I have always been a huge Pink Floyd fan. Despite what my Spotify stats tell (which I listen to Nick Cave more), Pink Floyd have always had a special place in my music and life. They are the band that I wouldn’t be able to classify, or rate, nor rank. They are outside every category. They stay on their own.
I sat down the other day and thought of the best Pink Floyd songs, or at least my favourite ones. I came up with a list, but soon enough scratched that. I thought it would be far more interesting and original to list only their songs that somehow elicit specific images in my head when I listen to them. A few bands manage to do it, and Pink Floyd have the most songs that I associate a precise vibe and image with. These images are not necessarily associated with what the song is about; they are just what they make me think about and feel. It is a completely personal list, wholly different from anybody else’s. Still, I find it curious how these associations were born and why, and I thought it worth to write them here for posterity.
It is a completely personal blog, yes, meaningless to you. Rather an experiment and curiosity of mine.
Remember a Day (A Saucerful of Secrets)
Kids playing, puppets, old dresses, 70s summer in Europe, the sun piercing through leaves and falling on the kids, mixed with shadow due to the soft breeze moving the leaves and alternatively covering and uncovering the kids.
A Saucerful of Secrets (A Saucerful of Secrets)
Pompeii. The lava, ancient Roman Gods watching the city crumble. A sense of loss.
This is clearly connected to the original Live in Pompeii of the 70s, in which this very song was associated with the Vesuvius eruption.
If (Atom Heart Mother)
My dad as a young man, not yet married and childless. Somewhere in North Italy, Milan or Turin, an afternoon, cars running on a narrow street and my dad with thick sunglasses looking around, hopeful, maybe even happy.
I never saw a picture of my dad in North Italy, and I even doubt he was ever there in is youth. Thus this association is completely invented by me. Curious.
One Of These Days (Meddle)
Easy identification because it was the soundtrack of a tv program showing the goals of Serie A back in the 70s and 80s (“90 Minuto”, for the italians reading). So football, old football shirts, dirty socks, and the wait to watch the highlights of your team on a Sunday evening, after all the matches had been played.
A Pillow of Winds (Meddle)
Watching the clouds running fast on a blue sky while laying under the sun on a beach. Water is shining, the sea is nearly motionless.
Clearly a summery song. Most of Meddle I identify with summer.
San Tropez (Meddle)
I know the song isn’t called Monaco but it smells of old croupiers at the casino moving the roulette, ancient nobility and new richness crowding the table, looking hopefully at the number the ball will pick for them. A few classy women are looking from a distance seated at the bar, drinking and wishing they would be elsewhere, doing more interesting things.
I have recently been to St. Tropez and Monaco and I now sort of identify this song with both. But still the first image remains Monaco Casino.
Echoes (Meddle)
An albatross over the sea is obvious but I add me on a boat, looking at the horizon, no land on sight, on a hot late afternoon, before sunset. There’s a sense of tension, of wait, of new things coming, or wishing that those would.
Time (Dark Side of the Moon)
Wasted youth, depression, laziness, and a life that could have went straight and bent instead. Wasted potential. Me watching clouds on a lazy day, doing nothing instead of my school’s homework.
Brain Damage (Dark Side of the Moon)
Loneliness, at home, when nobody is and I am left to do my own thinking, or passing in a wasteful way my time. Longing for a better chance tomorrow.
Shine On You Crazy Diamond (pt 1-5) (Wish You Were Here)
A modern city, very grey, asphalt everywhere, me moving through it without a meta, without knowing anybody. A sense of urgency for something. A loss, a wound not closed, in the soul, not physical.
Welcome to the Machine (Wish You Were Here)
Capitalism and industrialism, grey skies, the oppression of having to work, produce, get enough money, and be also happy. A fake happiness, asked by society. The oppression of rules of society and job. The impossibility to live according to your own rules and rhythm.
Have A Cigar (Wish You Were Here)
An imaginary older friend of mine, in is early 20s, me in my teenage years. He tries to teach me, I listen in awe and with interest, not sure to be able to understand all the lessons he is trying to convey to me. He is kind though, but hurt, and wants to avoid me being hurt as well. His teaching I feel I will fail to follow.
Wish You Were Here (Wish You Were Here)
This song is strongly connected with my father, who let himself die over a dozen of years ago. I feel immediately his absence at the first notes. After his death I associated this song with him, with the relationship that we failed to have, with his efforts, meagre and clumsy, and our shared passions (football mainly). It is a song that remembers me not of the pain of his death but of the lack of the opportunity to have a relationship that would be beneficial to both with him anymore. Lost chances, sad past, a perennially unsatisfying present.
Dogs (Animals)
London in the 80s. Punks and modernity are incumbing, but a sense of old conservatism and class lingers on. City’s lights on a early evening, when the sky is still partly light, violet. The city as seen from the Thames. The image is rather static.
Goodbye Blue Sky (The Wall)
Afield of crosses, with tombs of fallen soldiers. Near a cliff, somewhere in England, north France or Ireland. The sky is gloomy, windy, and there’s gonna be rain. A few people are honouring the dead here and there, all clad in black. I am watching the field from a little afar, unsure whether I should join in honouring the fallen or not.
Hey You (The Wall)
Berlin in the 90s, the Wall has fallen but the city has not reunified fully yet. There’s much to rebuild, much to fix, but there’s a vibrant youth that will do it. Walking alone at night through the streets of Berlin, headphones on, listening to hard music. A sense of possibilities is lingering, with me feeling just a passing observer.
Comfortably Numb (The Wall)
This song is many things but primarily two. One is the sadness of lost youth, the lack of a second chance, to rebuild what was destroyed, of recovering the joy of looking at the world with fresh eyes. The thing is a violet sky with dark clouds over the sea, me on a pier or along the beach, looking at the sky and wondering what the future will reserve me.
Curious how this song is associated to me both with past and future. It is probably one of the very best songs ever, and I listened it so many times that a double association was born.
Marooned (The Division Bell)
A moonlight beach, waiting for somebody to take me, or something, not necessarily a person. Behind there is a vast field, green, gently moved by the wind, with the moonlight touching the tip of the grass. In the air the smell of algae, grass, and seawater.
High Hopes (The Division Bell)
Bury me at Fatu Hiva. This song has a strong connection with the 80s, the cruise ships of old, calm nights, the sense of peace that I associate with that age (and my childhood years). Specifically though this song makes me feel as I were on Fatu Hiva, one of the Marquesas in French Polynesia, looking at the sea while sipping a drink (may be a classic Mai Tai but also any rum-based cocktail), considering the possibilities and the future, on the first evening after I sailed across the Pacific on my sailboat to land at the Marquesas.
This song elicits a specific scene like with no other song, and such a peculiar place that I have been wondering why for years, without being capable of giving myself an answer. I have never been in French Polynesia but I kind of “remember” Fatu Hiva, probably from some episode of an old tv series of the 1980s that I stumbled upon as a little kid. Why that specific place caught my attention all these years back and got associated with this song is unfathomable to me. But it is contributing to giving me a direction in life, in fueling the dream of doing the passage from Panama to the Marquesas on my own sailboat one day, and living this scene while playing the song.