There was a time when John listened to little else and regarded Pink Floyd as so superior to the rest of the human race that they must be from another dimension. He grew out of this eventually, helped enormously by 1987’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
We saw them live twice, once at Manchester’s now-defunct Maine Road Stadium in 1987 (well, we missed the first half when the car broke down on the M62, but caught the best bits), and then later at Knebworth in 1990. Since then John has seen Roger Waters twice, on The Wall tour in 2011 and more recently on the Us + Them tour in 2018, both times in Madrid’s vast Wizink Centre (update: three times now, he also saw RW on the This Is Not a Drill tour in the same venue, despite the controversy that now surrounds him), and he has tickets to see Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets, (also in Madrid) on the Echoes tour, and hence is beside himself with excitement (update: this has since happened and was excellent).
In each podcast episode we talk through the artist’s history chronologically, picking our favourite tracks and ranking the albums as we go, so check that out if you want to know how we came to our decisions and why we picked the playlist tracks we did.
Our ranking and track picks are a compromise of our two different personal opinions, and of course we have to consider the Jeffrey Rulebook, it is also only a snapshot in time, so don’t take them too seriously! But do please comment below with your picks.
The Pink Floyd Jeffrey Podcast Playlist is also available here on Deezer.
Origins:
The first proper line-up of Pink Floyd came together in 1965 when the remnants of the band The Tea Set (who had had various line-ups and name changes) coalesced around fellow architecture students Roger Waters (bass), Nick Mason (drums) and Richard Wright (keyboards) with Roger “Syd” Barrett (vocals, guitar), Waters’s friend from Cambridge who had recently relocated to London to study at art college.
This four-piece – renamed Pink Floyd after blues musicians Pink Anderson and Floyd Council – began performing rhythm and blues music, slowly moving to avant-garde instrumental jams and eventually a more psychedelic sound as they became darlings of the underground music scene in London in the late 1960s. After signing with EMI in 1967, they recorded and released their first singles and album, famously attracting the attention of The Beatles who were recording in the neighbouring studio in EMI’s Abbey Road studios.
The first proper line-up was:
- Roger Waters – bass, vocals
- Nick Mason – drums
- Richard Wright – keyboards, vocals
- Syd Barrett – vocals, guitar
There are countless interviews, documentaries and other content about Pink Floyd that fed into this podcast (including the Rockonteurs podcast interview with Nick Mason), we also read Nick Mason’s Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd and Pigs Might Fly: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd by Mark Blake.
1967: A Piper at the Gates of Dawn
Our ranking: 12th
Their debut, largely written by the charismatic Syd Barrett, was regarded as an instant classic and positioned the band as leaders of the psychedelia movement – to today’s ears it sounds dated, sometimes incoherent, and often whimsical rather than substantial.
We found it overrated and fairly difficult to listen to as a whole piece, but enjoyed certain tracks, especially Astonomy Domine, one that has stood the test of time and is brilliant on the Ummagumma live disk.
Our picks: Astonomy Domine and Bike
Line-up change
As Syd Barrett’s bright childlike charisma faded and his drug use increased, he became more and more erratic and unreliable, so another old friend from Cambridge was drafted in to provide cover – enter David Gilmour – and so briefly the line-up was:
- Roger Waters – bass, vocals
- Nick Mason – drums
- Richard Wright – keyboards, vocals
- Syd Barrett – vocals, guitar
- David Gilmour – vocals, guitar
Then one day they didn’t pick Syd up, and he was out the band. They regret this harsh treatment, especially as Barrett was later diagnosed with schizophrenia, but they (especially Gilmour) helped with the two solo albums he would go on to make.
The line-up was therefore:
- Roger Waters – bass, vocals
- Nick Mason – drums
- Richard Wright – keyboards, vocals
- David Gilmour – vocals, guitar
1968: A Saucerful of Secrets
Our ranking: 8th
As Syd Barrett, the main songwriter and frontman had left, Roger Waters stepped up in the songwriting department. Their first attempt to define themselves in the post-Barrett era was to produce a charming album that sounds a lot like Syd Barrett never left.
Reportedly Nick Mason’s favourite album, which may explain why his own band is called Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets.
Our picks: Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun and Let There Be More Light
1969: More
Our ranking: 14th
1969 wasn’t exactly a golden year for the band with this soundtrack followed by the dreadful Ummagumma – this is clearly a band in search of a sound, and using a movie soundtrack as a means to give them some structure and meaning.
That said, this is a movie soundtrack more than it is an album, and at least has a couple of enjoyable tracks on it. If you judged it purely on the two tracks we picked for our playlist, you’d think we were crackers placing the album this low – Cymbaline is a particular lovely number, and gives us an early inkling of just how good David Gilmour was going to get.
