Podcasts about saucerful

We look at the Sophomore album from Pink Floyd, A Saucerful of Secrets. We discuss how the new edition of David Gilmour , and the departure of Syd Barrett changes the band' sound. Also we do like listener mail and stuff.

In this episode we welcome the excellent Gary Kemp to RBP's Hammersmith HQ and invite him to talk about Spandau Ballet, the New Romantics and Pink Floyd. After describing the pop baptism that was watching David Bowie sing 'Starman' on Top of the Pops, Gary recalls seeing the Sex Pistols at the Screen on the Green; the Bowie nights at Billy's; Steve Strange and the Blitz kids; and the formation of the band that became Spandau Ballet. With special reference to Betty Page's Sounds pieces on Spandau, we discuss the New Romantics and their complex relationship with the music press. From Spandau to Floyd is not a segue anyone would have made back in 1979, but Gary explains how he saw the half-century-old Dark Side of the Moon played live at Wembley's Empire Pool in 1974 and how he later joined forces with Floyd drummer Nick Mason in Saucerful of Secrets. In the course of a conversation about Dark Side, we hear clips from Jim Sullivan's 1997 phone interview with the late Rick Wright, who reflects on the state of Syd Barrett and his own (temporary) firing from Floyd. With a nod to Rockonteurs — Gary's own great podcast with Saucerful of Secrets bassist Guy Pratt — we pay tribute to the late David Crosby, who was the duo's guest in early 2020. Mark then talks us out with quotes from pieces about the Beatles (1966), the New York Dolls (1973) and Joni Mitchell at the Troubadour (1968 and 1973), after which Jasper concludes the episode with quotes from reviews of Björk's Homogenic (1997) and a Manchester "Gods of Rap" show starring Wu Tang Clan, De La Soul and Public Enemy... Many thanks to special guest Gary Kemp. Visit his website at garykemp.com and find the Rockonteurs at rockonteurs.com. Pieces discussed: A Manifesto for the Eighties, Spandau Ballet, the New Romantics, Rick Wright audio, Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon, Nick Mason, The Byrds' David Crosby, A Hippy out of Hell, A Long Strange Trip, The New York Dolls, The Beatles, Joni Mitchell at the Troubadour in 1968 and then in 1973, Björk and Gods of Rap.

The Wolf & Action Jackson took some time to reflect at the end of 2022 on all the great episodes, guests, concerts and artists we featured on the show this year.  With 29 albums reviewed, 10 podcaster/writer guests, 12 concerts reviewed and 9 artist interviews we covered a lot of ground!  On Part 1, we look back at the talented podcasters and writers who guested on our show and reminisce about all the concerts we reviewed after a COVID concert drought.We welcomed some our fellow Pantheon Podcasts hosts this year to talk about some of our favorite albums.  We look back at speaking with Tom & Zeus of Shout It Out Loudcasts, Christy Alexander Halberg of Rock Is Lit, Martin Popoff of History in 5 Songs, Paul of Vintage Rock Pod and Pantheon Founder Christian Swain of Rock n Roll Archeology.  We also welcomed some of our favorites from around the world like Neil of Def Lep Pod, Sonny "Hollywood" Pooni of Growin Up Rock, Chris of My Rock n Roll Heaven, rock journalist Anne Estella and RareVinyl.com Record Buyer Mike Wenban.Like so many of you, we were psyched to have live music back in our lives in 2022!  Some tickets we'd had for two and half years, some were bought the week of the show.  Hear The Wolf talk about seeing Simple Minds at Wembley Arena, Sting at the Palladium, Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets, Yes and Jeff Beck & Johnny Depp at Royal Albert Hall and The Rolling Stones and Duran Duran at Hyde Park.  And hear Jackson talk about finally getting to see The Cult again after lockdown, along with The Stadium Tour.  Not to mention, the first concert our hosts saw together in 28 years in Indianapolis.  Part 2 is on the artists we welcomed to the show in 2022, be sure to subscribe and download!Ugly American Werewolf in London WebsiteTwitterInstagramYouTubeLInkTreewww.pantheonpodcasts.comVisit RareVinyl.com and use the code PODCAST to save 10% off all orders!

The Wolf & Action Jackson took some time to reflect at the end of 2022 on all the great episodes, guests, concerts and artists we featured on the show this year.  With 29 albums reviewed, 10 podcaster/writer guests, 12 concerts reviewed and 9 artist interviews we covered a lot of ground!  On Part 1, we look back at the talented podcasters and writers who guested on our show and reminisce about all the concerts we reviewed after a COVID concert drought.We welcomed some our fellow Pantheon Podcasts hosts this year to talk about some of our favorite albums.  We look back at speaking with Tom & Zeus of Shout It Out Loudcasts, Christy Alexander Halberg of Rock Is Lit, Martin Popoff of History in 5 Songs, Paul of Vintage Rock Pod and Pantheon Founder Christian Swain of Rock n Roll Archeology.  We also welcomed some of our favorites from around the world like Neil of Def Lep Pod, Sonny "Hollywood" Pooni of Growin Up Rock, Chris of My Rock n Roll Heaven, rock journalist Anne Estella and RareVinyl.com Record Buyer Mike Wenban.Like so many of you, we were psyched to have live music back in our lives in 2022!  Some tickets we'd had for two and half years, some were bought the week of the show.  Hear The Wolf talk about seeing Simple Minds at Wembley Arena, Sting at the Palladium, Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets, Yes and Jeff Beck & Johnny Depp at Royal Albert Hall and The Rolling Stones and Duran Duran at Hyde Park.  And hear Jackson talk about finally getting to see The Cult again after lockdown, along with The Stadium Tour.  Not to mention, the first concert our hosts saw together in 28 years in Indianapolis.  Part 2 is on the artists we welcomed to the show in 2022, be sure to subscribe and download!Ugly American Werewolf in London WebsiteTwitterInstagramYouTubeLInkTreewww.pantheonpodcasts.comVisit RareVinyl.com and use the code PODCAST to save 10% off all orders!

