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COMMENTS
Released
just three months after 'More', 'Ummagumma'
took its unlikely name from a slang word for sex. Pink Floyd had moved sideways
from one EMI subsidiary label to another, new, one, Harvest, intended by
its founder Malcom Jones to capture the spirit of the new, progressive underground
music. Harvest took the brave step of allowing the band to combine a straightforward
live album with a second disc, comprising four sections, each recorded by
one band member as a solo activity, guided, for the last time, by a bemused
Norman Smith. This was Harvest's first ever double album, and the first
record on the label to chart. The studio sessions coincided with those for
Syd Barrett's first solo album 'The
Madcap Laughs', which Gilmour and Waters partly produced. The live sides,
produced by the band, were recorded at two concerts, the first at Birmingham's
legendary Mothers Club on 27th April 1969, the other on 2nd May at the Chamber
of Commerce, Manchester. Radio One DJ
John Peel, at whose wedding Nick Mason
was best man, once described the burglary of his flat, where the only item
stolen was an acetate copy of a recording of 'Interstellar
Overdrive', then under consideration for inclusion on the album. Aside
from 'Grantchester Meadows', and perhaps
the final part of 'the Narrow Way', the
solo sides are a brave experiment that fails, or at least has dated badly,
and although the various pieces are interesting on first hearing, they certainly
don't bear repeated listening. Hipgnosis' intriguing design for the album
included the sleeve of the musical 'Gigi', which was subsequently airbrushed
from US versions - perhaps because of copyright problems. The rear sleeve
depicted the band's roadies (one of whom is Alan Stiles, later immortalised
in 'Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast') and equipment,
spread-eagled on a runway at Biggin Hill airfield. Inside the gatefold sleeve,
Roger Waters was pictured with his first
wife Jude. For the first CD booklet, she was discreetly omitted, as was
the Biggin Hill shot.
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