then whether I'm a good or bad guitarist isn't really relevant. I mean, I try my damnedest to do my best, although certainly for the first half of the tour I was, well - rusty. I hadn't played for a long time and my fingers were really stiff. But also I would say that I got very good by the time we were halfway through."

And the accusation that from where you all stand it's impossible for you to relate any more to the thoughts of the average punter? "If you're referring to that bit which says something about our "desperately bourgeois existence's...Well, I mean, how do you or he know how we live our lives? Apart from you - marginally - about me? Do you? Does Nick? [Kent, who wrote the original article] He hasn't been to one of our houses. He's got absolutely no idea of how I spend my life apart from what you might have told him - and you don't know how the others live. Do you think my life is so desperately bourgeois? My house is not particularly grand. Have you seen Roger's house? He lives in a five grand terraced house in Islington. So I really can't see how Kent can sit there and say things like that. He's no idea of what he's talking about." He does admit to a kind of laziness in the band, though. He's also realistic about their individual instrumental prowess.

"In terms of musical virtuosity we're really not anywhere I think; individual musicianship is well below par." And no, they're not 'bereft of ideas' - just resting. And worrying about a follow-up to Dark Side which has, he claims, 'trapped us creatively'. In passing, he says the lyrics are obvious intentionally.

"We tried to make them as simple and direct as possible and yet, as we were writing them, we knew they'd be misunderstood. We still get people coming up to us who think that "Money - it's a gas" is a direct and literal statement that "we like money"." The point - a good one I thought - about the appeal of Floyd (and similar bands) being in some way associated with the rapid sophistication in stereo equipment is tossed out entirely. "Six years ago,' says Gilmour impatiently, "we still sold albums and yet hardly anyone in this country had a stereo. It was all Dansettes then..."

And yet from casual random sampling of friends with Floyd albums, invariably the first thing said is, 'Oh, such and such track sounds great on my stereo.' Surely this is a case of packaging to some extent taking priority over contents? "No. That's ridiculous. I suppose the same criticism would then apply to Stevie Wonder records?" Well, as it happens... To Kent's rather brilliant summing-up. "Personally," Gilmour states stoically, "I don't believe any of that rubbish about Nineteen Eighty-Four." I really do.

"But I mean what difference is there between our sort of music and anyone else's, apart from the fact that maybe most of the other bands just play music for the body? And they're hardly progressive at all. Not that I think we're wildly progressive either."

But at it's worst, a stage show like the Floyd's only dulls an audience's sensibilities even to the extent of sending them to sleep. Nothing is left for them to project their imagination into - it's the difference between the holding power of a radio play and a TV play. And in any case, how does it feel to be part of a show where the audience doesn't even give you a ripple for a good solo, yet applauds a bucket of dry ice every time? "Yeah. That's all part of the dramatic effect, isn't it?" And that's a lame comeback.

"We went through a period where we blew out our entire light show for two years and there was no real difference. I personally know for a fact that it wouldn't make any difference if we did it again. We've never been hyped. There's been no great publicity campaign. It's built up purely on the strength of gigs. I don't think we're remotely close to that thing about tapes, do you?"

On the strength of the Wembley things, yes. You looked bored and dispirited.

"Not bored. Definitely dispirited. It gets very depressing when you're fighting against odds like dud equipment. Energy soon flags. We weren't pleased to do an encore because we didn't deserve it." Why didn't they say so, then? You know, don the olde showbiz Batcape? "I'm not interested in disguising my feelings on stage with showbiz devices. I've seen hundreds of bands do that. Does anybody respect them? From what he writes, Nick Kent seems to believe in it all - the old idea of The Show Must Go On, Never Let The Public See Your Feelings and things like that."

Wouldn't the discipline of forcing just a little of that attitude on yourselves help in situations like that?

"No. When I'm standing there I'm conscious of trying to give the most I can," sez Gilmour emphatically. "And I don't need to have clean hair for that."

Wah, super, j'avais jamais lu ça. Merci...

Merci mihalis pour cette interview
L'histoire du groupe n'a aucun secret sur ce forum c'est vraiment très impressionnant!!

Ce journaliste n'aimait pas le Floyd c'est une évidence.
Et cette critique sur la saleté des cheveux de Gilmour c'est vraiment débile à défaut d'être méchant!
Et j'ai du mal à comprendre comment on a pu critiquer un morceau comme SOYCD...

Ils étaient très difficiles les critiques rock à l'époque quand même.
Ils ne réalisaient pas la chance de vivre une époque extrêmement riche musicalement.

Faut quand même dire que les premières versions de SOYCD jouées en 74 étaient plutôt bancales. Le morceau n'était clairement pas abouti.

spiderpink a écrit:

Ils étaient très difficiles les critiques rock à l'époque quand même.
Ils ne réalisaient pas la chance de vivre une époque extrêmement riche musicalement.