Episode one hundred and fifty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “See Emily Play", the birth of the UK underground, and the career of Roger Barrett, known as Syd. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-five-minute bonus episode available, on "First Girl I Loved" by the Incredible String Band. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources No Mixcloud this time, due to the number of Pink Floyd songs. I referred to two biographies of Barrett in this episode -- A Very Irregular Head by Rob Chapman is the one I would recommend, and the one whose narrative I have largely followed. Some of the information has been superseded by newer discoveries, but Chapman is almost unique in people writing about Barrett in that he actually seems to care about the facts and try to get things right rather than make up something more interesting. Crazy Diamond by Mike Watkinson and Pete Anderson is much less reliable, but does have quite a few interview quotes that aren't duplicated by Chapman. Information about Joe Boyd comes from Boyd's book White Bicycles. In this and future episodes on Pink Floyd I'm also relying on Nick Mason's Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd and Pink Floyd: All the Songs by Jean-Michel Guesdon and Philippe Margotin. The compilation Relics contains many of the most important tracks from Barrett's time with Pink Floyd, while Piper at the Gates of Dawn is his one full album with them. Those who want a fuller history of his time with the group will want to get Piper and also the box set Cambridge St/ation 1965-1967. Barrett only released two solo albums during his career. They're available as a bundle here. Completists will also want the rarities and outtakes collection Opel.  ERRATA: I talk about “Interstellar Overdrive” as if Barrett wrote it solo. The song is credited to all four members, but it was Barrett who came up with the riff I talk about. And annoyingly, given the lengths I went to to deal correctly with Barrett's name, I repeatedly refer to "Dave" Gilmour, when Gilmour prefers David. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A note before I begin -- this episode deals with drug use and mental illness, so anyone who might be upset by those subjects might want to skip this one. But also, there's a rather unique problem in how I deal with the name of the main artist in the story today. The man everyone knows as Syd Barrett was born Roger Barrett, used that name with his family for his whole life, and in later years very strongly disliked being called "Syd", yet everyone other than his family called him that at all times until he left the music industry, and that's the name that appears on record labels, including his solo albums. I don't believe it's right to refer to people by names they choose not to go by themselves, but the name Barrett went by throughout his brief period in the public eye was different from the one he went by later, and by all accounts he was actually distressed by its use in later years. So what I'm going to do in this episode is refer to him as "Roger Barrett" when a full name is necessary for disambiguation or just "Barrett" otherwise, but I'll leave any quotes from other people referring to "Syd" as they were originally phrased. In future episodes on Pink Floyd, I'll refer to him just as Barrett, but in episodes where I discuss his influence on other artists, I will probably have to use "Syd Barrett" because otherwise people who haven't listened to this episode won't know what on Earth I'm talking about. Anyway, on with the show. “It's gone!” sighed the Rat, sinking back in his seat again. “So beautiful and strange and new. Since it was to end so soon, I almost wish I had never heard it. For it has roused a longing in me that is pain, and nothing seems worth while but just to hear that sound once more and go on listening to it for ever. No! There it is again!” he cried, alert once more. Entranced, he was silent for a long space, spellbound. “Now it passes on and I begin to lose it,” he said presently. “O Mole! the beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear, happy call of the distant piping! Such music I never dreamed of, and the call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet! Row on, Mole, row! For the music and the call must be for us.” That's a quote from a chapter titled "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" from the classic children's book The Wind in the Willows -- a book which for most of its length is a fairly straightforward story about anthropomorphic animals having jovial adventures, but which in that one chapter has Rat and Mole suddenly encounter the Great God Pan and have a hallucinatory, transcendental experience caused by his music, one so extreme it's wiped from their minds, as they simply cannot process it. The book, and the chapter, was a favourite of Roger Barrett, a young child born in Cambridge in 1946. Barrett came from an intellectual but not especially bookish family. His father, Dr. Arthur Barrett, was a pathologist -- there's a room in Addenbrooke's Hospital named after him -- but he was also an avid watercolour painter, a world-leading authority on fungi, and a member of the Cambridge Philharmonic Society who was apparently an extraordinarily good singer; while his mother Winifred was a stay-at-home mother who was nonetheless very active in the community, organising a local Girl Guide troupe. They never particularly encouraged their family to read, but young Roger did particularly enjoy the more pastoral end of the children's literature of the time. As well as the Wind in the Willows he also loved Alice in Wonderland, and the Little Grey Men books -- a series of stories about tiny gnomes and their adventures in the countryside. But his two big passions were music and painting. He got his first ukulele at age eleven, and by the time his father died, just before Roger's sixteenth birthday, he had graduated to playing a full-sized guitar. At the time his musical tastes were largely the same as those of any other British teenager -- he liked Chubby Checker, for example -- though he did have a tendency to prefer the quirkier end of things, and some of the first songs he tried to play on the guitar were those of Joe Brown: [Excerpt: Joe Brown, "I'm Henry VIII I Am"] Barrett grew up in Cambridge, and for those who don't know it, Cambridge is an incubator of a very particular kind of eccentricity. The university tends to attract rather unworldly intellectual overachievers to the city -- people who might not be able to survive in many other situations but who can thrive in that one -- and every description of Barrett's father suggests he was such a person -- Barrett's sister Rosemary has said that she believes that most of the family were autistic, though whether this is a belief based on popular media portrayals or a deeper understanding I don't know. But certainly Cambridge is full of eccentric people with remarkable achievements, and such people tend to have children with a certain type of personality, who try simultaneously to live up to and rebel against expectations of greatness that come from having parents who are regarded as great, and to do so with rather less awareness of social norms than the typical rebel has. In the case of Roger Barrett, he, like so many others of his generation, was encouraged to go into the sciences -- as indeed his father had, both in his career as a pathologist and in his avocation as a mycologist. The fifties and sixties were a time, much like today, when what we now refer to as the STEM subjects were regarded as new and exciting and modern. But rather than following in his father's professional footsteps, Roger Barrett instead followed his hobbies. Dr. Barrett was a painter and musician in his spare time, and Roger was to turn to those things to earn his living. For much of his teens, it seemed that art would be the direction he would go in. He was, everyone agrees, a hugely talented painter, and he was particularly noted for his mastery of colours. But he was also becoming more and more interested in R&B music, especially the music of Bo Diddley, who became his new biggest influence: [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, "Who Do You Love?"] He would often spend hours with his friend Dave Gilmour, a much more advanced guitarist, trying to learn blues riffs. By this point Barrett had already received the nickname "Syd". Depending on which story you believe, he either got it when he started attending a jazz club where an elderly jazzer named Sid Barrett played, and the people were amused that their youngest attendee, like one of the oldest, was called Barrett; or, more plausibly, he turned up to a Scout meeting once wearing a flat cap rather than the normal scout beret, and he got nicknamed "Sid" because it made him look working-class and "Sid" was a working-class sort of name. In 1962, by the time he was sixteen, Barrett joined a short-lived group called Geoff Mott and the Mottoes, on rhythm guitar. The group's lead singer, Geoff Mottlow, would go on to join a band called the Boston Crabs who would have a minor hit in 1965 with a version of the Coasters song "Down in Mexico": [Excerpt: The Boston Crabs, "Down in Mexico"] The bass player from the Mottoes, Tony Sainty, and the drummer Clive Welham, would go on to form another band, The Jokers Wild, with Barrett's friend Dave Gilmour. Barrett also briefly joined another band, Those Without, but his time with them was similarly brief. Some sources -- though ones I consider generally less reliable -- say that the Mottoes' bass player wasn't Tony Sainty, but was Roger Waters, the son of one of Barrett's teachers, and that one of the reasons the band split up was that Waters had moved down to London to study architecture. I don't think that's the case, but it's definitely true that Barrett knew Waters, and when he moved to London himself the next year to go to Camberwell Art College, he moved into a house where Waters was already living. Two previous tenants at the same house, Nick Mason and Richard Wright, had formed a loose band with Waters and various other amateur musicians like Keith Noble, Shelagh Noble, and Clive Metcalfe. That band was sometimes known as the Screaming Abdabs, The Megadeaths, or The Tea Set -- the latter as a sly reference to slang terms for cannabis -- but was mostly known at first as Sigma 6, named after a manifesto by the novelist Alexander Trocchi for a kind of spontaneous university. They were also sometimes known as Leonard's Lodgers, after the landlord of the home that Barrett was moving into, Mike Leonard, who would occasionally sit in on organ and would later, as the band became more of a coherent unit, act as a roadie and put on light shows behind them -- Leonard was himself very interested in avant-garde and experimental art, and it was his idea to play around with the group's lighting. By the time Barrett moved in with Waters in 1964, the group had settled on the Tea Set name, and consisted of Waters on bass, Mason on drums, Wright on keyboards, singer Chris Dennis, and guitarist Rado Klose. Of the group, Klose was the only one who was a skilled musician -- he was a very good jazz guitarist, while the other members were barely adequate. By this time Barrett's musical interests were expanding to include folk music -- his girlfriend at the time talked later about him taking her to see Bob Dylan on his first UK tour and thinking "My first reaction was seeing all these people like Syd. It was almost as if every town had sent one Syd Barrett there. It was my first time seeing people like him." But the music he was most into was the blues. And as the Tea Set were turning into a blues band, he joined them. He even had a name for the new band that would make them more bluesy. He'd read the back of a record cover which had named two extremely obscure blues musicians -- musicians he may never even have heard. Pink Anderson: [Excerpt: Pink Anderson, "Boll Weevil"] And Floyd Council: [Excerpt: Floyd Council, "Runaway Man Blues"] Barrett suggested that they put together the names of the two bluesmen, and presumably because "Anderson Council" didn't have quite the right ring, they went for The Pink Floyd -- though for a while yet they would sometimes still perform as The Tea Set, and they were sometimes also called The Pink Floyd Sound. Dennis left soon after Barrett joined, and the new five-piece Pink Floyd Sound started trying to get more gigs. They auditioned for Ready Steady Go! and were turned down, but did get some decent support slots, including for a band called the Tridents: [Excerpt: The Tridents, "Tiger in Your Tank"] The members of the group were particularly impressed by the Tridents' guitarist and the way he altered his sound using feedback -- Barrett even sent a letter to his girlfriend with a drawing of the guitarist, one Jeff Beck, raving about how good he was. At this point, the group were mostly performing cover versions, but they did have a handful of originals, and it was these they recorded in their first demo sessions in late 1964 and early 1965. They included "Walk With Me Sydney", a song written by Roger Waters as a parody of "Work With Me Annie" and "Dance With Me Henry" -- and, given the lyrics, possibly also Hank Ballard's follow-up "Henry's Got Flat Feet (Can't Dance No More) and featuring Rick Wright's then-wife Juliette Gale as Etta James to Barrett's Richard Berry: [Excerpt: The Tea Set, "Walk With Me Sydney"] And four songs by Barrett, including one called "Double-O Bo" which was a Bo Diddley rip-off, and "Butterfly", the most interesting of these early recordings: [Excerpt: The Tea Set, "Butterfly"] At this point, Barrett was very unsure of his own vocal abilities, and wrote a letter to his girlfriend saying "Emo says why don't I give up 'cos it sounds horrible, and I would but I can't get Fred to join because he's got a group (p'raps you knew!) so I still have to sing." "Fred" was a nickname for his old friend Dave Gilmour, who was playing in his own band, Joker's Wild, at this point. Summer 1965 saw two important events in the life of the group. The first was that Barrett took LSD for the first time. The rest of the group weren't interested in trying it, and would indeed generally be one of the more sober bands in the rock business, despite the reputation their music got. The other members would for the most part try acid once or twice, around late 1966, but generally steer clear of it. Barrett, by contrast, took it on a very regular basis, and it would influence all the work he did from that point on. The other event was that Rado Klose left the group. Klose was the only really proficient musician in the group, but he had very different tastes to the other members, preferring to play jazz to R&B and pop, and he was also falling behind in his university studies, and decided to put that ahead of remaining in the band. This meant that the group members had to radically rethink the way they were making music. They couldn't rely on instrumental proficiency, so they had to rely on ideas. One of the things they started to do was use echo. They got primitive echo devices and put both Barrett's guitar and Wright's keyboard through them, allowing them to create new sounds that hadn't been heard on stage before. But they were still mostly doing the same Slim Harpo and Bo Diddley numbers everyone else was doing, and weren't able to be particularly interesting while playing them. But for a while they carried on doing the normal gigs, like a birthday party they played in late 1965, where on the same bill was a young American folk singer named Paul Simon, and Joker's Wild, the band Dave Gilmour was in, who backed Simon on a version of "Johnny B. Goode". A couple of weeks after that party, Joker's Wild went into the studio to record their only privately-pressed five-song record, of them performing recent hits: [Excerpt: Joker's Wild, "Walk Like a Man"] But The Pink Floyd Sound weren't as musically tight as Joker's Wild, and they couldn't make a living as a cover band even if they wanted to. They had to do something different. Inspiration then came from a very unexpected source. I mentioned earlier that one of the names the group had been performing under had been inspired by a manifesto for a spontaneous university by the writer Alexander Trocchi. Trocchi's ideas had actually been put into practice by an organisation calling itself the London Free School, based in Notting Hill. The London Free School was an interesting mixture of people from what was then known as the New Left, but who were already rapidly aging, the people who had been the cornerstone of radical campaigning in the late fifties and early sixties, who had run the Aldermaston marches against nuclear weapons and so on, and a new breed of countercultural people who in a year or two would be defined as hippies but at the time were not so easy to pigeonhole. These people were mostly politically radical but very privileged people -- one of the founder members of the London Free School was Peter Jenner, who was the son of a vicar and the grandson of a Labour MP -- and they were trying to put their radical ideas into practice. The London Free School was meant to be a collective of people who would help each other and themselves, and who would educate each other. You'd go to the collective wanting to learn how to do something, whether that's how to improve the housing in your area or navigate some particularly difficult piece of bureaucracy, or how to play a musical instrument, and someone who had that skill would teach you how to do it, while you hopefully taught them something else of value. The London Free School, like all such utopian schemes, ended up falling apart, but it had a wider cultural impact than most such schemes. Britain's first underground newspaper, the International Times, was put together by people involved in the Free School, and the annual Notting Hill Carnival, which is now one of the biggest outdoor events in Britain every year with a million attendees, came from the merger of outdoor events organised by the Free School with older community events. A group of musicians called AMM was associated with many of the people involved in the Free School. AMM performed totally improvised music, with no structure and no normal sense of melody and harmony: [Excerpt: AMM, "What Is There In Uselesness To Cause You Distress?"] Keith Rowe, the guitarist in AMM, wanted to find his own technique uninfluenced by American jazz guitarists, and thought of that in terms that appealed very strongly to the painterly Barrett, saying "For the Americans to develop an American school of painting, they somehow had to ditch or lose European easel painting techniques. They had to make a break with the past. What did that possibly mean if you were a jazz guitar player? For me, symbolically, it was Pollock laying the canvas on the floor, which immediately abandons European easel technique. I could see that by laying the canvas down, it became inappropriate to apply easel techniques. I thought if I did that with a guitar, I would just lose all those techniques, because they would be physically impossible to do." Rowe's technique-free technique inspired Barrett to make similar noises with his guitar, and to think less in terms of melody and harmony than pure sound. AMM's first record came out in 1966. Four of the Free School people decided to put together their own record label, DNA, and they got an agreement with Elektra Records to distribute its first release -- Joe Boyd, the head of Elektra in the UK, was another London Free School member, and someone who had plenty of experience with disruptive art already, having been on the sound engineering team at the Newport Folk Festival when Dylan went electric. AMM went into the studio and recorded AMMMusic: [Excerpt: AMM, "What Is There In Uselesness To Cause You Distress?"] After that came out, though, Peter Jenner, one of the people who'd started the label, came to a realisation. He said later "We'd made this one record with AMM. Great record, very seminal, seriously avant-garde, but I'd started adding up and I'd worked out that the deal we had, we got two percent of retail, out of which we, the label, had to pay for recording costs and pay ourselves. I came to the conclusion that we were going to have to sell a hell of a lot of records just to pay the recording costs, let alone pay ourselves any money and build a label, so I realised we had to have a pop band because pop bands sold a lot of records. It was as simple as that and I was as naive as that." Jenner abandoned DNA records for the moment, and he and his friend Andrew King decided they were going to become pop managers. and they found The Pink Floyd Sound playing at an event at the Marquee, one of a series of events that were variously known as Spontaneous Underground and The Trip. Other participants in those events included Soft Machine; Mose Allison; Donovan, performing improvised songs backed by sitar players; Graham Bond; a performer who played Bach pieces while backed by African drummers; and The Poison Bellows, a poetry duo consisting of Spike Hawkins and Johnny Byrne, who may of all of these performers be the one who other than Pink Floyd themselves has had the most cultural impact in the UK -- after writing the exploitation novel Groupie and co-writing a film adaptation of Spike Milligan's war memoirs, Byrne became a TV screenwriter, writing many episodes of Space: 1999 and Doctor Who before creating the long-running TV series Heartbeat. Jenner and King decided they wanted to sign The Pink Floyd Sound and make records with them, and the group agreed -- but only after their summer holidays. They were all still students, and so they dispersed during the summer. Waters and Wright went on holiday to Greece, where they tried acid for the first of only a small number of occasions and were unimpressed, while Mason went on a trip round America by Greyhound bus. Barrett, meanwhile, stayed behind, and started writing more songs, encouraged by Jenner, who insisted that the band needed to stop relying on blues covers and come up with their own material, and who saw Barrett as the focus of the group. Jenner later described them as "Four not terribly competent musicians who managed between them to create something that was extraordinary. Syd was the main creative drive behind the band - he was the singer and lead guitarist. Roger couldn't tune his bass because he was tone deaf, it had to be tuned by Rick. Rick could write a bit of a tune and Roger could knock out a couple of words if necessary. 'Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun' was the first song Roger ever wrote, and he only did it because Syd encouraged everyone to write. Syd was very hesitant about his writing, but when he produced these great songs everyone else thought 'Well, it must be easy'" Of course, we know this isn't quite true -- Waters had written "Walk with me Sydney" -- but it is definitely the case that everyone involved thought of Barrett as the main creative force in the group, and that he was the one that Jenner was encouraging to write new material. After the summer holidays, the group reconvened, and one of their first actions was to play a benefit for the London Free School. Jenner said later "Andrew King and myself were both vicars' sons, and we knew that when you want to raise money for the parish you have to have a social. So in a very old-fashioned way we said 'let's put on a social'. Like in the Just William books, like a whist drive. We thought 'You can't have a whist drive. That's not cool. Let's have a band. That would be cool.' And the only band we knew was the band I was starting to get involved with." After a couple of these events went well, Joe Boyd suggested that they make those events a regular club night, and the UFO Club was born. Jenner and King started working on the light shows for the group, and then bringing in other people, and the light show became an integral part of the group's mystique -- rather than standing in a spotlight as other groups would, they worked in shadows, with distorted kaleidoscopic lights playing on them, distancing themselves from the audience. The highlight of their sets was a long piece called "Interstellar Overdrive", and this became one of the group's first professional recordings, when they went into the studio with Joe Boyd to record it for the soundtrack of a film titled Tonite Let's All Make Love in London. There are conflicting stories about the inspiration for the main riff for "Interstellar Overdrive". One apparent source is the riff from Love's version of the Bacharach and David song "My Little Red Book". Depending on who you ask, either Barrett was obsessed with Love's first album and copied the riff, or Peter Jenner tried to hum him the riff and Barrett copied what Jenner was humming: [Excerpt: Love, "My Little Red Book"] More prosaically, Roger Waters has always claimed that the main inspiration was from "Old Ned", Ron Grainer's theme tune for the sitcom Steptoe and Son (which for American listeners was remade over there as Sanford and Son): [Excerpt: Ron Grainer, "Old Ned"] Of course it's entirely possible, and even likely, that Barrett was inspired by both, and if so that would neatly sum up the whole range of Pink Floyd's influences at this point. "My Little Red Book" was a cover by an American garage-psych/folk-rock band of a hit by Manfred Mann, a group who were best known for pop singles but were also serious blues and jazz musicians, while Steptoe and Son was a whimsical but dark and very English sitcom about a way of life that was slowly disappearing. And you can definitely hear both influences in the main riff of the track they recorded with Boyd: [Excerpt: The Pink Floyd, "Interstellar Overdrive"] "Interstellar Overdrive" was one of two types of song that The Pink Floyd were performing at this time -- a long, extended, instrumental psychedelic excuse for freaky sounds, inspired by things like the second disc of Freak Out! by the Mothers of Invention. When they went into the studio again with Boyd later in January 1967, to record what they hoped would be their first single, they recorded two of the other kind of songs -- whimsical story songs inspired equally by the incidents of everyday life and by children's literature. What became the B-side, "Candy and a Currant Bun", was based around the riff from "Smokestack Lightnin'" by Howlin' Wolf: [Excerpt: Howlin' Wolf, "Smokestack Lightnin'"] That song had become a favourite on the British blues scene, and was thus the inspiration for many songs of the type that get called "quintessentially English". Ray Davies, who was in many ways the major songwriter at this time who was closest to Barrett stylistically, would a year later use the riff for the Kinks song "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains", but in this case Barrett had originally written a song titled "Let's Roll Another One", about sexual longing and cannabis. The lyrics were hastily rewritten in the studio to remove the controversial drug references-- and supposedly this caused some conflict between Barrett and Waters, with Waters pushing for the change, while Barrett argued against it, though like many of the stories from this period this sounds like the kind of thing that gets said by people wanting to push particular images of both men. Either way, the lyric was changed to be about sweet treats rather than drugs, though the lascivious elements remained in. And some people even argue that there was another lyric change -- where Barrett sings "walk with me", there's a slight "f" sound in his vocal. As someone who does a lot of microphone work myself, it sounds to me like just one of those things that happens while recording, but a lot of people are very insistent that Barrett is deliberately singing a different word altogether: [Excerpt: The Pink Floyd, "Candy and a Currant Bun"] The A-side, meanwhile, was inspired by real life. Both Barrett and Waters had mothers who used  to take in female lodgers, and both had regularly had their lodgers' underwear stolen from washing lines. While they didn't know anything else about the thief, he became in Barrett's imagination a man who liked to dress up in the clothing after he stole it: [Excerpt: The Pink Floyd, "Arnold Layne"] After recording the two tracks with Joe Boyd, the natural assumption was that the record would be put out on Elektra, the label which Boyd worked for in the UK, but Jac Holzman, the head of Elektra records, wasn't interested, and so a bidding war began for the single, as by this point the group were the hottest thing in London. For a while it looked like they were going to sign to Track Records, the label owned by the Who's management, but in the end EMI won out. Right as they signed, the News of the World was doing a whole series of articles about pop stars and their drug use, and the last of the articles talked about The Pink Floyd and their association with LSD, even though they hadn't released a record yet. EMI had to put out a press release saying that the group were not psychedelic, insisting"The Pink Floyd are not trying to create hallucinatory effects in their audience." It was only after getting signed that the group became full-time professionals. Waters had by this point graduated from university and was working as a trainee architect, and quit his job to become a pop star. Wright dropped