Table of Contents Popular Culture and Philosophy Series Editor: George A. Reisch Title Page Pink Floyd: From Pompeii to Philosophy Pink Floyd in Popular Culture Chapter 1 - “I Hate Pink Floyd,” and other Fashion Mistakes of the 1960s, 70s, ... The Four Lads from CambridgeFrom Waffling to MeddlingThe Crazy DiamondWish You Weren’t HereDoes Johnny Rotten Still Hate Pink Floyd? Chapter 2 - Life and Death on The Dub Side of the Moon Side OneSide TwoRasta ReasoningOn Rasta Time“A New Broom Sweeps Clean, but an Old Broom Knows Every Corner” Chapter 3 - Dark and Infinite Goodbye Blue SkyNobody HomeBricks in the WallWe Don’t Need No InterpretationFeelings of an Almost Human Nature Chapter 4 - Pigs Training Dogs to Exploit Sheep: Animals as a Beast Fable Dystopia The Dog-Eat-Dog MarketplacePigs in the WhitehouseSheepish ExploitationCaring Dogs Watching Flying Pigs Chapter 5 - Exploring the Dark Side of the Rainbow Major SynchronizationsDesign or Chance?Synchronizations and SynchronicityApophenia and ParadigmsThematic Synchronicity Chapter 6 - Mashups and Mixups : Pink Floyd as Cinema Defining Cinematic MusicMusic Videos and Music FilmsMashups and Sync UpsIn the End, It’s Only Round and Round (and Round) Alienation (Several Different Ones) Chapter 7 - Dragged Down by the Stone: Pink Floyd, Alienation, and the ... Wish You Were . ConnectedWhen the World You’re in Starts Playing Different TunesDon’t Be Afraid to CareDon’t Sit DownTime, Finitude, and DeathMoneyAny Colour of Us and Them You LikeArtists and Crazy DiamondsThis One’s PinkWe Don’t 2 Need No Indoctrination Chapter 8 - Roger Waters : Artist of the Absurd (C)amused to DeathThat Fat Old SunPrisms and DiamondsWelcome to the ZooThe Pros and Cons of AudiencesAlienation inside the WallWould You Help Me to Carry the Stone? Chapter 9 - Theodor Adorno, Pink Floyd, and the Psychedelics of Alienation Part I: Interstellar OverdriveIt’s Alright, We Told You What to DreamCan the Machine Be Fixed?Arnold Schoenberg had a Strraaaange . MethodAn Echo of a Distant Time: Stravinsky’s PrimitivismThe LSD FactorSet the Controls for Maximum CreativityPart II: From Axes to EchoesCareful with that Axe, EugeneSet the Controls for the Heart of the SunEchoesThe Eclipse of Musical Alienation Chapter 10 - I and Thou and “Us and Them”: Existential Encounters on The Dark ... Very Hard to Explain Why You’re Mad, Even if You’re Not MadLive for Today, Gone Tomorrow, That’s MeI Never Said I Was Frightened of DyingI Don’t Know, I Was Really Drunk at the TimeGive ’Em a Quick, Short, Sharp, ShockI Can’t Think of Anything to Say Except. I Think It’s Marvelous!There is No Dark Side of the Moon Really. Matter of Fact It’s All Dark Apples and Oranges? Or Just Apples? Chapter 11 - Pulling Together as a Team : Collective Action and Pink Floyd’s Intentions Waters’s Position: Raving and Drooling, or Serious Argument?An Enduring Lapse of Identity?The Same in a Relative Way?The Echo of a Distant Time: Identity and ChangeActions Brings Good Fortune: Actions, Intentions, and EvaluationA Smile from a Veil? Hypothetical and Actual IntentionsLike a Cardboard Cut-Out Man: Collectives as IndividualsTo Join in with the Game Chapter 12 - The Dinner Band on the Cruise Ship of Theseus Wot’s...Uh the Deal?What Do You Want from Me?Band Roster IdentityStylistic IdentityLegal IdentityNominal IdentityWish You Were HereBrain Damage, or Careful with that Axe, EugeneThe Show Must Go OnAbsolutely Curtains Chapter 13 - Distorted View: A Saucerful of Skepticism Random PrecisionAnd What Exactly Is a Dream?Distorted View (See Through, Baby Blue)You Raver, You Seer of VisionsIt Takes Two to KnowWondering and Dreaming. The Words Have Different Meanings Chapter 14 - Wish You Were Here (But You Aren’t): Pink Floyd and Non-Being The Philosophers’ Struggle with Non-Being.Non-Being as AlienationNon-Being as AbsenceNon-Being in ‘Postmodernism’Meet You on the Dark Side of the Moon? Chapter 15 - It’s All Dark: The Eclipse of the Damaged Brain All that You LoveAll that You DoAll that You Touch, See, Taste, FeelAll You CreateAll 3 that Is Now, Gone, to ComeEverything Under the Sun Is in TuneAll that You Beg, Borrow or StealAll that You SayEveryone You FightAll You DistrustEveryone You MeetAll that You GiveAll You DestroyThe Sun Is Eclipsed by the Moon The Art of Insanity: Nietzsche, Barrett, and Beyond Chapter 16 - Wandering and Dreaming: The Tragic Life of Syd Barrett Syd and FriedrichNietzsche’s Birth of TragedyApollo and Dionysus in PiperDionysus and DisintegrationA Parting of the WaysYou Legend, You Martyr Chapter 17 - Submersion, Subversion, and Syd: The Madcap Laughs and Barrett ... Late Nights at the ApolloLost in the Dionysian WoodTreading the Sand of SubversionA Long, Cold Look at the Aura and AuthenticityIf It’s in You, Reproduce It for the Masses“The Madcap Laughed at the Man on the Border” Chapter 18 - Thinking Outside