Pink Floyd – Live At Paris Theatre, London – 1970 – Past Daily Backstage Weekend

Pink Floyd – In concert At Paris Theatre, London – September 16, 1970 – BBC Radio 1 –

Pink Floyd in concert this weekend. Recorded live at The Paris Theatre on September 16, 1970 for BBC Radio 1’s In Concert series. This concert comes just weeks before the release of their fifth studio album, Atom Heart Mother.

From their Wikipedia page:

Their fourth album, Ummagumma represented a departure from their previous work. Released as a double-LP on EMI’s Harvest label, the first two sides contained live performances recorded at Manchester College of Commerce and Mothers, a club in Birmingham. The second LP contained a single experimental contribution from each band member. Ummagumma received positive reviews upon its release, in November 1969. The album peaked at number 5, spending 21 weeks on the UK chart.

In October 1970, Pink Floyd released Atom Heart Mother. An early version premièred in France in January, but disagreements over the mix prompted the hiring of Ron Geesin to work out the sound problems. Geesin worked to improve the score, but with little creative input from the band, production was troublesome. Geesin eventually completed the project with the aid of John Alldis, who was the director of the choir hired to perform on the record. Norman Smith earned an executive producer credit, and the album marked his final official contribution to the band’s discography. Gilmour said it was “A neat way of saying that he didn’t … do anything”. Waters was critical of Atom Heart Mother, claiming that he would prefer if it were “thrown into the dustbin and never listened to by anyone ever again”. Gilmour was equally dismissive of the album and once described it as “a load of rubbish”, stating: “I think we were scraping the barrel a bit at that period”. Ironically, Pink Floyd’s first number 1 album, Atom Heart Mother was hugely successful in Britain, spending 18 weeks on the UK chart. It premièred at the Bath Festival on 27 June 1970.

Pink Floyd toured extensively across America and Europe in 1970. In 1971, Pink Floyd took second place in a reader’s poll, in Melody Maker, and for the first time were making a profit. Mason and Wright became fathers and bought homes in London while Gilmour, still single, moved to a 19th-century farm in Essex. Waters installed a home recording studio at his house in Islington in a converted toolshed at the back of his garden. In January 1971, upon their return from touring Atom Heart Mother, Pink Floyd began working on new material. Lacking a central theme, they attempted several unproductive experiments; engineer John Leckie described the sessions as often beginning in the afternoon and ending early the next morning, “during which time nothing would get [accomplished]. There was no record company contact whatsoever, except when their label manager would show up now and again with a couple of bottles of wine and a couple of joints”. The band spent long periods working on basic sounds, or a guitar riff. They also spent several days at Air Studios, attempting to create music using a variety of household objects, a project which would be revisited between The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here.

If you’ve come to Pink Floyd based on Dark Side Of The Moon, listening to the earlier material gives you a better idea of where they progressing musically; the high points as well as the low. And if you’re a fan, you have to hear all of it.

Here’s 1970.

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