out of university, but Mason and Barrett took sabbaticals. Barrett in particular seems to have seen this very much as a temporary thing, talking about how he was making so much money it would be foolish not to take the opportunity while it lasted, but how he was going to resume his studies in a year. "Arnold Layne" made the top twenty, and it would have gone higher had the pirate radio station Radio London, at the time the single most popular radio station when it came to pop music, not banned the track because of its sexual content. However, it would be the only single Joe Boyd would work on with the group. EMI insisted on only using in-house producers, and so while Joe Boyd would go on to a great career as a producer, and we'll see him again, he was replaced with Norman Smith. Smith had been the chief engineer on the Beatles records up to Rubber Soul, after which he'd been promoted to being a producer in his own right, and Geoff Emerick had taken over. He also had aspirations to pop stardom himself, and a few years later would have a transatlantic hit with "Oh Babe, What Would You Say?" under the name Hurricane Smith: [Excerpt: Hurricane Smith, "Oh Babe, What Would You Say?"] Smith's production of the group would prove controversial among some of the group's longtime fans, who thought that he did too much to curtail their more experimental side, as he would try to get the group to record songs that were more structured and more commercial, and would cut down their improvisations into a more manageable form. Others, notably Peter Jenner, thought that Smith was the perfect producer for the group. They started work on their first album, which was mostly recorded in studio three of Abbey Road, while the Beatles were just finishing off work on Sgt Pepper in studio two. The album was titled The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, after the chapter from The Wind in the Willows, and other than a few extended instrumental showcases, most of the album was made up of short, whimsical, songs by Barrett that were strongly infused with imagery from late-Victorian and Edwardian children's books. This is one of the big differences between the British and American psychedelic scenes. Both the British and American undergrounds were made up of the same type of people -- a mixture of older radical activists, often Communists, who had come up in Britain in the Ban the Bomb campaigns and in America in the Civil Rights movement; and younger people, usually middle-class students with radical politics from a privileged background, who were into experimenting with drugs and alternative lifestyles. But the  social situations were different. In America, the younger members of the underground were angry and scared, as their principal interest was in stopping the war in Vietnam in which so many of them were being killed. And the music of the older generation of the underground, the Civil Rights activists, was shot through with influence from the blues, gospel, and American folk music, with a strong Black influence. So that's what the American psychedelic groups played, for the most part, very bluesy, very angry, music, By contrast, the British younger generation of hippies were not being drafted to go to war, and mostly had little to complain about, other than a feeling of being stifled by their parents' generation's expectations. And while most of them were influenced by the blues, that wasn't the music that had been popular among the older underground people, who had either been listening to experimental European art music or had been influenced by Ewan MacColl and his associates into listening instead to traditional old English ballads, things like the story of Tam Lin or Thomas the Rhymer, where someone is spirited away to the land of the fairies: [Excerpt: Ewan MacColl, "Thomas the Rhymer"] As a result, most British musicians, when exposed to the culture of the underground over here, created music that looked back to an idealised childhood of their grandparents' generation, songs that were nostalgic for a past just before the one they could remember (as opposed to their own childhoods, which had taken place in war or the immediate aftermath of it, dominated by poverty, rationing, and bomb sites (though of course Barrett's childhood in Cambridge had been far closer to this mythic idyll than those of his contemporaries from Liverpool, Birmingham, Newcastle, or London). So almost every British musician who was making music that might be called psychedelic was writing songs that were influenced both by experimental art music and by pre-War popular song, and which conjured up images from older children's books. Most notably of course at this point the Beatles were recording songs like "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" about places from their childhood, and taking lyrical inspiration from Victorian circus posters and the works of Lewis Carroll, but Barrett was similarly inspired. One of the books he loved most as a child was "The Little Grey Men" by BB, a penname for Denys Watkins-Pitchford. The book told the story of three gnomes,  Baldmoney, Sneezewort, and Dodder, and their adventures on a boat when the fourth member of their little group, Cloudberry, who's a bit of a rebellious loner and more adventurous than the other three, goes exploring on his own and they have to go off and find him. Barrett's song "The Gnome" doesn't use any precise details from the book, but its combination of whimsy about a gnome named Grimble-gromble and a reverence for nature is very much in the mould of BB's work: [Excerpt: The Pink Floyd, "The Gnome"] Another huge influence on Barrett was Hillaire Belloc. Belloc is someone who is not read much any more, as sadly he is mostly known for the intense antisemitism in some of his writing, which stains it just as so much of early twentieth-century literature is stained, but he was one of the most influential writers of the early part of the twentieth century. Like his friend GK Chesterton he was simultaneously an author of Catholic apologia and a political campaigner -- he was a Liberal MP for a few years, and a strong advocate of an economic system known as Distributism, and had a peculiar mixture of very progressive and extremely reactionary ideas which resonated with a lot of the atmosphere in the British underground of the time, even though he would likely have profoundly disapproved of them. But Belloc wrote in a variety of styles, including poems for children, which are the works of his that have aged the best, and were a huge influence on later children's writers like Roald Dahl with their gleeful comic cruelty. Barrett's "Matilda Mother" had lyrics that were, other than the chorus where Barrett begs his mother to read him more of the story, taken verbatim from three poems from Belloc's Cautionary Tales for Children -- "Jim, Who Ran away from his Nurse, and was Eaten by a Lion", "Henry King (Who chewed bits of String, and was cut off in Dreadful Agonies)", and "Matilda (Who Told Lies and Was Burned to Death)" -- the titles of those give some idea of the kind of thing Belloc would write: [Excerpt: The Pink Floyd, "Matilda Mother (early version)"] Sadly for Barrett, Belloc's estate refused to allow permission for his poems to be used, and so he had to rework the lyrics, writing new fairy-tale lyrics for the finished version. Other sources of inspiration for lyrics came from books like the I Ching, which Barrett used for "Chapter 24", having bought a copy from the Indica Bookshop, the same place that John Lennon had bought The Psychedelic Experience, and there's been some suggestion that he was deliberately trying to copy Lennon in taking lyrical ideas from a book of ancient mystic wisdom. During the recording of Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the group continued playing live. As they'd now had a hit single, most of their performances were at Top Rank Ballrooms and other such venues around the country, on bills with other top chart groups, playing to audiences who seemed unimpressed or actively hostile. They also, though made two important appearances. The more well-known of these was at the 14-Hour Technicolor Dream, a benefit for International Times magazine with people including Yoko Ono, their future collaborator Ron Geesin, John's Children, Soft Machine, and The Move also performing. The 14-Hour Technicolor Dream is now largely regarded as *the* pivotal moment in the development of the UK counterculture, though even at the time some participants noted that there seemed to be a rift developing between the performers, who were often fairly straightforward beer-drinking ambitious young men who had latched on to kaftans and talk about enlightenment as the latest gimmick they could use to get ahead in the industry, and the audience who seemed to be true believers. Their other major performance was at an event called "Games for May -- Space Age Relaxation for the Climax of Spring", where they were able to do a full long set in a concert space with a quadrophonic sound system, rather than performing in the utterly sub-par environments most pop bands had to at this point. They came up with a new song written for the event, which became their second single, "See Emily Play". [Excerpt: The Pink Floyd, "See Emily Play"] Emily was apparently always a favourite name of Barrett's, and he even talked with one girlfriend about the possibility of naming their first child Emily, but the Emily of the song seems to have had a specific inspiration. One of the youngest attendees at the London Free School was an actual schoolgirl, Emily Young, who would go along to their events with her schoolfriend Anjelica Huston (who later became a well-known film star). Young is now a world-renowned artist, regarded as arguably Britain's greatest living stone sculptor, but at the time she was very like the other people at the London Free School -- she was from a very privileged background, her father was Wayland Young, 2nd Baron Kennet, a Labour Peer and minister who later joined the SDP. But being younger than the rest of the attendees, and still a little naive, she was still trying to find her own personality, and would take on attributes and attitudes of other people without fully understanding them,  hence the song's opening lines, "Emily tries, but misunderstands/She's often inclined to borrow somebody's dream til tomorrow". The song gets a little darker towards the end though, and the image in the last verse, where she puts on a gown and floats down a river forever *could* be a gentle, pastoral, image of someone going on a boat ride, but it also could be a reference to two rather darker sources. Barrett was known to pick up imagery both from classic literature and from Arthurian legend, and so the lines inevitably conjure up both the idea of Ophelia drowning herself and of the Lady of Shallot in Tennyson's Arthurian poem, who is trapped in a tower but finds a boat, and floats down the river to Camelot but dies before the boat reaches the castle: [Excerpt: The Pink Floyd, "See Emily Play"] The song also evokes very specific memories of Barrett's childhood -- according to Roger Waters, the woods mentioned in the lyrics are meant to be woods in which they had played as children, on the road out of Cambridge towards the Gog and Magog Hills. The song was apparently seven minutes long in its earliest versions, and required a great deal of editing to get down to single length, but it was worth it, as the track made the top ten. And that was where the problems started. There are two different stories told about what happened to Roger Barrett over the next forty years, and both stories are told by people with particular agendas, who want particular versions of him to become the accepted truth. Both stories are, in the extreme versions that have been popularised, utterly incompatible with each other, but both are fairly compatible with the scanty evidence we have. Possibly the truth lies somewhere between them. In one version of the story, around this time Barrett had a total mental breakdown, brought on or exacerbated by his overuse of LSD and Mandrax (a prescription drug consisting of a mixture of the antihistamine diphenhydramine and the sedative methaqualone, which was marketed in the US under the brand-name Quaalude), and that from late summer 1967 on he was unable to lead a normal life, and spent the rest of his life as a burned-out shell. The other version of the story is that Barrett was a little fragile, and did have periods of mental illness, but for the most part was able to function fairly well. In this version of the story, he was neurodivergent, and found celebrity distressing, but more than that he found the whole process of working within commercial restrictions upsetting -- having to appear on TV pop shows and go on package tours was just not something he found himself able to do, but he was responsible for a whole apparatus of people who relied on him and his group for their living. In this telling, he was surrounded by parasites who looked on him as their combination meal-ticket-cum-guru, and was simply not suited for the role and wanted to sabotage it so he could have a private life instead. Either way, *something* seems to have changed in Barrett in a profound way in the early summer of 1967. Joe Boyd talks about meeting him after not having seen him for a few weeks, and all the light being gone from his eyes. The group appeared on Top of the Pops, Britain's top pop TV show, three times to promote "See Emily Play", but by the third time Barrett didn't even pretend to mime along with the single. Towards the end of July, they were meant to record a session for the BBC's Saturday Club radio show, but Barrett walked out of the studio before completing the first song. It's notable that Barrett's non-cooperation or inability to function was very much dependent on circumstance. He was not able to perform for Saturday Club, a mainstream pop show aimed at a mass audience, but gave perfectly good performances on several sessions for John Peel's radio show The Perfumed Garden, a show firmly aimed at Pink Floyd's own underground niche. On the thirty-first of July, three days after the Saturday Club walkout, all the group's performances for the next month were cancelled, due to "nervous exhaustion". But on the eighth of August, they went back into the studio, to record "Scream Thy Last Scream", a song Barrett wrote and which Nick Mason sang: [Excerpt: Pink Floyd, "Scream Thy Last Scream"] That was scheduled as the group's next single, but the record company vetoed it, and it wouldn't see an official release for forty-nine years. Instead they recorded another single, "Apples and Oranges": [Excerpt: Pink Floyd, "Apples and Oranges"] That was the last thing the group released while Barrett was a member. In November 1967 they went on a tour of the US, making appearances on American Bandstand and the Pat Boone Show, as well as playing several gigs. According to legend, Barrett was almost catatonic on the Pat Boone show, though no footage of that appears to be available anywhere -- and the same things were said about their performance on Bandstand, and when that turned up, it turned out Barrett seemed no more uncomfortable miming to their new single than any of the rest of the band, and was no less polite when Dick Clark asked them questions about hamburgers. But on shows on the US tour, Barrett would do things like detune his guitar so it just made clanging sounds, or just play a single note throughout the show. These are, again, things that could be taken in two different ways, and I have no way to judge which is the more correct. On one level, they could be a sign of a chaotic, disordered, mind, someone dealing with severe mental health difficulties. On the other, they're the kind of thing that Barrett was applauded and praised for in the confines of the kind of avant-garde underground audience that would pay to hear AMM or Yoko Ono, the kind of people they'd been performing for less than a year earlier, but which were absolutely not appropriate for a pop group trying to promote their latest hit single. It could be that Barrett was severely unwell, or it could just be that he wanted to be an experimental artist and his bandmates wanted to be pop stars -- and one thing absolutely everyone agrees is that the rest of the group were more ambitious than Barrett was. Whichever was the case, though, something had to give. They cut the US tour short, but immediately started another British package tour, with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Move, Amen Corner and the Nice. After that tour they started work on their next album, A Saucerful of Secrets. Where Barrett was the lead singer and principal songwriter on Piper at the Gates of Dawn, he only sings and writes one song on A Saucerful of Secrets, which is otherwise written by Waters and Wright, and only appears at all on two more of the tracks -- by the time it was released he was out of the group. The last song he tried to get the group to record was called "Have You Got it Yet?" and it was only after spending some time rehearsing it that the rest of the band realised that the song was a practical joke on them -- every time they played it, he would change the song around so they would mess up, and pretend they just hadn't learned the song yet. They brought in Barrett's old friend Dave Gilmour, initially to be a fifth member on stage to give the band some stability in their performances, but after five shows with the five-man lineup they decided just not to bother picking Barrett up, but didn't mention he was out of the group, to avoid awkwardness. At the time, Barrett and Rick Wright were flatmates, and Wright would actually lie to Barrett and say he was just going out to buy a packet of cigarettes, and then go and play gigs without him. After a couple of months of this, it was officially announced that Barrett was leaving the group. Jenner and King went with him, convinced that he was the real talent in the group and would have a solo career, and the group carried on with new management. We'll be looking at them more in future episodes. Barrett made a start at recording a solo album in mid-1968, but didn't get very far. Jenner produced those sessions, and later said "It seemed a good idea to go into the studio because I knew he had the songs. And he would sometimes play bits and pieces and you would think 'Oh that's great.' It was a 'he's got a bit of a cold today and it might get better' approach. It wasn't a cold -- and you knew it wasn't a cold -- but I kept thinking if he did the right things he'd come back to join us. He'd gone out and maybe he'd come back. That was always the analogy in my head. I wanted to make it feel friendly for him, and that where we were was a comfortable place and that he could come back and find himself again. I obviously didn't succeed." A handful of tracks from those sessions have since been released, including a version of “Golden Hair”, a setting by Barrett of a poem by James Joyce that he would later revisit: [Excerpt: Syd Barrett, “Golden Hair (first version)”] Eleven months later, he went back into the studio again, this time with producer Malcolm Jones, to record an album that later became The Madcap Laughs, his first solo album. The recording process for the album has been the source of some controversy, as initially Jones was producing the whole album, and they were working in a way that Barrett never worked before. Where previously he had cut backing tracks first and only later overdubbed his vocals, this time he started by recording acoustic guitar and vocals, and then overdubbed on top of that. But after several sessions, Jones was pulled off the album, and Gilmour and Waters were asked to produce the rest of the sessions. This may seem a bit of a callous decision, since Gilmour was the person who had replaced Barrett in his group, but apparently the two of them had remained friends, and indeed Gilmour thought that Barrett had only got better as a songwriter since leaving the band. Where Malcolm Jones had been trying, by his account, to put out something that sounded like a serious, professional, record, Gilmour and Waters seemed to regard what they were doing more as producing a piece of audio verite documentary, including false starts and studio chatter. Jones believed that this put Barrett in a bad light, saying the outtakes "show Syd, at best as out of tune, which he rarely was, and at worst as out of control (which, again, he never was)." Gilmour and Waters, on the other hand, thought that material was necessary to provide some context for why the album wasn't as slick and professional as some might have hoped. The eventual record was a hodge-podge of different styles from different sessions, with bits from the Jenner sessions, the Jones sessions, and the Waters and Gilmour sessions all mixed together, with some tracks just Barrett badly double-tracking himself with an acoustic guitar, while other tracks feature full backing by Soft Machine. However, despite Jones' accusations that the album was more-or-less sabotaged by Gilmour and Waters, the fact remains that the best tracks on the album are the ones Barrett's former bandmates produced, and there are some magnificent moments on there. But it's a disturbing album to listen to, in the same way other albums by people with clear talent but clear mental illness are, like Skip Spence's Oar, Roky Erickson's later work, or the Beach Boys Love You. In each case, the pleasure one gets is a real pleasure from real aesthetic appreciation of the work, but entangled with an awareness that the work would not exist in that form were the creator not suffering. The pleasure doesn't come from the suffering -- these are real artists creating real art, not the kind of outsider art that is really just a modern-day freak-show -- but it's still inextricable from it: [Excerpt: Syd Barrett, "Dark Globe"] The Madcap Laughs did well enough that Barrett got to record a follow-up, titled simply Barrett. This one was recorded over a period of only a handful of months, with Gilmour and Rick Wright producing, and a band consisting of Gilmour, Wright, and drummer Jerry Shirley. The album is generally considered both more consistent and less interesting than The Madcap Laughs, with less really interesting material, though there are some enjoyable moments on it: [Excerpt: Syd Barrett, "Effervescing Elephant"] But the album is a little aimless, and people who knew him at the time seem agreed that that was a reflection of his life. He had nothing he *needed* to be doing -- no  tour dates, no deadlines, no pressure at all, and he had a bit of money from record royalties -- so he just did nothing at all. The one solo gig he ever played, with the band who backed him on Barrett, lasted four songs, and he walked off half-way through the fourth. He moved back to Cambridge for a while in the early seventies, and he tried putting together a new band with Twink, the drummer of the Pink Fairies and Pretty Things, Fred Frith, and Jack Monck, but Frith left after one gig. The other three performed a handful of shows either as "Stars" or as "Barrett, Adler, and Monck", just in the Cambridge area, but soon Barrett got bored again. He moved back to London, and in 1974 he made one final attempt to make a record, going into the studio with Peter Jenner, where he recorded a handful of tracks that were never released. But given that the titles of those tracks were things like "Boogie #1", "Boogie #2", "Slow Boogie", "Fast Boogie", "Chooka-Chooka Chug Chug" and "John Lee Hooker", I suspect we're not missing out on a lost masterpiece. Around this time there was a general resurgence in interest in Barrett, prompted by David Bowie having recorded a version of "See Emily Play" on his covers album Pin-Ups, which came out in late 1973: [Excerpt: David Bowie, "See Emily Play"] At the same time, the journalist Nick Kent wrote a long profile of Barrett, The Cracked Ballad of Syd Barrett, which like Kent's piece on Brian Wilson a year later, managed to be a remarkable piece of writing with a sense of sympathy for its subject and understanding of his music, but also a less-than-accurate piece of journalism which led to a lot of myths and disinformation being propagated. Barrett briefly visited his old bandmates in the studio in 1975 while they were recording the album Wish You Were Here -- some say even during the recording of the song "Shine On, You Crazy Diamond", which was written specifically about Barrett, though Nick Mason claims otherwise -- and they didn't recognise him at first, because by this point he had a shaved head and had put on a great deal of weight. He seemed rather sad, and that was the last time any of them saw him, apart from Roger Waters, who saw him in Harrod's a few years later. That time, as soon as Barrett recognised Waters, he dropped his bag and ran out of the shop. For the next thirty-one years, Barrett made no public appearances. The last time he ever voluntarily spoke to a journalist, other than telling them to go away, was in 1982, just after he'd moved back to Cambridge, when someone doorstopped him and he answered a few questions and posed for a photo before saying "OK! That's enough, this is distressing for me, thank you." He had the reputation for the rest of his life of being a shut-in, a recluse, an acid casualty. His family, on the other hand, have always claimed that while he was never particularly mentally or physically healthy, he wasn't a shut-in, and would go to the pub, meet up with his mother a couple of times a week to go shopping, and chat to the women behind the counter at Sainsbury's and at the pharmacy. He was also apparently very good with children who lived in the neighbourhood. Whatever the truth of his final decades, though, however mentally well or unwell he actually was, one thing is very clear, which is that he was an extremely private man, who did not want attention, and who was greatly distressed by the constant stream of people coming and looking through his letterbox, trying to take photos of him, trying to interview him, and so on. Everyone on his street knew that when people came asking which was Syd Barrett's house, they were meant to say that no-one of that name lived there -- and they were telling the truth. By the time he moved back, he had stopped answering to "Syd" altogether, and according to his sister "He came to hate the name latterly, and what it meant." He did, in 2001, go round to his sister's house to watch a documentary about himself on the TV -- he didn't own a TV himself -- but he didn't enjoy it and his only comment was that the music was too noisy. By this point he never listened to rock music, just to jazz and classical music, usually on the radio. He was financially secure -- Dave Gilmour made sure that when compilations came out they always included some music from Barrett's period in the group so he would receive royalties, even though Gilmour had no contact with him after 1975 -- and he spent most of his time painting -- he would take photos of the paintings when they were completed, and then burn the originals. There are many stories about those last few decades, but given how much he valued his privacy, it wouldn't be right to share them. This is a history of rock music, and 1975 was the last time Roger Keith Barrett ever had anything to do with rock music voluntarily. He died of cancer in 2006, and at his funeral there was a reading from The Little Grey Men, which was also quoted in the Order of Service -- "The wonder of the world, the beauty and the power, the shapes of things, their colours lights and shades; these I saw. Look ye also while life lasts.” There was no rock music played at Barrett's funeral -- instead there were a selection of pieces by Handel, Haydn, and Bach, ending with Bach's Allemande from the Partita No. IV in D major, one of his favourite pieces: [Excerpt: Glenn Gould, "Allemande from the Partita No. IV in D major"]  As they stared blankly in dumb misery deepening as they slowly realised all they had seen and all they had lost, a capricious little breeze, dancing up from the surface of the water, tossed the aspens, shook the dewy roses and blew lightly and caressingly in their faces; and with its soft touch came instant oblivion. For this is the last best gift that the kindly demi-god is careful to bestow on those to whom he has revealed himself in their helping: the gift of forgetfulness. Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the after-lives of little animals helped out of difficulties, in order that they should be happy and lighthearted as before. Mole rubbed his eyes and stared at Rat, who was looking about him in a puzzled sort of way. “I beg your pardon; what did you say, Rat?” he asked. “I think I was only remarking,” said Rat slowly, “that this was the right sort of place, and that here, if anywhere, we should find him. And look! Why, there he is, the little fellow!” And with a cry of delight he ran towards the slumbering Portly. But Mole stood still a moment, held in thought. As one wakened suddenly from a beautiful dream, who struggles to recall it, and can re-capture nothing but a dim sense of the beauty of it, the beauty! Till that, too, fades away in its turn, and the dreamer bitterly accepts the hard, cold waking and all its penalties; so Mole, after struggling with his memory for a brief space, shook his head sadly and followed the Rat.

