I wasn't planning to do this one for a long time yet, but since today is the album's 50th birthday, it seemed fitting. It's an album I've known well for most of that 50 years, seemingly forever on the turntable at teenage parties, then banished during the punk wars.
I picked up a copy (yes, a quid at a boot fair) about 20 years ago, and while I never actually owned it on vinyl, I knew the album to almost note perfection, such was its ubiquity. The strength of the album is the strength of the songs. None of the other experimentation would work, unless the songs held up. Breathe, the first song, sets us up - a simple melody, so many memorable lyrics,and as so often, the space in the music gives it the atmosphere, evident in the extended, understated intro into Time, Roger Waters' lyrics accompanied by low key guitar chops from Dave Gilmour, who also supplies a memorable guitar solo.
"shorter of breath and one day closer to death"
"hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way"
are among the memorable lines which delight the ears, before a welcome reprise of Breathe brings us into Richard Wright's gentle piano chords, introducing Clare Torry's stunning wordless vocals on The Great Gig In The Sky (somewhat tarnished by its use in a Nurofen advert some years ago).
The second half starts with Money (a song I had great fun re-mixing at the V&A Pink Floyd exhibition some years ago.), a driving bass line and reverb guitar taking us into the song about, er... money, performed by four multi-millionaires. Us and Them follows, a gentle tune, with a soft underlying saxophone
"Me and you, God only knows it's not what we would choose"
War? Relationships? Both? Any Colour You Like is an extended instrumental of synths and clipped guitars, the final song before the run out on Eclipse.
To cover Life, the Universe and Everything in 40 minutes with songs of life, death, money, war, relationships, mental health is a tall order. Do Pink Floyd achieve it?
No, of course they don't, but they make a valiant effort to scratch the surface. As a work, it's six carefully constructed songs, separated by instrumental breaks which enhance, rather that merely fill.
Fifty years on, it's still high on many people's list of greatest albums and it's there for a reason. Ambitious? Certainly. Pretentious, self-indulgent? Perhaps. But unless the songs, lyrical content and instrumentation all worked, it would be just another 1970s prog dinosaur product.
5* - a classic of the genre, a classic of English 1970s music, still sounding great at 50.
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