Pink Floyd – 1970: Devi/ation (The Early Years 1965-1972, Volume 4)

9.5 – England – 1970/2017

 -- Masterpiece --

In my last review, I posited that the two suites The Man and The Journey, as presented in their live incarnations, constituted a lost Pink Floyd album that, had it been recorded, would have surpassed the uneven Ummagumma released in its stead. On the Devi/ation set, however, we are presented with an actual lost Pink Floyd album of sorts: the soundtrack to Michelangelo Antonioni’s film flop Zabriskie Point.

Having previously done the score for Barbet Schroeder’s also forgettable More (as would be borne out by La Vallée for which they recorded Obscured By Clouds, it would seem that having Pink Floyd do your score was the kiss of death for many films!), the Floyd were no strangers to film work (though they, possibly apocryphally, turned down a chance to work on 2001: A Space Odyssey). And so in early 1970 they decamped to Rome to work on the music for Zabriskie Point. By all reports, it wasn’t all that fun of an experience. Whereas the Floyd felt they worked best left alone (as had more or less been the case with More), Antonioni insisted on personally supervising the sessions, frustrating the band with his constant meddling criticism.

In the end, despite recording a whole album’s worth of material, only three Pink Floyd tracks made it into the film: the ropey sound collage “Heart Beat, Pig Meat”, the breezy country-rock ditty “Crumbling Land”, and the “Careful With That Axe, Eugene” remake “Come In Number 51, Your Time Is Up” (actually the raison-d’être for the Floyd’s participation in the project: Antonioni wanted the signature climax of that track to coincide with the film’s explosive finale and specifically hired the band to recreate it). The rest of the soundtrack album was filled out by an eclectic mix of contemporary American hippie folk-rock, old-timey country, and a haunting acoustic guitar instrumental by John Fahey (he was similarly flown to Rome to wastefully record stuff that wouldn’t be used). A 1997 reissue of the soundtrack album included a couple more Pink Floyd numbers and some Jerry Garcia guitar noodling.

As such, much of the material presented on the second disc of this set (which actually chronologically precedes the first disc) is now being (officially) heard for the first time, and while it’s hardly Dark Side Of The Moon or Meddle, it’s still a most welcome addition to the Pink Floyd canon (admittedly, this reviewer is biased as this transitional period is by far my favourite Floyd). Really, the best comparand for this music would the work of contemporaneous Italian soundtrack maestros such as Piero Umiliani, Stelvio Cipriani, or Piero Piccioni (hey, it is a soundtrack to a 1970s film by an Italian director!), and while it doesn’t quite reach the lush beauty of the works of those composers, it does stand well next to them (indeed, certain sequences would not be out of place in a Morricone-scored Spaghetti Western).

Very much like those Italian sountracks (and soundtracks in general, I suppose), the Zabriskie Point material revolves around recurring motifs. The jaunty theme from the “Country Song” (featured on the expanded 1997 reissue of the official soundtrack) crops up in a few pleasant iterations (I should note here that the Floyd were baffled when Antonioni insisted they do some pleasant country-rock as they felt any number of American bands could’ve done it better; I disagree: I’ve found that the Floyd excelled at pastoral psych rock such as the supremely underrated “Green Is The Colour” and “Wots… Uh, The Deal”, but I digress). Other highlights of the disc include the famous “The Riot Scene” (aka “The Violent Sequence”), an early version of “Us And Them” that Antonioni rejected for being “too sad”, as well as “Explosion”, which sounds like a cross between “Careful With That Axe, Eugene” and the funky middle-section of “Atom Heart Mother”. Aside from some unusually heavy rockers, the set is rounded out by Rick Wright’s various atmospheric “Love Scene” versions: the spacey vibes and minimalist piano are much preferable to the aimless Jerry Garcia guitar noodling that was used instead.

The main criticism for this disc is that it doesn’t include the tracks included on the either the original soundtrack or its expanded reissue. “Crumbling Land” is represented by an inferior outtake version and the expanded edition’s “Unknown Song” is represented by an indistinguishable alternate take, but it would be nice to have all the material in one place. Instead, the second disc of this set is filled out by a band-only version of “Atom Heart Mother” that is of obvious great historic interest, but, given the inclusion of a couple of band-only live versions, it’s a bit redundant to hear the album version without the brass, choir, strings, and tape effects.