A big feature interview with Colin Linden, whose band Blackie & The Rodeo Kings make a welcome return to Vancouver next week. Plus a trip down psychedelic memory lane with songs from the newly remastered Revolver, reflections on the recent Grateful Dead tribute, and a celebration of Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets show last week. Some songs for Remembrance Day, and new music from Africa at the beginning and Celtic and English trad towards the end of the show

Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets had to wait 2 years to tour due to COVID.  But The Wolf & Action Jackson waited 27 years to see a live show together again; however, they all converged in Indianapolis on Friday, October 14.  As proud members of Panteon Podcasts, we sponsored the The Echoes Tour and worked the show while greeting our VIP Experience winner, Heather.Listen to The Wolf's journey from Europe to Indianapolis and how dangerously close he was to missing the show.  Hear snippets of our interview with Guy Pratt & Gary Kemp of the Saucers (and the brilliant podcast The Rockonteurs) and the amazing night we had in Indy.  Starting with One Of These Days through to the epic Echoes the guys shared stories, had some fun with the crowd, displayed extraordinary musicianship and still came back for an encore.Thanks to all our listeners who've supported us through our first 100 shows!  We pay tribute to all our guests, fellow podcasters and friends who have joined us over the years with a fun mashup of their bumpers.  And don't worry, we've got hundreds more shows in us...Hear Ep96 for our full interview with Gary & Guy: https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/uawil-96-gary-kemp-guy-pratt-of-nick-masons/id1542993846?i=1000580988376&l=enHear Ep75 for my review from Royal Albert Hall in London: https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/uawil-75-nick-masons-saucerful-of-secrets-live-at/id1542993846?i=1000565385735&l=enUgly American Werewolf in London WebsiteTwitterInstagramYouTubeLInkTreewww.pantheonpodcasts.comWant to win front row seats to Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets in the US?Enter here to win tickets and a chance to be on a Pantheon Podcast: https://pantheonpodcasts.com/nickmasonGet tickets here: https://www.thesaucerfulofsecrets.com/

Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets had to wait 2 years to tour due to COVID.  But The Wolf & Action Jackson waited 27 years to see a live show together again; however, they all converged in Indianapolis on Friday, October 14.  As proud members of Panteon Podcasts, we sponsored the The Echoes Tour and worked the show while greeting our VIP Experience winner, Heather.Listen to The Wolf's journey from Europe to Indianapolis and how dangerously close he was to missing the show.  Hear snippets of our interview with Guy Pratt & Gary Kemp of the Saucers (and the brilliant podcast The Rockonteurs) and the amazing night we had in Indy.  Starting with One Of These Days through to the epic Echoes the guys shared stories, had some fun with the crowd, displayed extraordinary musicianship and still came back for an encore.Thanks to all our listeners who've supported us through our first 100 shows!  We pay tribute to all our guests, fellow podcasters and friends who have joined us over the years with a fun mashup of their bumpers.  And don't worry, we've got hundreds more shows in us...Hear Ep96 for our full interview with Gary & Guy: https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/uawil-96-gary-kemp-guy-pratt-of-nick-masons/id1542993846?i=1000580988376&l=enHear Ep75 for my review from Royal Albert Hall in London: https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/uawil-75-nick-masons-saucerful-of-secrets-live-at/id1542993846?i=1000565385735&l=enUgly American Werewolf in London WebsiteTwitterInstagramYouTubeLInkTreewww.pantheonpodcasts.comWant to win front row seats to Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets in the US?Enter here to win tickets and a chance to be on a Pantheon Podcast: https://pantheonpodcasts.com/nickmasonGet tickets here: https://www.thesaucerfulofsecrets.com/