The rest of the album is – as we said – a movie soundtrack, and so doesn’t work as a satisfying album.
Our picks: Main Theme and Cymbaline
1969: Ummagumma
Our ranking: 15th
If any album can best teach us to not judge a record by its cover it is 1969’s Ummagumma, a wonderful cover encasing a dreadful album.
This isn’t really a proper Pink Floyd album. One disk is a live album which is very good indeed, but because The Jeffrey Podcast doesn’t include live albums, we’re ignoring this and concentrating on the studio disk in the double-album pack.
This disk has one half of each side given over to each of the four musicians, giving them space to experiment with their own ideas. This is probably a response to them feeling unsure how to proceed without Syd Barrett, or without the structure of a movie soundtrack, but it also teaches us that Pink Floyd are, like so many great bands, best as a whole rather than as individual parts (something they would go on to prove time and again with their solo projects). It also shows that experimentation is all very well, but by definition it is not all going to work, and no one is so brilliant that we need to hear them aimlessly mucking around in search of new ideas.
There isn’t a single enjoyable piece on it, but we picked the two sections that seem least bad, by David Gilmour and Richard Wright respectively.
Our picks: The Narrow Way (Part 3) and Sysyphus (Part 2)
Here is that rather fabulous cover, although didn’t quite make it as our favourite:
1970: Atom Heart Mother
Our ranking: 6th
Arguably the first proper post-Syd Barrett album, and a real hidden gem in the Floyd canon. Side One is a single suite that doesn’t sound much like Pink Floyd, or indeed anything else (maybe Tubular Bells might be closest?), but is an incredibly enjoyable album, definitely worth getting to grips with (and this version by students of the Conservatório in Paris is wonderful, the vocal at 7’24” is stunning, and gives me goose-pimples).
Side Two has three strong songs, one each by Waters, Gilmour and Wright, and then one weak mess: Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast, a mix of whimsy, psychedelia and someone making their breakfast.
Our picks: Summer ’68 and If
1971: Meddle
Our ranking: 4th
If Pink Floyd took a step forward with the unwieldy but eccentrically brilliant Atom Heart Mother, they consolidated that and took another giant leap with this magnificent album.
It starts imperiously with the galloping bass instrumental(ish) One of These Days, has a few weaker tracks (Fearless is good, the others are only okay – why the blazes didn’t they put Biding My Time on it!?), then dedicates Side Two to their greatest achievement by far up to this point: the wonder that is Echoes – a piece so good that it makes anything before it seem less significant. That said, it could very much do without the four-minute intermission during which we are treated to the drone of whale sound. It may have been fashionable at the time, but has always sounded clumsy to us (and needn’t be repeated when the song is played live nowadays!)
Our picks: One of These Days and Echoes
1972: Obscured by Clouds
Our ranking: 10th
Another movie soundtrack, knocked out over a few weeks while they were preparing to record The Dark Side of the Moon, and so suffers like most soundtrack albums in not being structured like a normal album and having many bit and bobs that don’t work outside the context of the film. It is nowhere near as good as the albums either side of it, but it has quite a few decent tracks on it, and you can hear David Gilmour leaping forward as he further develops his own unique style and sound.
Our picks: Free Four and Childhood’s End
1973: The Dark Side of the Moon
Our ranking: 2nd
This is possibly the most complete and perfectly crafted concept album ever created – to say the whole is greater than the the sum of the parts is an understatement, and even more so when you consider the parts themselves are (mostly) magnificent on their own.
The production values are many times better than anything they recorded previously, and the use of shorter songs, saxophones and female vocals, make for a more accessible mainstream sound – hence the extraordinary success (depending on which list you decide to believe, it is seventh in the all-time list, staying in the US Billboard top 200 albums from release date until 1988, although it reappeared in 1991, and still does from time to time).
It is a work of genius, that still sounds wonderful today – although through over-exposure it’s not something we listen to very often these days.
Our picks: Brain Damage and Eclipse
1975: Wish You Were Here
Our ranking: 3rd
After the global success of The Dark Side of the Moon, they continued with the same kind of polished accessible sound with this gorgeous tribute to Syd Barrett and reflection on alienation and loneliness. The opening few minutes of Shine on You Crazy Diamond are an extraordinary exercise in holding an audience’s attention with minimal activity as the piece slowly unfolds – the second part of this number on Side Two is inexplicably overlooked and we absolutely love it, with part 8 especially being a great example of how funky the Floyd could get when they wanted.
