Atom Heart Mother (Pink Floyd)
Pink Floyd’s fifth studio album, 1970’s Atom Heart Mother, was groundbreaking, and iconic, however you look at it (or take whichever way it was received). And to accompany the turn of the decade, it saw a turn in the band’s direction, from distinct psychedelia to prominent progressive rock.
And worth a look as the title track was co-composed by my dad, Ron Geesin.
Ron was always (and still is) on the avant-garde side of things, and by 1967 had released an EP and LP, and was asked to compose/produce the soundtrack to the film The Body, with Roger Waters. The baby heard on the opening track is me, aged 6-8 months (I’m guessing). The final track, Give Birth To A Smile, features the rest of Pink Floyd (Gilmour, Wright, Mason), uncredited. The only single taken from the album was that Give Birth To A Smile, issued only in The Philippines, on Parlophone, and has to be one of the rarest and most sought after Floyd singles known.
The track Atom Heart Mother started life as an untitled collection of ideas and a 23 minute backing track laid down by Waters and Mason (an early title of the song / suite was The Amazing Epic, some scores by Geesin list ‘Untitled Epic’).
A suitable working title could easily have been ‘Argument In E Minor For Rock Band And Orchestra’.
The basics of the track came from early January 1970 rehearsals, and a date at Hull University mid Jan the band were still knocking ideas into shape. Ron’s and Mason’s accounts do differ slightly. Ron had been introduced to the band by tour manager Sam Cutler and were apparently impressed with his home recording and tape editing techniques (Mason admitted years later that they learnt a lot about techniques and effects on the cheap from Ron).
However far the band had gotten, they were under pressure to go on tour (management and label), so left the piece(s) with Ron to orchestrate and knit together. Cue stories of Ron working at his piano, score in one hand, sat in his underpants during a heatwave, at their then place in Ladbroke Grove. I would have been in a cot in the background somewhere. Gilmour and Wright would have visited at various times to work on some of the melodies.
Recording took place at Abbey Road (Mick Underwood has confirmed he would have been in the studio next door recording with Quatermass at the time). The seasoned session brass players, more accustomed to more traditional classical work and not Ron’s more avant-garde work, weren’t happy and decided to push the admittedly green Geesin in the studio, nearly coming to blows, so John Aldiss (directing the choir) helped out.
The track was still untitled, and a name was needed for a BBC performance. Ron pointed Waters to a copy of the Evening Standard dated 16th July where Roger found a story about a lady from North London fitted with a pacemaker, with the headline “Atom Heart Mother Named”. Cue title.
Many moons ago, Ron said in an interview: “Roger and I had done the music for the film of The Body around March, or February 1970. It might have been his experience with seeing me tackle bits of a film, and writing stuff because I wrote cello things, and different, small combinations, for different bits. It might have been him seeing that, that he knew that I would be capable of doing… And in those days, you didn’t hang about for long on anything. It was just like ‘This is what’s needed to be done’. Right, I’ll get at it tomorrow morning, that kind of thing. It wasn’t like you had to wait two weeks. I might have been into another film, or doing something for the television or something. I’d have just had to get the drawing board clear and then on to it. And that was it, that was total. Mid-May to mid-June. And then after that was done, Roger and I got together and did the album and remade stuff. That’s how that happened”.
The album was visually striking, with its now famous shot of a cow, and also (in the UK at least, some countries differed) no band name or album title shown.
The album hit no.1, and did rather well given that the band were rather short of ideas, which surely renders some of the negative press (inc band comments) irrelevant.
I’ve kept details intentionally very brief; if you wish to know more, Ron has written a book on the recording of the album; “The Flaming Cow”, for which I contributed a discography. Also, I spent a full day up at the British Library’s newspaper archive in Colindale, London, to find the exact edition of the right newspaper right day, that had the headline.
In 2008, Ron Geesin and Italian tribute band Mun Floyd recreated the track, in full, at Cadogan Hall, Chelsea, London. With conductor, 10 piece brass, full choir, and cellist Caroline Dale. Two nights, and at one of those nights, David Gilmour played, and it’s the best I’ve ever seen David play.
In the original recording, there is a segment where Geesin and Mason had a disagreement over the lead beat of the orchestration, and that is how it was recorded. This performance repeated that segment, playing it both how it was recorded and how it was written, thus extending the track.
That performance has since been recreated (different bands, orchestra et al) In Italy and Paris, and has gone down an absolute storm.
Without the family connection, I’d still love this album.
Joe Geesin | Now Spinning Magazine