Moving on to the first disc, then. An early live version  of “Atom Heart Mother” begins the proceedings with Roger Waters informing the audience, somewhat apologetically. that while the studio version will feature a full orchestra and choir, here the band will attempt to do it by themselves. While the group would subsequently disown the track (unfairly, I think) as “a load of rubbish”, hearing it here in a somewhat stripped-down version is quite the minor revelation. I particularly like how the band themselves reproduce the choir part with Wright and Gilmour’s harmonized falsetto.

Most of the first disc consists of a radio session recorded for the BBC on July 16, 1970, arguably the best BBC session the band recorded. “Embryo” appears in its full-on psychedelic version: whereas the studio version (included on Dramatis/ation) was a short, pastoral acoustic number, here it is lengthy guitar freakout. “Green Is The Colour” makes another welcome appearance, this time slightly more electrified (with another nice solo by Gilmour in which he accompanies himself with some scat singing) that leads into a rather truncated rendition of “Careful With That Axe, Eugene”. A pleasant “If” and a full rendition of “Atom Heart Mother” (this time with a full choir, cello, and brass ensemble in tow) are decent versions even if they don’t substantially differ or improve upon their studio counterparts.

The real value of this set, however, lies in the visual component on the accompanying Blu-Ray and DVDs. The crown jewel is “An Hour With Pink Floyd”: a full concert set recorded for KQED, the PBS’s San Francisco affiliate. The band-only version of “Atom Heart Mother” is wonderful (again, the falsetto chorale harmonies are a highlight), as is the extended electric version of “Cymbaline” (it might go on for one guitar solo too many, but I don’t care). Both the sound and video quality of the set are top notch (really, it blows my mind that this wasn’t released sooner). Anticipating the “director’s cut” of the Live At Pompeii film, portions of the broadcast consist of pseudo-psychedelic stock footage. Indeed, the performance begins with a long tracking shot of a desert plain before revealing the band (watching this, I was initially concerned that it was an audio-only concert).

The rest of the video material does not quite stand up to the very high bar set by the KQED set. A live performance at a festival in St. Tropez repeats much of the same setlist but with poorer audio. The low-end is particularly absent, but it really only suffers in contrast to the television studio recording, which is a bit of an unfair comparison really. This concert footage is then followed by some brief – and slightly pointless – “in studio” improvisations (along with a fleeting excerpt of “Embryo”) recorded for a show by the French ballet choreographer Roland Petit.

Finally, things are rounded by a live performance of “Atom Heart Mother” recorded at a free concert in London’s Hyde Park. As noted by the set itself, the audio and sound quality are quite poor, but it is “included for its historical nature”, and it is indeed fascinating to see the Floyd jamming along with a clearly befuddled choir and orchestra. One wonders what some of the very stuffy looking older members of the orchestra were thinking as they accompanied these long-haired hippies with all sorts of funny smells presumably drifting in from the audience. Of extra hilarity are some of the lady choir members, who look like the staid mid-century English housewives lampooned by Monty Python as being “pepperpots”.

The set also includes a full 1970 quadrophonic mix of the entire Atom Heart Mother album. It's exactly as awesome as one would expect. Interestingly, the quad mix reveals a few distinctions from the standard stereo mix -- there are a couple of guitar parts in the middle section of "Atom Heart Mother Suite" that I'd never heard before, and the beginning of "Fat Old Sun" sounds quite different. In a somewhat heavy-handed, though still effective, use of the four-way space, "Summer 68" begins completely centred, but when the brass comes in, the whole song explodes to surround the listener. The mix is a little brash, but it still works.

In all, even accounting for my bias towards Atom Heart Mother-period Pink Floyd, I would still say this is the high point of this most welcome series, largely on account of the fantastic KQED performance. Moreover, the BBC session is uniformly excellent and the Zabriskie Point material fills in a hitherto unheralded gap in the Floyd’s discography. Top shelf.