Some of the greatest songs of all time were never meant to be experienced in the same way in concert. As much as people love the idea of seeing a concert and hearing their favourite acts pull off the impossible, there will always be a little bit of disappointment when someone goes up onstage and doesn’t sound as perfect as the record. That’s what gives a lot of musicians their charm, but Roger Waters knew that there were some songs that were never meant to leave the confines of the studio.
Looking at Pink Floyd’s body of work, though, you can see why there would be some trouble translating everything in a live setting. The entirety of Dark Side of the Moon is a fantastic experience to listen to, but even when the band covered the whole thing live for the record Pulse, it was understood that they had some help onstage, whether it was bringing in choirs on some songs or using tape loops for ‘On the Run’. It’s still entertaining, but how does anyone expect four people to do that?
That’s not even how Syd Barrett felt when Pink Floyd first began. He knew that some songs were bound to sound different whenever he walked onstage, and even in the days when he had his musical bearings, there was no way that a song like ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ was going to sound exactly the same as the studio version because of how strange it was on record.
The art of taking chances had only begun in the 1960s, though, and Waters would have even more ground to cover when leading Floyd after Barrett. ‘Echoes’ was bound to sound different every time they played the ambient section, and listening to Live at Pompeii, their version of ‘A Saucerful of Secrets’ sounds like a completely different song compared to what they had done on the album of the same name.
It was all about creative ingenuity for Waters whenever the band played, but that was all down to listening to The Beatles back in the day. Most of Pink Floyd were still wet behind the ears at the time, so when listening to the Fab Four create Sgt Pepper, they knew they no longer had to be limited to what they could do with the traditional guitar, bass, keyboards and drums whenever they got onstage.
Because if ‘A Day in the Life’ could be considered a classic without being played live, Waters knew the playing field had changed, saying in 1967, “We don’t think it’s dishonest because we can’t play live what we play on records. It’s a perfectly OK scene. Can you imagine somebody trying to play ‘A Day In The Life’? Yet that’s one of the greatest tracks ever made. A lot of stuff on our LP is completely impossible to do live.”
While Waters did eventually find love for the more primitive recording techniques found on John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band album, there was always a hope for Floyd to make something even more extravagant. ‘Wish You Were Here’ could easily be played on an acoustic guitar and no one would bat an eye, but would ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ have that same kind of impact if it didn’t have those four magical notes that sound like they are being played from the other side of the world?
Like it or not, this was Pink Floyd creating art, and they weren’t about to sacrifice their creative muse if it meant playing songs that people could enjoy live. Waters had already started to outgrow the euphoria of performing to huge crowds by the end of the 1970s anyway, so it was much better for him to treat the studio like his own musical playground.