Ils étaient surtout un métro en retard et ne comprenaient pas cette musique si en avance sur son temps!

Les 4 premiers albums de Led Zep se sont fait démonter par la critique à l'époque. Tout ça en dit donc plus sur la qualité de la critique que celle des albums et lives concernés, à mon avis

Même aujourd'hui, des sites comme Pitchfork mettent des notes très bonnes à du gros caca et descendent des albums très corrects !

Ne pas oublier que c'était l'avis d'un mec sur toute une rédaction !

Nick Kent n'a jamais caché sa préférence pour la période Syd et son dégout pour le prog' !
Son kiff c'est le Rock et le Punk

ce qui est inquiétant c'est que des mecs comme eudeline et manoeuvre en soient encore là en 2014, à opposer les deux...Alors que je me souviens d'une interview de johnny rotten il y a quelques années sur le sujet, à la question sur le prog, il répondait en substance "mais vous êtes encore là dessus les mecs ? Nan mais faut arrêter, c'était pour la posture et pour déconner, pas du sérieux"

Pour Eudeline, je suis d'accord avec toi ! Il ne voit que par le Punk et le Rock & Roll (et daté de préférence).

Par contre, pour Manoeuvre, qui n'en est pas à un paradoxe prêt, il a fait depuis longtemps son coming out sur le Prog' : avis tranché sur certains disques, mais d'autres dont il est follement "amoureux" !!

Le truc c'est comment être objectif si on aime pas un style de musique?
Pour exemple, je n'aime pas le rap, mais je n'oserai pas dire que tel groupe de rap c'est de la merde vu que j'y connais rien.
Je pense que ce genre d'attitude n'est pas professionnel.

Ensuite c'est vrai que à l'époque, ils étaient très difficile quand même.
Combien d'albums (aujourd'hui légendaires) se sont fait massacrer, et ce qui est marrant c'est qu'aujourd'hui, ces mêmes journalistes diraient que ce sont des chefs d'oeuvres!
Y en a même qui ont assassiner DSOTM lors de sa sortie c'est dire...

ah, je ne savais pas, ça fait un moment que je n'ai pas lu manoeuvre, à qui j'accorde autant de crédibilité sur le rock qu'à Mimie Mathy sur le basket ball. A peu près. Enfin, j'avais bien aimé voir Page et Plant se foutre de lui en interview.

Quant à Eudeline, chacun de ses papiers pue le regret de musicien raté à plein nez, et souvent l'ignorance, quand il entre dans des considérations techniques sur la guitare, le son, les effets...Ce besoin pathétique qu'il a de se poser en mec qui sait ce qu'est une fuzz ou un accord de septième tout en se vautrant à chaque fois qu'il entre sur ce terrain...

Bref, ça nous éloigne du sujet, ce documentaire sur Wish était sacrément chouette et je regrette de ne pas l'avoir vu plus tôt. Ca doit être génial d'être devant la table de mix avec toutes les pistes des masters originaux et de pouvoir bouger les fader pour mettre en évidence tel ou tel détail. Le rêve !

@spiderpink

Pas très logique ce que tu dis !

Pink Floyd était connu dès 1967 pour faire une musique qui sortait du cadre ! Ensuite ils ont fait parti des groupes qui ont développer un style qu'on allait appeler Prog'

Peut être Nick Kent n'était pas à la page, mais il parle d'un groupe qu'il a aimé au départ et qui ne lui correspond plus ! Après, il se "masturbe" comme tout "Rock Critic" qui se respecte (ou pas) avec son style !

Après on peut aimer sa façon d'écrire et ne surtout pas être d'accord avec ce qu'il dit

@P

C'est beau comme du Manoeuvre ou Eudeline !! (je déconne, hein !!)

Ok. J'avais compris qu'il aimait l'époque de Syd car à un moment il dit sur les paroles de SOYCD que Syd méritait mieux comme texte (si j'ai bien compris je suis pas une bête en anglais) mais le fait que la musique du groupe ne lui correspondait plus ne lui donnait pas le droit d' écrire une telle critique.

Celà dit c'est du passé, on va bien trouver un journaliste qui va assassiner TER de toute façon  

Je vous fais un extra hors-sujet mais Ehn Deïss, le fondateur du forum les Grandes Z'oreilles avait exhumé cette chronique de Manoeuvre sortie à l'époque, à propos d'un disque qui, aujourd'hui, fait partie de sa discothèque idéale, part two. Je vous laisse savourer :

Spoiler:

Ol    ymp'

Deux disques qu'il encense, désormais

olymp a écrit:

Je vous fais un extra hors-sujet mais Ehn Deïss, le fondateur du forum les Grandes Z'oreilles avait exhumé cette chronique de Manoeuvre sortie à l'époque, à propos d'un disque qui, aujourd'hui, fait partie de sa discothèque idéale, part two. Je vous laisse savourer :

Spoiler:

Ol    ymp'

Le mec doit donc avoir le même avis à 30 ans et à 60 ? Manœuvre a le droit de changer d'avis.