The Shine On suite bookends the album, with less good songs between: the electronic buzzy Welcome to the Machine which we don’t much enjoy on the record (but it is good live), the funky Have a Cigar (with vocals by Roy Harper) – John loves this, Gordon’s not so keen – and the perfectly pleasant and melodic title track which we’re a bit bored of having heard it so many times.
Our picks: Shine on You Crazy Diamond (Parts 1 to 5) and Shine on You Crazy Diamond (Parts 6 to 9)
Winner of our favourite album cover:
1977: Animals
Our ranking: Top!
Darker and more inaccessible, the growling Animals album is the real start of Roger Waters’s dominance of the band. He writes four of the five songs, sharing the writing credits on the other (Dogs) with David Gilmour, and does most of the singing.
The sound is quite different from its more commercial predecessors, perhaps partly because it was recorded at their own Britannia Row Studios, but maybe it’s just a reflection of the balance getting out of whack as it edged toward becoming a more Roger Waters vehicle and less a whole band thing. There is no Rick Wright writing credit on here, for example, and his atmospheric keyboards are much less obvious; more than any other member, he felt edged out. Nick Mason describes this period as quite an unhappy time as the band bickered and struggled to find the sound they wanted … and yet, despite all this, they birth this wonderful piece of gorgeous magnificence.
It is deep and dark and brooding, but enormously musical and enjoyable. The guitar on Dogs is especially spectacular, and the bass is funky and bulky in that straightforward way that Roger Waters so cleverly pulls off. The lyrics and themes are memorable too, and meaningful without being preachy or didactic.
It took us a bit longer to love this, but by crikey, it was worth the effort.
Our picks: Dogs and Pigs (Three Different Ones)
1979: The Wall
Our ranking: 5th
The Wall was absolutely massive when it came out, led by the hit single Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2), it seemed to be everywhere for years – to the point of being played in Berlin soon after the Berlin Wall came down, the final refrain of “tear down the wall” chanted by hundreds of thousands of Berliners was extraordinarily emotional.
The album is bloated and preposterous, but also compelling and wonderful. It is peak Roger Waters in being heavily lyrical and autobiographical, but also incredibly ambitious and enormous. The story is mixed up, being about two things at the same time, and would have been better for being shorter and more focused on either one thing or the other, but for all that, it contains loads of classic Floyd bangers, not just the Another Brick suite, but Hey You, Comfortably Numb, Run Like Hell, Young Lust and Mother, and the whole album (except maybe the ridiculous The Trial) buzzes with atmosphere.
The process of making it was painful, and it might have been better as a single album, but it is still a wonderful beast that you need to own (but forget the film, it’s incoherent nonsense).
Our picks: the Another Brick in the Wall suite (Another Brick in the Wall (Part 1), The Happiest Days of our Lives, Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2), Another Brick in the Wall (Part 3)) and Hey You.
Line-up change
The Wall was really a Roger Waters solo project. He was the dominant composer, lyricist, singer and the sole driving force behind the band. Gilmour was disengaged, having started a family and released his debut solo album, Rick Wright was increasingly difficult to work with, demanding producer credit but not doing any producing, and with the power dynamics now so clearly leaning toward Rog, it was inevitable it would cause issues. In the end something had to give and Rick Wright was fired (though brought back for the live shows as a session musician, meaning he was only member who actually made any money out of the expensive The Wall shows).
Gilmour has since observed that by this time the lyrical and conceptual side of their work was too dominant, with the musical side too subdued – this reflects the different roles of Waters and Gilmour, and mirrors Waters’ dominance and Gilmour’s passivity.
- Roger Waters – vocals, bass
- Nick Mason – drums
- David Gilmour – vocals, guitar
1983: The Final Cut
Our ranking: 7th
The first (and only) Pink Floyd album not to feature keyboard-player RIchard Wright since Rog fired him during the making of the The Wall album. The Final Cut is mainly made up of repurposed “spare bricks” – i.e. leftover songs from The Wall, structured into a new narrative labelled “a requiem to the post-war dream by Roger Waters” … and it really is a Roger Waters solo album, with Gilmour offering very little to the mix other than a couple of guitar solos and the vocals to Not Now John (by his own admission, he is a lazybones, and you can understand Waters’s frustration to some extent – he recently described the process of working on this album with Gilmour as “whatshisname sitting playing Donkey Kong and telling me it was all crap”).
It is an enjoyable and coherent album if we forget it’s supposed to be a Pink Floyd album. It is mainly lyrically-driven, almost spoken-word in places, light on guitar, layered with orchestral arrangements, and backed by toned-down insipid drumming that sounds nothing like Nick Mason.
