Pink Floyd.......as musicians

I'm not stalking or anything - I just HAD to like the Ringo part

 

I have always found Nick Mason's playing to be hypnotic. Just perfect>

 

A quick listen to Floyd live, from the WYWH boxset, shows Gilmour not being a great/interesting improviser, imo, which reduces his status to far below Hendrix, Allman, Garcia, Page, Beck and many more from the 60's. I love David's tone, his sweet touch...but Jeff Beck can do what DG does, plus tons more!

Nick's a great drummer....he's just not a power drummer. He's like Gregg Allman on organ; fits the music perfectly, but not a soloist.

Waters is a decent bass player, but no Chris Squire, JPJ or Entwhistle. His talent is clearly in songwriting, when compared to his bass playing.

Wright is a fantastic keyboardist...with him in a band, who needs an orchestra?

 

I think Waters and Mason perform perfectly as timekeepers. Overall, I don't think keyboardists get the credit they deserve unless they are over the top like the Wakeman's of the world. I can't even imagine PF without Wright any more than I could imagine Deep Purple without Jon Lord.

Anyone that thinks Gilmour is anything other than brilliant should catch one of his solo concerts. While I love to watch guitarists like Bonamassa, no one evokes pure emotion from a guitar like DG!

 

I can not answer the question because I do not have the technical skills to do so, except for Mason, know something about drums... not much but enough.
For the success of a band is more important, that the musician fits into the band's philosophy than its potential virtuosity, the right man in the right place.
The punk gave us this perpective with more detail and evidence. For me Wright was the most gifted of all, as musician and Mason on the other end is being underrated here, He's a discreet man who does his work, is competent, skilled and he's perfectly fitted into the band's sound... like Charlie Watts for the Stones.
For example Brufford and Peart are better but they would be best for the Floyd's career?

 

Glen started as a sesssion player. He is a musician's musician.

 

Agreed. Part of what made Ringo great was that he knew what to play, and when. He wasn't a busy drummer 99% of the time. He served the song. So did Mason.

Bob Ezrin was all about having a hit album with THE WALL, and disco was IT in '79. Brick Part II, Run Like Hell, etc., had to be pounding and relentless. That was the goal, and the goal was realized. In any event, there simply isn't room for big fills on those tracks. I think the drum/bass entrance on Run Like Hell is incredible.

Mason plays an incredible 3/4(or 12/8) on The Thin Ice. Contrary to popular misconception, playing a medium to fast tempo is simple. Playing something slowly like The Thin Ice or In The Flesh and having it be rock solid and not speeding up during fills is difficult.

Omar Hakim and John Robinson play a simple disco 4/4 (with accents) on Daft Punk's Get Lucky. Anyone want to call those guys out?


Dan

 

Haha I know. But I was serious! Ringo was interesting and he grooved. Mason is just plodding and boring.

 

I agree with the highlighted text, but I disagree on Mason. There are a lot of drummer who serve the song who I find fascinating and could listen to all day...Ringo, Dave Rowntree, Eds Chesters, Mick Avory, Charlie Watts, and more. But by the end of the 70s, Mason does little more than plod along as a metronome. I've been a PF fan for ages and I'm a musician myself, but I've never understood the appeal of his drumming. To each their own.

 

Great musicians. Not so great songwriters. Very hit and miss with me.

 

They are not as good technically as Yes or King Crimson, but for songwriters I would put them right after The Beatles. David is my favorite slow/tasteful player, though.

 

Just watched Live at Pompeii last night. Mason was most entertaining with his hard hitting tribal style drumming, nothing bad to say about him.

 

This is true. Often, as with guitar, it is the slower more precise stuff that is much more difficult to play.
When I am interviewing drummers for a band, the two most important things I look for is how well they can keep time on simple stuff that is slow, and how well they control dynamics.
I always try to find guys who can play everything they play loud softly. Beating the hell out of drums and being able to keep time is easy. Keeping good time while playing softly is very hard, especially doing tom rolls. Because it is very difficult to swing a drum stick rapidly from a snare to a tom or tom to another tom and strike the next drum softly. It is very difficult to get from a to b then hit b very quietly. Well trained drummers can do a John Bonham solo in small VFW and not get kicked out.

 

Haha, I feel it's exactly the opposite!

I wouldn't go that far, personally. Waters is a damn fine writer, but he relied too much on the whiny, complaining, personal stuff from Animals on and even though I love those albums, it does grate as well. Gilmour I've never rated as much of a writer although he's had his moments.

 

I actually thought that Syd Barrett was a decent guitar player. Whether he was better(or not) is not really important. David Gilmore learned his parts very well. I always thought that Syd sounded a lot like "surf guitar" in some of his riffs.

 

I've always considered Syd and that era of Floyd to be the most overrated thing. Never understood everyone going gaga over him. I enjoy the music but the way some people talk about him baffles me.

 

Ahead of Ray Davies, Bob Dylan, Jagger/Richards, Neil Young, and a couple dozen other writers whose forte was actually writing songs, and not just creating sonic soundscapes?

 

You left out Pete Townshend, Andy Partridge, et al. Putting Floyd on that same level is just a weeeeeeee bit of a stretch, no?

 

I think it had more to do with the whole"Psychedelic Madcap" persona that attracted some to him. I am not sure that Pink Floyd would have had the decades of success if Syd had remained with the band. David Gilmore deserves the credit for everything past the "Piper at the Gated of Dawn" album. I always thought that he was a more all around musician than Syd was.

 

Agreed on the last bit. Mick Avory is an underrated drummer if ever there was one.


Dan

 

For me there was just something about Syd that was magical.
It's almost like what it would sound like if a child picked up the guitar for the first time and just started playing but somehow was able to connect the dots with the sounds to make a cohesive song. A very good one at that. It's stuff that most guitar players scoff at because it goes against everything they were taught. Only Syd could make most of those chord changes work.
It's useless to try to compare him to some one like David Gilmour or more technically adept players because it was like Syd was playing by a different set of "rules".

 

Gilmour is one of the all-time greats.
Roger, Rick & Nick were all great in Pink Floyd.

 

Agreed regarding Mason on 'The Wall' - I also really enjoy his drumming on 'Hey You', probably the only song on the LP that required moving between tempos and negotiating a few odd measures (aside from 'Mother' which of course he didn't play on). It's a great example of his playing.

 

It's not complex in terms of execution but it is a complex melody and a daring move for a pop rock group. Red Hot Chili Peppers did that in Ethiopia and the first thing I heard people saying was that the song was sounding "off" or "out of tempo". Money is a song that has a lot of jazz elements onto it, including the time signature. When you're a rock musician that listened to 4/4 all your life and that's your language, getting out of your comfort zone and composing one of your biggest hits in "exotic" time signatures is a quite bold statement and needs a lot of music listening. For that, I respect Roger for the riff.
There's a lot of quite hard songs to play on guitar or drums that are dumb simple and unsophisticated in structural terms. Money is a simple song to play on the guitar (may be a little more challenging for drumming beginners) but it's quite sophisticated, has some good melodies, features two distinct tempos that act as motifs inside the song structure and has some metalanguages going on in terms of subject, with the jazzy sound working perfectly as a metaphor for high life and corruption.