Lost for Words - Instrumental Floyd

compiled by Mike McInnis

Peter Jenner: "In fact, I was once trying to tell him about this Arthur Lee song I couldn't remember the title of, so I just hummed the main riff. Syd picked up his guitar and followed what I was humming chord-wise. The chord pattern he worked out he went on to use as the main riff for 'Interstellar Overdrive'." - New Musical Express, April 13, 1974

Gilmour: "'A Saucerful of Secrets' was a very important track; it gave us our direction forward. If you take 'A Saucerful of Secrets', 'Atom Heart Mother', and 'Echoes', all lead logically to Dark Side of the Moon. 'Saucerful' was inspired when Roger and Nick began drawing weird shapes on a piece of paper. We then composed music based on the structure of the drawing.... We tried to write the music around the peaks and valleys of the art. My role, I suppose, was to try and make it a bit more musical, and to help create a balance between formlessness and structure, disharmony and harmony." - Guitar World, February 1993

Gilmour: "The band felt we achieved something with the title track of 'A Saucerful of Secrets'. I can't say as I fully understood what was going on when it was being made, with Roger sitting around drawing little diagrams on bits of paper. But throughout the following period I tried to add what I knew of harmony and bring it slightly more mainstream, if you like. And the way they worked certainly educated me. We passed on all our individual desires, talents, and knowledge to each other." - Musician, August 1992

Gilmour: "Well, on the middle section of 'A Saucerful of Secrets', most of the time the guitar was lying on the studio floor. And I unscrewed one of the legs from a mic stand.... You know how mic stands have three steel legs about a foot long? I just whizzed one of those up and down the neck--not very subtly. Another technique, which came a bit later, is to take a small piece of steel and rub it from side to side across the strings. You just move it and stop it in places that sound good. It's something like an E-bow." - Guitar World, February 1993

Gilmour: "The Binson was an Italian made delay unit. It was strange because it didn't utilize tape loops. Instead, it used a metal recording wheel. You could get some wonderful delay effects that aren't attainable on anything that's been made since. 'One of These Days' evolved from some of my experiments with the Binson, as did 'Echoes'. One day, Roger decided to take some of the techniques that I was developing and try them out himself on bass. And he came up with that basic riff that we all worked on and turned into 'One of these Days'.
"For the middle section, another piece of technology came into play: an H&H amp with vibrato. I set the vibrato to more or less the same tempo as the delay. But the delay was in 3/4 increments of the beat and the vibrato went with the beat. I just played the bass through it and made up that little section, which we then stuck on to a bit of tape and edited in. The tape splices were then camouflaged with cymbal crashes." - Guitar World, February 1993

Gilmour: "'One of These Days' is a little subsidiary piece that came out of the work on 'Echoes'. I always loved it. It's seminal, I suppose, yeah. A lot shorter, in any case - better for radio play." - Guitar World, February 1993

Clare Torry (on "The Great Gig in the Sky"): "When I arrived they explained the concept of the album to me and played me Rick Wright's chord sequence. They said, 'We want some singing on it.' But didn't know what they wanted, so I suggested going out into the studio and trying a few things. I started off using words but they said, 'Oh no, we don't want any words.' So the only thing I could think of was to make myself sound like an instrument, a guitar or whatever, and not to think like a vocalist. I did that and they loved it." - MOJO, March 1998

question: "Be honest. When listening to the 'Great Gig in the Sky', have you ever thought, Oh put a sock in it, you silly cow?"
Gilmour:"Sometimes. Sometimes no. Sometimes yes." - Q Magazine, June 1999

Waters (on "Any Colour You Like"): "A little instrumental fill. Apart from the songs that are credited to one person, it's all a bit of a grey area. 'Money', 'Eclipse', and 'Brain Damage' which are credited to me were mine. 'Us and Them' was clearly Rick's tune and I wrote the lyrics. 'Great Gig in the Sky' was Rick's. 'Breathe' and 'Any Colour You Like' are grey areas and so is 'Time', because it was close to a real collaboration of all four members.
"The distributions got divided up in strange ways afterwards because we were being very egalitarian and group-like in those days. I regret it furiously now, of course. I gave away a lot of the publishing and I wish I hadn't, but these things happen and that's how it is and that's how it will always be." - MOJO, March 1998

Waters: "There was an abortive attempt to make an album not using any musical instruments. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it didn't come together." - interview with Nick Sedgewick, 1975

Gilmour (on "Shine On You Crazy Diamond"): "Yeah, I don't really know whether it would be strictly honest to say one sits around doing the instrumental passages really thinking about Syd, and thinking 'Oh my God! I must be more soulful cos it's Syd'. I mean, no, I don't really think that..." - Australian Radio Interview, 1988

Gilmour: "Part Two of 'Signs of Life' was actually done in 1977, I think. The guitar and the whistling answers was actually a demo that I did in '77 or '78. We had to replace the actual guitar, but the backing chords are from an ancient thing I did. Most of the rest of it was written within the past two years." - Creem Magazine, February 1988

Wright (on The Division Bell): "There are a lot of other aspects of the record that I was very happy about, such as being able to contribute to the writing. My influence can be heard on tracks like 'Marooned' and 'Cluster One'. Those were the kind of things that I gave the Floyd in the past and it was good that they were now getting used again." - August 1998

interviewer: "What can you tell me about The Division Bell's guitar instrumental 'Marooned'?
Gilmour: It's "amazing how far I can bend those notes, isn't it?" [laughs]
interviewer: "I'll say. How do you achieve those wild, octave-wide, bends?"
Gilmour: "A Digitech Whammy Pedal. It's a great little unit, but I haven't even begun to explore half the things it does. The fact that it allows you to bend a note a full octave is quite shocking. It's so odd."
interviewer: "You seem to use the effect very naturally--I almost didn't notice it at first. Did you practice with it a lot before you recorded 'Marooned'?"
Gilmour: "No. [laughs] I think we basically wrote the first version of it the day I got the pedal. I still don't think I use it very effectively, but it's a very good pedal."
interviewer: "How much of 'Marooned' is improvised?"
Gilmour: "Pretty much all of it. I probably took three or four passes at it and took the best bits out of each." - Guitar World, February 1993