HOLY COW

Pink Floyd and the making of Atom Heart Mother. Joe Geesin celebrates the band’s most controversial album.

Pink Floyd’s 1970 album Atom Heart Mother is one LP in the band’s illustrious discography that is often overlooked, and has met with very mixed reactions from fans and band alike. With the psychedelic Syd Barrett material a favourite with critics and Dark Side Of The Moon gracing almost every record collection in the country, the 60s and 70s Pink Floyd took the music world by storm, and 1970 was a turning point.

The aforementioned DSOTM has outsold pretty much any other album by a British artist and inspired recent themed concerts by the band’s bassist Roger Waters. And 1979’s The Wall took the band to the top of the singles’ chart.

So 38 years on, why celebrate Atom Heart Mother? Well, it was the band’s first really big seller, the first album to go gold, there’s the groundbreaking 23-minute title track, and it was the first Pink Floyd album to top the charts, something that Dark Side Of The Moon never did. And earlier this year, guitarist David Gilmour performed the title track live with co-writer and arranger Ron Geesin and top tribute band Mun Floyd to much acclaim. This was something many fans thought they’d never see, and it proved a huge success.

So what is the appeal of Atom Heart Mother? The orchestrated title track with its aggressive undertones? The quandary with their musical direction, …

by Joe Geesin
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