Our picks: Southampton Dock and The Final Cut
Line-up change
Roger Waters decided that Pink Floyd was over and thought he’d agreed a dissolution of the partnership. Gilmour and Mason thought he’d said he was leaving, and so decided they wanted to carry on without him.
So they did, and Waters – unhappy they were using the band name, and a lot of his ideas (e.g. the inflatable pig) – sued, and so began years of legal wrangling.
Gilmour and Mason struggled without Waters at the helm, but – with Guy Pratt on bass, although not an official member of the band – and Richard Wright invited back, although not an official member either (in his case to avoid being sued by Rog) – they eventually came up with a new album, albeit one Mason barely features on.
- Nick Mason – drums
- David Gilmour – vocals, guitar
- (Richard Wright – keyboards, vocals)
1987: A Momentary Lapse of Reason
Our ranking: 13th
Roger Waters’s argument that Pink Floyd was a spent force creatively was proven right with the release of this poor self-conscious effort.
It is really a David Gilmour and friends album, with tracks written by Gilmour and others, but not other Pink Floyd members. Rick Wright isn’t officially a member of the band (for legal reasons) but plays on it, Nick Mason is an official member of the band but barely plays on it, being both out of practice and low in confidence. It’s just a collection of mediocre songs with no overall feeling or concept, and anyway doesn’t sound much like Pink Floyd.
Roger Waters described it better than we can:
I think it’s very facile, but a quite clever forgery … The songs are poor in general; the lyrics I can’t quite believe. Gilmour’s lyrics are very third-rate
Interestingly Rick Wright described his criticisms as “fair” – and we would agree.
The recent Later Years re-release is much better, because it includes Nick Mason’s drumming and removes the horrid layers of 80s production.
Our picks: Signs of Life and One Slip (this was a mistake, Sorrow would have been a better choice).
Line-up change
With legal matters settled with Roger, Richard Wright officially rejoins:
- Nick Mason – drums
- David Gilmour – vocals, guitar
- Richard Wright – keyboards, vocals
1994: The Division Bell
Our ranking: 9th
After the success of A Momentary Lapse of Reason and the subsequent massive money-spinning tours, the band reconvened and wrote a load of material on David Gilmour’s luxury houseboat. It is great that they were writing together again and thinking more conceptually, and this really shows with a much stronger and more enjoyable album than its horrid predecessor – it is derivative of earlier Floyd in places, and still a bit too self-conscious perhaps, but it has some great songs on it that have stood the test of time … and in High Hopes they created a true Floyd classic.
Our picks: High Hopes and What Do You Want From Me?
Line-up change
The four reunited on stage in 2005 for Live 8, seeing their record sales soar as a consequence as they reminded people just how good they were (they donated the extra royalties to charity). This proved to be a one-off rather than the start of something new, and they resisted the vast amounts of money being thrown at them to do a world tour.
Roger Waters returned to his solo career, including writing and releasing an opera (Ça Ira) – interestingly the criticism (see here for Allan Kozzin’s article in the New York Times summed up here on Wikipedia for those who don’t want to pay) could be about any Waters release from The Wall onwards:
The biggest criticisms were that the opera is too narrative, which makes staging very difficult – and, as a result, disrupts the flow of the piece. Others have complained that the score is too conventional and that Waters should have taken more risks with it
David Gilmour also recorded a solo album (“On an Island”) and toured extensively with Rick Wright, Guy Pratt and others.
In 2006 Syd Barrett died, and then in 2008 Richard Wright died of lung cancer, leaving Pink Floyd as just Gilmour and Mason.
- Nick Mason – drums
- David Gilmour – vocals, guitar
2014: The Endless River
Our ranking: 11th
This largely instrumental final double-album is a tribute to the late Rick Wright and is constructed from the leftover pieces of ambient jams that didn’t make it on to The Division Bell … but given that unpromising premise, it is surprisingly decent.
That said, it is instrumental ambient bits and pieces, so although it is pleasant and has some interesting ideas (and a fair bit that is derivative of earlier Floyd stuff), it’s not great.
Our picks: It’s What We Do, and the Allons-y bits (Allons-y (1), Autumn ’68, and Allons-y (2))- we picked four tracks because they’re short, three of them fit together, and it’s a double album.
The Jeffrey Music ranking of Pink Floyd albums (2021):
- Animals (1977)
- The Dark Side of the Moon (1973)
- Wish You Were Here (1975)
- Meddle (1971)
- The Wall (1979)
- Atom Heart Mother (1970)
- The Final Cut (1983)
- A Saucerful of Secrets (1968)
- The Division Bell (1994)
- Obscured by Clouds (1972)
- The Endless River (2014)
- A Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967)
- A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987)
- More (1969)
- Ummagumma (1969)
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