They performed around 100 gigs throughout the UK, Europe and the US that year, near as makes no difference: it was almost as though not seeing them required more effort than seeing them.Īnd, of course, 1970 saw them turn a significant corner when Atom Heart Mother topped the UK album chart in October, becoming their first gold record: a well-earned benefaction after their long climb back into the light. In sharp contrast to the already enigmatic, will-o’-the-wisp public profile of their former frontman, Pink Floyd were as ubiquitous as Spangles in 1970. (Many punters vaguely ascribed this to “gadgetry”.) But their burgeoning popularity was achieved in large part through hard graft – a relentless, appropriately Sisyphean touring schedule which committed them to living in a state of almost permanent flux. By the closing months of 1969, Pink Floyd were widely recognised as a great band performing stately, spacey and haunting music, wrapped in a compelling, arty, innovative skein of sonic mystery. The market for what Gilmour would wryly summarise as the band’s “weird shit” proved surprisingly buoyant. Stability was restored,īut the Floyd commendably continued down the doggedly experimental and exploratory path which had lent them such a bracing originality in the first instance. Fortunately, new guitarist David Gilmour literally possessed a safe pair of hands. To their credit, Pink Floyd had built a solid reputation for high-minded, path-forging initiatives by 1970: a skilful save considering that events could have gone either way for them following the frustrating, self-sabotaging months of cancelled engagements and wayward performances which preceded Syd Barrett’s abdication/dismissal in early 1968. To maintain the fiction that you were one of the tomorrow people, you needed the right soundtrack: one which took you out of yourself, elevating you beyond the accumulated tat, detritus and chintz of your circumstances. Decimalisation wouldn’t take effect for another year. And yet, in so many ways, the smog of times long past still clogged everyone’s pores. You could convince yourself that you were already living in the future every time you sat in a hard plastic seat, walked through a concrete underpass, spotted a Digi Grotesk typeface on a sci-fi book cover, or ran across the road in front of a Bond Bug – bright orange, wedged-shaped three-wheelers which looked like the delirious outcome of a Gerry Anderson cheese nightmare specifically gouda. At the time, saying “1970” felt excitingly unfamiliar in your mouth and sounded unthinkably modern. It always takes a couple of beats to adjust to the novelty of a new decade.
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