the Wall: Michel Foucault on Madness, Fascism, ... There Must Have Been a Door There When I Came InWhich Colour of Madness Would You Like?Morality and PhysiologyI’ve Always Been Mad. And Guilty.What about the Worms?Art, Madness, and Syd Barrett Chapter 19 - Living Pink Capitulation—Riding the Gravy TrainMedication—I Can Ease Your PainRe-creation—A Day When You Were YoungEmancipation—You’ll Lose Your Mind and PlayResignation and Exploration—I’ll Climb the Hill in My Own Way Selected Pink Floyd Discography Author Bios Copyright Page 4 One of the opening shots from Adrian Maben’s film, Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii: The Director’s Cut ( 1972; Hip-O Records, 2003) Pink Floyd: From Pompeii to Philosophy GEORGE A. REISCH By 1971, Pink Floyd had set the controls for the heart of philosophy. That year, Adrian Maben made his extraordinary concert film, Pink Floyd at Pompeii . It begins with the desolate, lonely strains of “Echoes” as Maben’s camera—impossibly high above the ancient Roman amphitheatre at Pompeii—descends with almost imperceptible slowness into the circular theatre of stone. The band, its truckloads of equipment, and miles of 5 cables are set up in the middle of the enormous circle below. Pink Floyd had just begun writing and recording Dark Side of the Moon and had yet to be jolted by the international stardom that would propel them through the 1970s and culminate in their second monster album, The Wall , in 1979. That’s why the setting and venue could not be more perfect—or ironic. For this enormous stone amphitheatre is a circular wall, built up long ago brick by brick, isolating Roger Waters, Nick Mason, David Gilmour, and Rick Wright from the outside world. It was originally designed to hold a live audience, of course. But there is none in this film. Pink Floyd simply plays—to themselves, to each other, to a handful of sound technicians—with the seriousness and concentration for which they were becoming famous. There is no public performance, no on-stage banter, no corporate sponsorship, no advertising. Those who might have come expecting to see Pink Floyd “in the flesh,” to get drunk, stoned, or rowdy (or all three), might have felt that something was eluding them. But no audience was present, so the film shows no trace of the slowly growing discord between Roger Waters, in particular, and the rapidly growing audiences that Pink Floyd played to during the rest of the 1970s. By the end of the decade, things had turned around completely. The very first song of The Wall has the album’s protagonist, Pink, interrogating a stadium-sized crowd of inebriated teenagers: So ya thought ya might like to go to the show. To feel the warm thrill of confusion That space cadet glow. Tell me, is something eluding you, Sunshine? His anger culminated in 1977 during a show in Montreal, Waters recalls in interviews. Noisy, disruptive fans so annoyed him that he spit on them from the stage. He was appalled at his behavior, he admits, and began to think seriously about how and why large audiences had become so disconnected from the music they had paid to hear, and from the musicians they had come to see “in the flesh.” Soon, he was toying with the concept of a rock band separated from its audience by a huge brick wall. But even that idea did not assuage his sarcasm and bitterness. Early drafts of Waters’s screenplay for the film version (released in 1982) included military airplanes dive bombing the audience. 1 Here in the ruins of Pompeii, however, Waters and the band play without a hint of the frustration or bitterness that was to come. They are happy playing alone, behind their wall, without any suggestion that this is some psychotic confinement or retreat from a cruel, unbearable world. Those themes and messages had not yet become real and pressing for Waters. The event Maben’s cameras capture is noncommerical, artistic, and musical. And philosophical . Pink Floyd seems natural and comfortable in this setting not simply because they play so well or because the cameras glide around the band and the open-air amphitheatre so elegantly. It is because the themes and ideas they had just begun to explore musically on Meddle and Dark Side —such as time, death, madness, loss, and empathy—are among those that philosophers of ancient Greece and Italy began to scrutinize over two thousand years ago. Not far from the time and the place, that is, where the volcano Vesuvius erupted to strip away all but the stone buildings of this once bustling Italian village. Even the philosophical and cultural metaphor of Enlightenment that would soon help catapult the band to international stardom—the battle between the 6 light and clarity of understanding and the darkness of shadows, mystery, and madness—is unmistakeable as the band plays alternately in the bright afternoon sun and the murky darkness.