Artist: Pink Floyd
Title: Get To Know Interview
Location: Get To Know, ABC Television, Australia
Date: August 15th, 1971
Track:
01. Interview (4:06)
Running length: 4 min 06 sec
Source: LOW>FLAC
Quality: EX
Comments:
Far East Tour
August 6th-August 15th, 1971
This interview was originally screened on the GTK (Get To Know) program
along with the more easily attainable 'Careful With That Axe, Eugene'
and 'Set The Controls' clip(s). The interview was transcribed by Guy
Hughes for Brain Damage.
[INTERVIEWER: How did Pink Floyd set out? Were you originally a rock
band and you moved into the electronic thing? How did it all begin?]
[DAVID: Hard to remember.]
[ROGER: Yes, gosh, it was a long time ago. We just played for fun when
we were at college.]
[RICK: We played for fun...and we played R&B, The Rolling Stones
numbers.]
[ROGER] Bo Diddley.]
[RICK: Like all groups used to in those days. It developed from there
but again it wasn't a conscious development.]
[INTERVIEWER: How tightly written are your compositions? Do you do a lot
of improvisation when you go into the studio? When you're recording?]
[RICK: We do a lot of improvisation in rehearsals, and generally from
the rehearsals we then go into the studios knowing something, sometimes,
I mean "A Saucerful Of Secrets" was comple...started completely in the
studio from scratch.]
[INTERVIEWER: It must be a really tedious, not tedious, but a really
slow way to create because you all work together don't you.]
[RICK: Yep. A very long process.]
[INTERVIEWER: Is there some tremendous musical rapport between the four
of you? David?]
[DAVID: Um, I think on stage there is, yes. It often doesn't really work
quite that way in the studio. It's not down to a musical rapport between
us, it's individual people working.]
[Voice in the background: "It's a scuffle, it's quite a battle really".]
[ROGER: It's a matter of finding common ground and everybody...everybody
in the band has the power of veto almost. I mean if somebody is
enthusiastic about something, if somebody else is...arggh...then the
person you know, you know the veto tends to be the stronger force in
fact; so it gets elbowed.]
[INTERVIEWER: Do you draw any of your musical influence at all from
someone like Stockhausen?]
[RICK: For me, all influences are totally subconscious. I think. I'm not
really aware of where they're coming from, but I know that it's
happening. It's got to happen.]
[DAVID: But we are very into sort of timeless, ageless, spacious sorts
of moods in our music. Very often atmospheric, not really occult, I
wouldn't say.]
[INTERVIEWER: Do you use a lot of tapes during performances playing over
your performances? You must have sound engineers working with you during
performances.]
[DAVID: We don't actually have sound engineers
[RICK: We don't use a lot of tapes in fact.]
[DAVID: We have a couple of Robos. We don't use a lot of tapes. ]
[RICK: We use tapes for dramatic effect.]
[DAVID: There's no music.]
[RICK: At certain pointsin the concert a tape will be played.]
[NICK: Nearly everything we use on stage is very unsophisticated. I mean
we don't have a...]
[RICK: There are certain myths about Pink Floyd, one of which is that we
have loads of electronic equipment.]
[ROGER: Which is how we get the sound which is nothing to do with it.]
[RICK: Which isn't true. We have one guitar, one bass, one set of drums
and one organ, plus some echo units, which is basically all we have.]
[ROGER: There's only one thing that you couldn't go into any
record...any music shop and buy that we use and that's our quadrophonic
pan pot system. But everything else...practically every group that's
working uses.]
[INTERVIEWER: Do you want to move into any sort of theatrical field at
all, you know where you may have more singers and dancers and a whole
theatrical thing?]
[RICK: Yes.]
[NICK: Yes, but we don't really know what we want to do. There's a very
vague concept of what we'd like to do in terms of theatre that's known
amongst ourselves as "the theatre project". ]
[RICK: Yes, but there's a very strong feeling that we should do it.]
[ROGER: Yes, but we don't quite know how we are going to get about doing
it.]
[INTERVIEWER: Are you working on an album at present?]
[RICK: Yeah, we've practically finished it except for four days of
production when we get back.]
[INTERVIEWER: And what's this called?]
[ROGER: Ahhh...]
[DAVID: That's a matter of some dispute!]
[RICK: We don't know.]
[INTERVIEWER: How different is it going to be to "Atom Heart Mother"?]
[DAVID: It's going to be very, very different. But quite how is
impossible to say.]
[NICK: It won't have a choir and orchestra on it. I can tell you that at
this point.]
[DAVID: It will sound a bit as if it has got a choir on it.
[NICK: But it won't have.]
[DAVID: It won't have a real choir, it will have our multi-tracked
choir.]