Once Upon a Time in the Top Spot: Pink Floyd, Atom Heart Mother

44 years ago today, Pink Floyd’s first album to be specially mixed for four-channel quadraphonic sound also became their first album to hit #1 in the UK.

Released in the UK on October 2, 1970 and in the US eight days later), the rehearsals for Atom Heart Mother originated in the wake of the band’s work on the Zabriskie Point soundtrack. The title track featured contributions from Ron Geesin, likely best known to Floyd fans for his collaboration with Roger Waters on the Music from The Body album; by most reports, Geesin had a great deal to do with whipping the track into shape, putting together an orchestral arrangement which added a much-needed structure to the existing recording.

Given that “Atom Heart Mother” is made up of six sections and lasts for almost 24 minutes, you will not be surprised to learn that it took up the entire first side of the album, but Side Two features four tracks: one each by Waters (“If”), Richard Wright (“Summer ’68”), and Gilmour (“Fat Old Sun”), and one group composition (“Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast”). While “Summer ‘68” proved to be the last Pink Floyd song featuring lyrics written solely by Wright, it’s a lovely piece of pop that features harmonies which owe no small debt to the Beach Boys.

While Atom Heart Mother was obviously well-received at the time of its initial release, the band has offered some less-than-pleasant comments about it since then, but it’s Waters who delivered the most hysterical of the bunch: during a 1984 BBC Radio 1 interview, he declared, “If somebody said to me now, ‘Right, here’s a million pounds: go out and play Atom Heart Mother,’ I’d say, ‘You must be fucking joking!’” One can only presume, however, that Gilmour has backed off a bit from his quote in Guitar World that found him writing off the album as “a load of rubbish”: the aforementioned Mr. Geesin managed to sway him into participating in a live performance of the title track in 2008.