Nicholas Berkeley Mason, CBE (born 27 January 1944) is an English drummer and founding member of the progressive rock band Pink Floyd. He is the only member to feature on every Pink Floyd album, and the only constant member since its formation in 1965. He co-wrote Pink Floyd compositions such as “Echoes”, “Time”, “Careful With That Axe, Eugene” and “One of These Days”. In 2018, he formed a new band, Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets, to perform music from Pink Floyd's early years.Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets is on tour. Go see them live. Lean more about Lyte.Find more great podcasts from Osiris Media, the leading storyteller in music. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nicholas Berkeley Mason, CBE (born 27 January 1944) is an English drummer and founding member of the progressive rock band Pink Floyd. He is the only member to feature on every Pink Floyd album, and the only constant member since its formation in 1965. He co-wrote Pink Floyd compositions such as “Echoes”, “Time”, “Careful With That Axe, Eugene” and “One of These Days”. In 2018, he formed a new band, Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets, to perform music from Pink Floyd's early years.Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets is on tour. Go see them live. Lean more about Lyte.Find more great podcasts from Osiris Media, the leading storyteller in music. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Christian Swain is the Founder & CEO of Pantheon Podcasts - a network of music podcasts preserving the legacy of rock n roll and all its many sub-genres.  We chat with Christian about being a musician in LA in the 1980s hanging out at The Roxy, The Rainbow and the Whiskey-a-go-go.  We talk why certain bands make it and other don't, the role record companies play in those successes and failures and why it's important to interview the original creators of the music we love.Ugly American Werewolf in London WebsiteTwitterInstagramYouTubeLInkTreewww.pantheonpodcasts.comWant to win front row seats to Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets in the US?Enter here to win tickets and a chance to be on a Pantheon Podcast: https://pantheonpodcasts.com/nickmasonGet tickets here: https://www.thesaucerfulofsecrets.com/

We continue our two-part look at Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets with two guys from the band. One guy is Guy Pratt. He's played with Pink Floyd, Roxy Music, Madonna, The Smiths, Echo & The Bunnymen, Tears For Fears, and the list goes on. We also have a friend of the show, Gary Kemp. You know him as the guitarist and principal songwriter for Spandau Ballet.   Currently, they are spending their time with Nick Mason, recreating the music of Pink Floyd circa 1967-1972. We get into all the secrets this week on the What Difference Does It Make podcast.  We are a proud member of Pantheon Podcasts.

We continue our two-part look at Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets with two guys from the band. One guy is Guy Pratt. He's played with Pink Floyd, Roxy Music, Madonna, The Smiths, Echo & The Bunnymen, Tears For Fears, and the list goes on. We also have a friend of the show, Gary Kemp. You know him as the guitarist and principal songwriter for Spandau Ballet.   Currently, they are spending their time with Nick Mason, recreating the music of Pink Floyd circa 1967-1972. We get into all the secrets this week on the What Difference Does It Make podcast.  We are a proud member of Pantheon Podcasts.

Christian Swain is the Founder & CEO of Pantheon Podcasts - a network of music podcasts preserving the legacy of rock n roll and all its many sub-genres.  We chat with Christian about being a musician in LA in the 1980s hanging out at The Roxy, The Rainbow and the Whiskey-a-go-go.  We talk why certain bands make it and other don't, the role record companies play in those successes and failures and why it's important to interview the original creators of the music we love.Ugly American Werewolf in London WebsiteTwitterInstagramYouTubeLInkTreewww.pantheonpodcasts.comWant to win front row seats to Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets in the US?Enter here to win tickets and a chance to be on a Pantheon Podcast: https://pantheonpodcasts.com/nickmasonGet tickets here: https://www.thesaucerfulofsecrets.com/

Bakko is joined by regular guest Gene Vogel as they record live in the lobby of the Minneapolis stop of the Nick Mason's Saucerful Of Secrets Tour. Light conversation mixed with attendee guest commentary. Enjoy. 

Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets show recap, another laptop cancels a show, Gene Simmons has no friends, Dave Ellefson strikes back, John 5 joining Motley Crue rumor, and more.  Pantheon PodcastsReach out to us!Rate, review and subscribe at Apple Podcasts: Cobras & Fire: Comedy / Rock Talk Show on Apple PodcastsJoin our fanpage on Facebook: (2) Cobras ON Fire: Private Group | FacebookClick like and follow on Facebook: (2) Cobras & Fire: Rock Podcast | Chicago IL | FacebookFollow us on Twitter: Best Hard Rock & Metal Podcast (@CobrasFire) / TwitterSubscribe to our YouTube channel: Cobras & Fire Rock Podcast - YouTubeEmail us: loosebakko@gmail.comBuy a shirt!: Cobras & Fire Store - Comedy Rock Talk Show | Best Hard Rock Metal Podcast (cobrasandfire.com)Stitcher: Cobras & Fire: Comedy / Rock Talk Show on StitcherSpreaker: Cobras & Fire: Comedy / Rock Talk Show | Listen to Podcasts On Demand Free | TuneInFind it all here: Cobras and Fire Podcast - Comedy Rock Talk ShowSongs Featured: Parasite - Ozzy Osbourne Right Turn Clyde - Bloodhound GangBig Foot - ChickenfootStop it You're Killing Me - Therapy?Rebel Yell - Drowning Pool Half-Life - Local HFake - Motley Crue

Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets show recap, another laptop cancels a show, Gene Simmons has no friends, Dave Ellefson strikes back, John 5 joining Motley Crue rumor, and more.  Pantheon PodcastsReach out to us!Rate, review and subscribe at Apple Podcasts: Cobras & Fire: Comedy / Rock Talk Show on Apple PodcastsJoin our fanpage on Facebook: (2) Cobras ON Fire: Private Group | FacebookClick like and follow on Facebook: (2) Cobras & Fire: Rock Podcast | Chicago IL | FacebookFollow us on Twitter: Best Hard Rock & Metal Podcast (@CobrasFire) / TwitterSubscribe to our YouTube channel: Cobras & Fire Rock Podcast - YouTubeEmail us: loosebakko@gmail.comBuy a shirt!: Cobras & Fire Store - Comedy Rock Talk Show | Best Hard Rock Metal Podcast (cobrasandfire.com)Stitcher: Cobras & Fire: Comedy / Rock Talk Show on StitcherSpreaker: Cobras & Fire: Comedy / Rock Talk Show | Listen to Podcasts On Demand Free | TuneInFind it all here: Cobras and Fire Podcast - Comedy Rock Talk ShowSongs Featured: Parasite - Ozzy Osbourne Right Turn Clyde - Bloodhound GangBig Foot - ChickenfootStop it You're Killing Me - Therapy?Rebel Yell - Drowning Pool Half-Life - Local HFake - Motley Crue

Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason is bringing early Pink Floyd music back to life by taking it on the road with his band, Saucerful of Secrets. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member steps into our virtual studios to talk about the music he created with Pink Floyd from 1967 to 1972, and the all-star band he assembled to recreate these iconic songs.Win an exclusive VIP tour experience with Pink Floyd drummer, Nick Mason, and his band Saucerful of Secrets. Details are found on the Pantheon Podcast website.

he fans with his powerful voice and vivid storytelling.It's great to see not only former bandmates like Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler & Vinny Appice sing his praises but to hear from Roger Glover, Rob Halford, Glenn Hughes, Lita Ford, Sebastian Bach, Eddie Trunk and many more about the kind of man and friend he was warmed our hearts.  Ronnie wasn't an overnight sensation - he was recording music in the 1950's!  But he didn't hit it big with Rainbow until the 70s and success eluded him in American until he eventually replaced Ozzy in Black Sabbath and then went on to form DIO with Vinny Appice, Jimmy Bain & Vivian Campbell.Hear what we thought of the movie, his falling out with Ritchie Blackmore, Tony Iommi, & Vivian Campbell, what he means to us as a singer and his legacy.Ugly American Werewolf in London WebsiteThe RockonteursTwitterInstagramYouTubeLInkTreewww.pantheonpodcasts.comWant to win front row seats to Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets in the US?Enter here to win tickets and a chance to be on a Pantheon Podcast: https://pantheonpodcasts.com/nickmasonWe'll be at the Indianapolis show Friday, October 14, Get tickets here: https://www.thesaucerfulofsecrets.com/

Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason is bringing early Pink Floyd music back to life by taking it on the road with his band, Saucerful of Secrets. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member steps into our virtual studios to talk about the music he created with Pink Floyd from 1967 to 1972, and the all-star band he assembled to recreate these iconic songs.Win an exclusive VIP tour experience with Pink Floyd drummer, Nick Mason, and his band Saucerful of Secrets. Details are found on the Pantheon Podcast website.

Guy Pratt and Gary Kemp of 'Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets' join My Rock Moment in today's episode. Guy Pratt is a seasoned session musician who's worked with Madonna, Michael Jackson, and has toured with David Gilmour's Pink Floyd since the 1980s. And Gary Kemp was principal songwriter, lead guitarist and backup vocalist for all 23 of Spandau Ballet's hit singles.Aside from their own stellar podcast, ‘The Rockonteurs,' where they sit down with the who's who of the rock world, they now play with Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets. Nick formed Saucerful of Secrets a few years back and the band pays homage to the early work of Pink Floyd.Gary and Guy stopped by My Rock Moment on the opening day of their Echoes tour in the U.S. to discuss the genesis of the band as well as playing Pink Floyd's well known early work for an audience with (very) high expectations. They also discuss their memorable rock moments with David Bowie!Some exciting news to share! My Rock Moment will be at the Santa Barbara, CA show on October 26th! So, Pantheon Podcasts and My Rock Moment are giving away an exclusive VIP EXPERIENCE to that show! The VIP Experience includes:A pair of front row ticketsExclusive VIP merchandiseOnsite perksA commemorative guitar pick-shaped necklace carved down from drum cymbals played by Nick Mason himself!Buy your tickets at https://www.thesaucerfulofsecrets.com  Then head to www.pantheonpodcasts.com/nickmason to enter to win an upgrade!If you can make it to the Santa Barbara show at the Arlington Theater October 26th, stop by and say hello. You can find me and My Rock Moment at the Pantheon table at the entrance - I would love to meet you!Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at @la_woman_rocks to get episode updates and see rare classic rock photos!