Un rock critic, par essence, c'est 100% subjectif, ça tranche, ça adore ou ça déteste, ça fait chier, ça énerve...
Comme Nick Kent il y a 40 ans. Mais c'est un plaisir de lire sa critique aujourd'hui.

Ces mecs font partie de notre amour de la musique.

WTFBJ ? a écrit:

olymp a écrit:

Je vous fais un extra hors-sujet mais Ehn Deïss, le fondateur du forum les Grandes Z'oreilles avait exhumé cette chronique de Manoeuvre sortie à l'époque, à propos d'un disque qui, aujourd'hui, fait partie de sa discothèque idéale, part two. Je vous laisse savourer :

Spoiler:

Ol    ymp'

Le mec doit donc avoir le même avis à 30 ans et à 60 ? Manœuvre a le droit de changer d'avis.

Un rock critic, par essence, c'est 100% subjectif, ça tranche, ça adore ou ça déteste, ça fait chier, ça énerve...
Comme Nick Kent il y a 40 ans. Mais c'est un plaisir de lire sa critique aujourd'hui.

Ces mecs font partie de notre amour de la musique.

Heureusement qu'on les a, en effet, pour pouvoir se poiler un peu...

WTFBJ ? a écrit:

olymp a écrit:

Je vous fais un extra hors-sujet mais Ehn Deïss, le fondateur du forum les Grandes Z'oreilles avait exhumé cette chronique de Manoeuvre sortie à l'époque, à propos d'un disque qui, aujourd'hui, fait partie de sa discothèque idéale, part two. Je vous laisse savourer :

Spoiler:

Ol    ymp'

Le mec doit donc avoir le même avis à 30 ans et à 60 ? Manœuvre a le droit de changer d'avis.

Un rock critic, par essence, c'est 100% subjectif, ça tranche, ça adore ou ça déteste, ça fait chier, ça énerve...
Comme Nick Kent il y a 40 ans. Mais c'est un plaisir de lire sa critique aujourd'hui.

Ces mecs font partie de notre amour de la musique.

Ouais enfin, dans ce cas, c'est qu'il n'avait quand même pas beaucoup écouté le CD avant de pondre un tel torchon.

Ou plus probablement qu'il s'est senti obligé de changer d'avis.

c'est sur, les gouts ça évolue, ça se remet en question, ça s'adapte à l'air du temps. Mais même à 30 ans d'interval, passer de "cette voix de castrat me donne envie de gerber et mes voisins me traitent de PD" à "c'est un disque indispensable et magnifique" faut quand même pas déconner...perso, même dans 150 ans vous ne m'entendrez jamais dire du bien d'Indochine, par exemple

@ Kyuss :

Bof, regardez, moi en deux semaines, j'ai changé mon opinion sur Louder than words du tout au (presque) tout ! Alors en 40 ans...

Marsu a écrit:

WTFBJ ? a écrit:

olymp a écrit:

Je vous fais un extra hors-sujet mais Ehn Deïss, le fondateur du forum les Grandes Z'oreilles avait exhumé cette chronique de Manoeuvre sortie à l'époque, à propos d'un disque qui, aujourd'hui, fait partie de sa discothèque idéale, part two. Je vous laisse savourer :

Spoiler:

Ol    ymp'

Le mec doit donc avoir le même avis à 30 ans et à 60 ? Manœuvre a le droit de changer d'avis.

Un rock critic, par essence, c'est 100% subjectif, ça tranche, ça adore ou ça déteste, ça fait chier, ça énerve...
Comme Nick Kent il y a 40 ans. Mais c'est un plaisir de lire sa critique aujourd'hui.

Ces mecs font partie de notre amour de la musique.

Ouais enfin, dans ce cas, c'est qu'il n'avait quand même pas beaucoup écouté le CD avant de pondre un tel torchon.

Ou plus probablement qu'il s'est senti obligé de changer d'avis.

Marsu, Marsu... Pas "CD", mais "LP" à l'époque... Tssss

Bah cette critique est assassine, mais au moins elle est drôle, et Nick Kent a le mérite d'avoir écouté le concert ! De plus ses critiques ne sont pas dénuées de fondement. Les Floyd ont toujours dit que cette période était naze tant au niveau moral que créativité. Ça ne semble pas être le cas de Nick Kent, barrettien sans vergogne, mais en tant que grands fans, nous sommes tous très exigeants avec eux, précisément pour l'estime qu'on leur porte !

Franchement, c'est un meilleur boulot de critique qu'un vague article "la chanson est planante, ils sont des génies, et ils sont trop profonds !" Sans compter qu'ils ont interviewé David Gilmour après ça, pour revenir dessus. C'est du vrai journalisme.


Merci beaucoup d'avoir partagé ça en tout cas, Mihalis ! C'est passionnant !