{"id":777184,"date":"2026-09-20T21:48:35","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T21:48:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/777184\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T21:48:35","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T21:48:35","slug":"the-fantastically-overlooked-1970-song-that-divided-pink-floyd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/777184\/","title":{"rendered":"The “fantastically overlooked” 1970 song that divided Pink Floyd"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pink<\/p>\n

Credit: Storm Thorgerson \/ Sony Music Entertainment<\/p>\n

Sun 20 September 2026 17:34, UK <\/p>\n

When discussing the greatest rock bands of the 20th century, it is hard not to mention the British titans The Beatles, The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd<\/a>. Each of these bands meddled in psychedelia but flourished in their own niches. In Pink Floyd\u2019s case, the band migrated from its psychedelic era with Syd Barrett towards a more refined and eclectic sound. <\/p>\n

Pink Floyd struck gold in 1971 with the arrival of Meddle and its enduring epic \u2018Echoes\u2019<\/a> and built upon this success throughout the 1970s with seminal releases like The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here. However, in the late 1960s, the band navigated a transitional period of unbalanced material.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Finding a new direction was always going to take time after Barrett\u2019s departure. He had been Pink Floyd\u2019s principal songwriter and the eccentric personality at the centre of their earliest success, leaving the remaining members without an obvious creative leader. <\/p>\n

Rather than immediately discovering the spacious sound that would define their greatest records, they experimented with lengthy instrumentals, individual compositions and increasingly elaborate studio techniques. The results were rarely straightforward, but the uncertainty was part of the process. Pink Floyd had to work out what they were no longer capable of being before they could determine what the band might become.<\/p>\n

Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother still lurk profusely in record shops across the UK. They evidently sold well, but both received lukewarm reactions from fans and critics due to a lack of coherence. As a sprawling album of live and studio recordings, Ummagumma contained some truly brilliant moments but was let down by a lack of consistency.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"David<\/a>Credit: Anton Corbjin<\/p>\n

Likewise, Atom Heart Mother suffered from inconsistency, a hodgepodge of lacklustre material. Many fans, and the band members themselves, deem the album among Pink Floyd\u2019s worst, primarily due to its patience-testing Side One medley, often known as \u2018Atom Heart Mother Suite\u2019. <\/p>\n

Guitarist David Gilmour considered the meandering track \u201ca load of rubbish\u201d. In an interview with the BBC in the 1980s, he continued, \u201cWe were at a real down point. We didn\u2019t know what on earth we were doing or trying to do at that time, none of us. We were really out there. I think we were scraping the barrel a bit at that period.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortunately, Roger Waters helped to refill the barrel shortly after as the band\u2019s creative leader. He, too, looked back on Atom Heart Mother as an undiscerning stench in the Pink Floyd catalogue. Offering his thoughts on the LP as a whole, he said he would be content to see it \u201cthrown into the dustbin\u201d, never to be listened to by \u201canyone ever again\u201d.<\/p>\n

The long slog of \u2018Atom Heart Mother Suite\u2019 seems to detract from the album\u2019s second side. While Waters is happy to throw the whole lot on the bonfire, Gilmour backs some of the music on Side Two. Unfortunately, this isn\u2019t the only time these two differed in their opinions<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In a conversation with Johnnie Walker on BBC Radio 2 in 2002, Gilmour revealed his appreciation for \u2018Fat Old Sun\u2019 as a diamond in the rough. After airing the song, Walker commended Gilmour\u2019s work and noted the brilliance of the live recording from the Royal Festival Hall as particularly captivating. <\/p>\n

Quoting a concert review, Walker described it as a \u201cfantastic song, rich with melody.\u201d Gilmour concurred: \u201cUh-huh. Fantastically overlooked.\u201d The guitarist revealed that he was somewhat alone in his opinion of the track. \u201cI tried very hard to push the others in Pink Floyd into allowing it to go on our Echoes Greatest\u2026 whatever [Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd], last year, but they weren\u2019t having it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gilmour\u2019s affection for \u2018Fat Old Sun\u2019 makes sense when viewed against the music he would later bring to Pink Floyd. Its warmth and pastoral simplicity were far removed from the unwieldy ambition of the title suite, while its unhurried construction gave his guitar room to breathe. <\/p>\n

When performed live, the band could stretch the song beyond the confines of the studio recording, allowing Gilmour to turn its gentle foundations into something more expansive. In that respect, it was not merely one of the album\u2019s more approachable moments. It also pointed towards the balance of melody, atmosphere and instrumental freedom that Pink Floyd would soon handle with considerably greater confidence.<\/p>\n

It seems that Nick Mason and Richard Wright were also unenthusiastic about Atom Heart Mother. \u201cAt the time, I thought we were making the most incredible music in the world, but looking back, it wasn\u2019t so good,\u201d Wright once told Mojo. \u201cNow we have become a lot more professional, and we don\u2019t take risks like we used to.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Fat Old Sun\u2019 certainly seemed to be the best of a bad bunch. Gilmour takes lead vocals in a song from his lyrical catalogue. Over folk stylings, he sings of a romantic rural image not dissimilar to the pastoral image on the record sleeve. Listen to the song below. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Storm Thorgerson \/ Sony Music Entertainment Sun 20 September 2026 17:34, UK When discussing the greatest rock…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":777185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[186792,42201,32620,96,128,15742,34789,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-777184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-186792","tag-1970s","tag-david-gilmour","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-pink-floyd","tag-roger-waters","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=777184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/777185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}