Ronnie James Dio was legend of hard rock and heavy metal.  From middle class beginnings in upstate New York to arenas around the world, Ronnie brought joy to the fans with his powerful voice and vivid storytelling.It's great to see not only former bandmates like Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler & Vinny Appice sing his praises but to hear from Roger Glover, Rob Halford, Glenn Hughes, Lita Ford, Sebastian Bach, Eddie Trunk and many more about the kind of man and friend he was warmed our hearts.  Ronnie wasn't an overnight sensation - he was recording music in the 1950's!  But he didn't hit it big with Rainbow until the 70s and success eluded him in American until he eventually replaced Ozzy in Black Sabbath and then went on to form DIO with Vinny Appice, Jimmy Bain & Vivian Campbell.Hear what we thought of the movie, his falling out with Ritchie Blackmore, Tony Iommi, & Vivian Campbell, what he means to us as a singer and his legacy.Ugly American Werewolf in London WebsiteThe RockonteursTwitterInstagramYouTubeLInkTreewww.pantheonpodcasts.comWant to win front row seats to Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets in the US?Enter here to win tickets and a chance to be on a Pantheon Podcast: https://pantheonpodcasts.com/nickmasonWe'll be at the Indianapolis show Friday, October 14, Get tickets here: https://www.thesaucerfulofsecrets.com/

My long time friend and continued collaborator, Thurman Storing is back on the show for a live listen and review of Pink Floyd's Saucerful of Secrets album on Vinyl and in Mono. Look for our breakdown and comparison of the Original Pink Floyd Animals album and the 2018 Remix. (which just came out in Oct 2022). Thank you for tuning in and enjoy the show!

Jeff Beck is a true legend and genius of rock guitar.  From his early days in The Yardbirds, through his hard rocking 70s incarnations to today, he's an innovator & someone who likes to collaborate with others.  I bought tickets to see him pre-COVID and had to wait 2.5 years to see him.  It turned out that during that time he had been collaborating with raconteur/actor Johnny Depp to work on some covers and original material.Johnny's appearance midway through Jeff's performance at Royal Albert Hall on May 30, 2022 was exciting for everyone in the crowd.  But did he really have the chops to perform with Jeff Beck and his band?  Or was he a privileged Hollywood star who gets to work with Hall of Fame legends on a lark?We talk about Johnny's impact on the performance from May and we review their new album, 18, which came out later in the summer.  Did Johnny up his game and give himself a new career option?  Did Jeff Beck lower his standards for a chance at a one off char topper?  Hear what Action Jackson & The Wolf have to say about that. Ugly American Werewolf in London WebsiteRareVinyl.com    Eil.comYouTubeTwitterInstagramwww.pantheonpodcasts.comWant to win front row seats to Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets in the US?Enter here to win tickets and a chance to be on a Pantheon Podcast: https://pantheonpodcasts.com/nickmasonWe'll be at the Indianapolis show Friday, October 14, Get tickets here: https://www.thesaucerfulofsecrets.com/

Bakko is joined by regular guest Gene Vogel as they record live in the lobby of the Minneapolis stop of the Nick Mason's Saucerful Of Secrets Tour. Light conversation mixed with attendee guest commentary. Enjoy. 

This week on Rockonteurs, Gary and Guy continue their US tour with Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets but still find time to chat to a guitar hero of theirs, Chris Spedding. Chris has been described as “one of the UK's most versatile guitarists”. As such he's played with The Pretenders, Roxy Music, Elton John, Art Garfunkel, Ginger Baker and Paul McCartney. He also produced the very first Sex Pistols recordings. Today it's Chris's chance to shine and tell the stories behind his life in music. Rockonteurs is produced by Ben Jones for Gimme Sugar Productions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

BONUS EPISODE: On September 26, Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets brought the Echoes Tour to the historic Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York. In this special episode, your hosts discuss an amazing night of classic songs. PLUS, Dan talks to bassist and co-lead vocalist Guy Pratt about the tour and his prolific career, which includes work with Pink Floyd, Michael Jackson, and Madonna. Check out ROCKONTEURS, a podcast all about the real stories behind real music, hosted by Guy Pratt and Spandau Ballet's Gary Kemp. Visit pantheonpodcasts.com/nickmason to learn more about Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets, buy tickets to the Echoes Tour, and enter to win an exclusive upgraded VIP experience. For more information, visit thesaucerfulofsecrets.com.To learn more about the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York visit thecapitoltheatre.com.

There is no denying that Stevie Nicks has captivated audiences since she first burst onto the music scene in the mid 70s. It is a combination of a uniquely gifted rock and roll voice, songwriting chops, and a distinctive look that led to her musical journey. Author Simon Morrison explores these elements and so much more in his latest book, Mirror in the Sky: The Life and Music of Stevie Nicks. Simon steps into the What Difference Does It Make virtual studios to further cement the case as to why Stevie is the first woman to be twice inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame.  Win an exclusive VIP tour experience with Pink Floyd drummer, Nick Mason, and his band Saucerful of Secrets. Details are found on the Pantheon Podcast website.

There is no denying that Stevie Nicks has captivated audiences since she first burst onto the music scene in the mid 70s. It is a combination of a uniquely gifted rock and roll voice, songwriting chops, and a distinctive look that led to her musical journey. Author Simon Morrison explores these elements and so much more in his latest book, Mirror in the Sky: The Life and Music of Stevie Nicks. Simon steps into the What Difference Does It Make virtual studios to further cement the case as to why Stevie is the first woman to be twice inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame.  Win an exclusive VIP tour experience with Pink Floyd drummer, Nick Mason, and his band Saucerful of Secrets. Details are found on the Pantheon Podcast website.

Keith Richards made Talk is Cheap in 1988 as a response to Mick Jagger's efforts as a solo artist and the sniping the two had engaged in via the press in the mid-80s.  But the Glimmer Twins made up, recorded Steel Wheels in 1989 and launched one of the biggest tours in rock history, reestablishing the Stones as a viable touring act.However, Keith didn't want to give up this fabulous band he'd created with Steve Jordan (now in the Stones), Charlie Drayton, Ivan Neville, Waddy Wachtel, Sarah Dash and Bobby Keys.  So while the Stones paused before Voodoo Lounge, Keith & the X-Pensive Wynos released Main Offender.  Wicked As It Seems was a bit of a hit on rock radio and inspired Mick to work with Keith to create Love Is Strong off Voodoo Lounge.It's a great album and the band did tour to support it.  We're reviewing the 30th anniversary edition which includes a live performance from England in 1993.  Truth be told this one has been on the shelf for a while as the 30th anniversary edition was released in March 2022 but we've been busy with interviews, live concert reviews and lots of fun stuff.  So ahead of its official anniversary on October 19, we offer our review of Main Offender 30th Anniversary Edition.Ugly American Werewolf in London WebsiteThe RockonteursTwitterInstagramYouTubeLInkTreewww.pantheonpodcasts.comWant to win front row seats to Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets in the US?Enter here to win tickets and a chance to be on a Pantheon Podcast: https://pantheonpodcasts.com/nickmasonWe'll be at the Indianapolis show Friday, October 14, Get tickets here: https://www.thesaucerfulofsecrets.com/

Keith Richards made Talk is Cheap in 1988 as a response to Mick Jagger's efforts as a solo artist and the sniping the two had engaged in via the press in the mid-80s.  But the Glimmer Twins made up, recorded Steel Wheels in 1989 and launched one of the biggest tours in rock history, reestablishing the Stones as a viable touring act.However, Keith didn't want to give up this fabulous band he'd created with Steve Jordan (now in the Stones), Charlie Drayton, Ivan Neville, Waddy Wachtel, Sarah Dash and Bobby Keys.  So while the Stones paused before Voodoo Lounge, Keith & the X-Pensive Wynos released Main Offender.  Wicked As It Seems was a bit of a hit on rock radio and inspired Mick to work with Keith to create Love Is Strong off Voodoo Lounge.It's a great album and the band did tour to support it.  We're reviewing the 30th anniversary edition which includes a live performance from England in 1993.  Truth be told this one has been on the shelf for a while as the 30th anniversary edition was released in March 2022 but we've been busy with interviews, live concert reviews and lots of fun stuff.  So ahead of its official anniversary on October 19, we offer our review of Main Offender 30th Anniversary Edition.Ugly American Werewolf in London WebsiteThe RockonteursTwitterInstagramYouTubeLInkTreewww.pantheonpodcasts.comWant to win front row seats to Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets in the US?Enter here to win tickets and a chance to be on a Pantheon Podcast: https://pantheonpodcasts.com/nickmasonWe'll be at the Indianapolis show Friday, October 14, Get tickets here: https://www.thesaucerfulofsecrets.com/

We're proud to have a sponsor like RareVinyl.com to not only support our show but to offer our listeners the high quality records, CDs, singles, programs, etc they crave.  With over 250,000 items in stock the collection is overwhelming and the quality is incredible.  But how do they find all these treasures?  Through their crack team of Record Buyers who sift through record collections to unearth the true treasures the hardcore fan can't live without.  Sometimes an overlooked 7 inch record can be worth $1,000 and sometimes the highest selling records of all time aren't worth much at all.  Mike Wenban, Record Buyer at RareVinyl.com joins us to share how you can identify those rare and hard to find records which drive collectors wild.Be sure to visit www.rarevinyl.com or www.eil.com and use code podcast to earn 10% off every purchase you make.  Ugly American Werewolf in London WebsiteRareVinyl.com    Eil.comYouTubeTwitterInstagramwww.pantheonpodcasts.comWant to win front row seats to Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets in the US?Enter here to win tickets and a chance to be on a Pantheon Podcast: https://pantheonpodcasts.com/nickmasonWe'll be at the Indianapolis show Friday, October 14, Get tickets here: https://www.thesaucerfulofsecrets.com/

This week on Rockonteurs, Gary and Guy take a quick break from the US tour with Saucerful of Secrets to chat to a member of the SODS (society of distinguished songwriters) – it's Mike Batt. Mike is a singer, songwriter, musician and record producer. In this episode, he discusses working with Art Garfunkel, Elkie Brookes, a variety of acclaimed orchestras and of course, The Wombles – who had 8 hit singles!! Rockonteurs is produced by Ben Jones for Gimme Sugar Productions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We are proud to welcome 2 legends of music - Guy Pratt & Gary Kemp.  Gary may be best known from his days as the guitarist & lead songwriter of Spandau Ballet but you may also know him as an actor (The Bodyguard).  Guy Pratt took over for Roger Waters on bass in Pink Floyd and has worked with superstars like Michael Jackson, Madonna, David Gilmour and so many more. Not only are they inspirations because of their musical talents but they host an extraordinary podcast, The Rockonteurs.  We chatted with them about their current tour of the US with Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets and what it's like to play music from Pink Floyd's pre-Dark Side catalog.  You'll find them quick with a joke but also very sincere as Guy talks about singing Rick Wright's parts on stage, Gary following in the footsteps of Syd Barrett, David Gilmour and David Bowie & the fun they have on the Rockonteurs.This is a special show for us as we've wanted to have Guy on since we reviewed Pink Floyd's Delicate Sound of Thunder on episode 3.  PInk Floyd fans may also want to download Episode 69 on A Momentary Lapse of Reason and Episode 75 on Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets live at Royal Albert Hall in London.We're excited to sponsor this tour, see below on how you can win a VIP experience with 2 FRONT ROW SEATS and be on our podcast.   We'll be at the show at Clowes Hall in Indianapolis on Friday, October 14 - get you tickets to the show and then come by to say hi to us!Ugly American Werewolf in London WebsiteThe RockonteursTwitterInstagramYouTubeLInkTreewww.pantheonpodcasts.comWant to win front row seats to Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets in the US?Enter here to win tickets and a chance to be on a Pantheon Podcast: https://pantheonpodcasts.com/nickmasonWe'll be at the Indianapolis show Friday, October 14, Get tickets here: https://www.thesaucerfulofsecrets.com/

The Smithereens dominated modern rock radio in the early 80s to mid 90s with songs like "Only A Memory" and "A Girl Like You". Despite the tragic loss of their lead singer, Pat DiNizio, the band soldiers on with guest vocalists Marshall Crenshaw and The Gin Blossoms Robin Wilson taking the vocals. Guitarist Jim Babjak and drummer Dennis Diken visit the What Difference Does It Make virtual studios and talk up their passion for 60s pop songs, the road to success, and this mysterious lost album from the 90s, strangely enough, called The Lost Album. Win an exclusive VIP tour experience with Pink Floyd drummer, Nick Mason, and his band Saucerful of Secrets. Details are found on the Pantheon Podcast website.

The Smithereens dominated modern rock radio in the early 80s to mid 90s with songs like "Only A Memory" and "A Girl Like You". Despite the tragic loss of their lead singer, Pat DiNizio, the band soldiers on with guest vocalists Marshall Crenshaw and The Gin Blossoms Robin Wilson taking the vocals. Guitarist Jim Babjak and drummer Dennis Diken visit the What Difference Does It Make virtual studios and talk up their passion for 60s pop songs, the road to success, and this mysterious lost album from the 90s, strangely enough, called The Lost Album. Win an exclusive VIP tour experience with Pink Floyd drummer, Nick Mason, and his band Saucerful of Secrets. Details are found on the Pantheon Podcast website.

We are proud to welcome 2 legends of music - Guy Pratt & Gary Kemp.  Gary may be best known from his days as the guitarist & lead songwriter of Spandau Ballet but you may also know him as an actor (The Bodyguard).  Guy Pratt took over for Roger Waters on bass in Pink Floyd and has worked with superstars like Michael Jackson, Madonna, David Gilmour and so many more.Not only are they inspirations because of their musical talents but they host an extraordinary podcast, The Rockonteurs.  We chatted with them about their current tour of the US with Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets and what it's like to play music from Pink Floyd's pre-Dark Side catalog.  You'll find them quick with a joke but also very sincere as Guy talks about singing Rick Wright's parts on stage, Gary following in the footsteps of Syd Barrett, David Gilmour and David Bowie & the fun they have on the Rockonteurs.This is a special show for us as we've wanted to have Guy on since we reviewed Pink Floyd's Delicate Sound of Thunder on episode 3.  PInk Floyd fans may also want to download Episode 69 on A Momentary Lapse of Reason and Episode 75 on Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets live at Royal Albert Hall in London.We're excited to sponsor this tour, see below on how you can win a VIP experience with 2 FRONT ROW SEATS and be on our podcast.   We'll be at the show at Clowes Hall in Indianapolis on Friday, October 14 - get you tickets to the show and then come by to say hi to us!Ugly American Werewolf in London WebsiteThe RockonteursTwitterInstagramYouTubeLInkTreewww.pantheonpodcasts.comWant to win front row seats to Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets in the US?Enter here to win tickets and a chance to be on a Pantheon Podcast: https://pantheonpodcasts.com/nickmasonWe'll be at the Indianapolis show Friday, October 14, Get tickets here: https://www.thesaucerfulofsecrets.com/

1987 in lined up perfectly for Whitesnake in North America.  MTV was pushing bands like Bon Jovi, Motley Crue and Def Leppard and hard rock was all over the charts.  Bring in a seasoned veteran like David Coverdale, A&R legend John Kalodner and the muscle of David Geffen and you get 10 million copies sold in North America!With fiery guitar magic from John Sykes, Coverdales sometimes rasping yet smooth vocals made this a juggernaut.  But did you know Coverdale fired everyone and brought a whole new all star team for the tour?  The videos were epic and featured perhaps the greatest video vixen of all time, Tawny Kitaen.  The trilogy of Still of the Night, Here I Go Again (#1 US) and Is This Love (#2 US) videos are the stuff rock n roll dreams of the 80s were made of.To walk through this 80s classic we've enlisted Sonny "Hollywood" Pooni of Growin' Up Rock Podcast and Album Review Crew with Tom & Zeus of Shout It Out Loudcast.  Sonny knows his stuff, bought the record the first day it came out, saw Whitesnake on that tour and more.  We reminisce and crack wise with Sonny on a record that we all lived through in the 80s. Ugly American Werewolf in London WebsiteGrowin' Up Rock WebsiteYouTubeTwitterInstagramLInkTreewww.pantheonpodcasts.comWant to win front row seats to Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets in the US?Enter here to win tickets and a chance to be on a Pantheon Podcast: https://pantheonpodcasts.com/nickmasonWe'll be at the Indianapolis show Friday, October 14, Get tickets here: https://www.thesaucerfulofsecrets.com/

Bands in the van, and a band at the crossroads. In this episode of RNRA Shorts, we'll get into the early days of Pink Floyd, and the latest from a Pink Floyd member: Nick Mason's 2022 Saucerful of Secrets tour. Written by Richard Evans and Christian Swain, Sound Design by Jerry Danielsen.  Sponsors and PartnersNick Mason's Saucerful Of SecretsRock's BackpagesSongsPink Floyd, “Echoes,” from MeddlePink Floyd, “See Emily Play,” from Piper at the Gates of DawnPink Floyd, “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” from A Saucerful of SecretsPink Floyd, “Interstellar Overdrive,” from Piper at the Gates of DawnPink Floyd, “Bike,” from Piper at the Gates of DawnPink Floyd, “Fearless,” from MeddlePink Floyd, “One of These Days,” from MeddlePink Floyd, “Jugband Blues,” from A Saucerful of SecretsNick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets: “Arnold Layne,” from Live at the RoundhouseBooksMason, Nick. Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd Chronicle Books LLC. Kindle Edition.Cutler, Sam. You Can't Always Get What You Want: My Life with the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead and Other Wonderful Reprobates . ECW Press. Kindle Edition.Films, Documentaries, and TV Shows“What Drives Us,” Directed by Dave Grohl, 2021"Omnibus" Syd Barrett: Crazy Diamond (TV Episode 2001) - IMDbPink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon (Short 1973) - IMDbNick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets: Live at the Roundhouse (2020) - IMDbOnline SourcesPink Floyd | Rock & Roll Hall of FameWhy Pink Floyd's Nick Mason Finally Went Solo at 75 – Rolling StoneHow Pink Floyd Carried on With 'A Saucerful of Secrets'Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets Concert Setlist at Zagrebački velesajam - Paviljon 9, Zagreb on May 31, 2022

Bands in the van, and a band at the crossroads. In this episode of RNRA Shorts, we'll get into the early days of Pink Floyd, and the latest from a Pink Floyd member: Nick Mason's 2022 Saucerful of Secrets tour. Written by Richard Evans and Christian Swain, Sound Design by Jerry Danielsen.  Sponsors and PartnersNick Mason's Saucerful Of SecretsRock's BackpagesSongsPink Floyd, “Echoes,” from MeddlePink Floyd, “See Emily Play,” from Piper at the Gates of DawnPink Floyd, “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” from A Saucerful of SecretsPink Floyd, “Interstellar Overdrive,” from Piper at the Gates of DawnPink Floyd, “Bike,” from Piper at the Gates of DawnPink Floyd, “Fearless,” from MeddlePink Floyd, “One of These Days,” from MeddlePink Floyd, “Jugband Blues,” from A Saucerful of SecretsNick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets: “Arnold Layne,” from Live at the RoundhouseBooksMason, Nick. Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd Chronicle Books LLC. Kindle Edition. Cutler, Sam. You Can't Always Get What You Want: My Life with the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead and Other Wonderful Reprobates . ECW Press. Kindle Edition. Films, Documentaries, and TV Shows“What Drives Us,” Directed by Dave Grohl, 2021"Omnibus" Syd Barrett: Crazy Diamond (TV Episode 2001) - IMDbPink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon (Short 1973) - IMDbNick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets: Live at the Roundhouse (2020) - IMDbOnline SourcesPink Floyd | Rock & Roll Hall of FameWhy Pink Floyd's Nick Mason Finally Went Solo at 75 – Rolling StoneHow Pink Floyd Carried on With 'A Saucerful of Secrets'Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets Concert Setlist at Zagrebački velesajam - Paviljon 9, Zagreb on May 31, 2022

By 1981, The Police had 3 hit records and the respect of their peers and the music industry.  But meddling from the record company caused Sting, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers to retreat to Canada and the isle of Montserrat to record their 4th album Ghost in the Machine.Producer Hugh Padgham had them work in separate rooms to get their sounds but it also may have been to keep them from each others throats as the band were known for fighting over their studio parts. Sting had developed into the lead songwriter and wrote the big singles Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic, Invisible Sun and Spirits in the Material World as he had all their previous hits.  But he sought to incorporate synthesizers, piano, horns and some of the reggae influences from their punk/ska peers and their island surroundings.  Of course Stewart and Andy had to push back on some of his ideas but you can't deny the results as it was their biggest selling album to that point and was the predecessor to their biggest record of all time, Synchronicity.Special thanks to Paul Stephenson of Vintage Rock Pod for the inspiration as his recent interview with Stewart Copeland gave us the idea to review this wonderful album.Ugly American Werewolf in London WebsiteYouTubeTwitterInstagramLInkTreewww.pantheonpodcasts.comWant to win front row seats to Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets in the US?Enter here to win tickets and a chance to be on a Pantheon Podcast: https://pantheonpodcasts.com/nickmasonGet tickets here: https://www.thesaucerfulofsecrets.com/