# We don't need no education
On June the 17th, 1981,
"The Wall" came crashing down on London's Earl's Court
ending the most ambitious rock extravaganza the world had ever seen.
It just always seemed like a good idea
to give people something a bit more theatrical and dramatic
than four guys on stage playing instruments and singing.
#...leave the kids alone.
Pink Floyd were of a new generation
who believed that rock had no boundaries musically or visually.
Everything was possible.
It was an amazing amalgam of different tools in media.
Nobody'd done that at the time.
You feel the repercussions now... still.
# So where were the spiders
Whole new worlds were created as rock pushed on into unexplored territory.
Within arts generally, there's always the feeling that one has to innovate
and reevaluate and then move on.
So it happened in rock.
#...and should we crush his sweet hands?
# Make me a deal and make it straight
# All signed and sealed, I´ll take it
Out went the rule book, and in came a spirit of experiment.
As opposed to just here's the voice, here's the chorus, here's the solo,
and here's the bridge, and then good night.
It was all kind of... you didn't know what was gonna happen next.
# ...tryin' to make the big time.
# I know what I like...
No longer was it boy meets girl,
now it was boy meets ideas.
The gates had been kicked open.
It was a childhood, you know, it was exploration, experimentation,
and sniff and smell everything.
From its simple beginnings, rock had become theatrical spectacle
on a grand scale.
This was a musical earthquake
that was to shake every rock act that followed.
This was the Second Age of Rock.
It's 1967, and rock music is about to undergo a revolution,
although you wouldn't have known it from the charts.
But then, BMI signed a band that would change British musical landscape,
# Arnold Layne...
their name was Pink Floyd.
# ...had a strange hobby
# Collecting clothes
# Moonshine washing line
# They suit him fine
Arnold Layne, the band's first single,
was the story of an underwear stealing transvestite,
not an obvious subject for immediate chart success.
# ...a tall mirror
If you look, certainly, at the headlines around at the time,
they were saying the "Pinky Kinkies" and there was...
talk of whether BBC was gonna ban it and all this stuff.
So I guess it's part and parcel, really, of that sense that
Pink Floyd was all gleefully pushing the envelope a little bit.
# Oh, Arnold Layne
# It's not the same...
Pink Floyd consisted of Roger Waters, Richard Wright, Nick Mason,
and their maverick song-writer, Syd Barrett,
an art school student from Cambridge.
# Why can't you see?
No one in those days would have written a song like that except for Syd.
I suppose that should've given us an indication, this...
this guy's brain is rather different to ours.
Syd and the band defined a new kind of rock,
psychedelic, mind-expanding.
This was rock meets the Mad Hatter's tea party.
I was passionately in love with the writing of Syd Barrett, from Pink Floyd.
There was something slightly not-quite-with-us about Syd
that really appealed to me strongly. There was a Peter Pan quality about him.
Pink Floyd's second single, "See Emily Play",
allegedly told the story of young aristocrat
known as the psychedelic schoolgirl.
# Emily tries but misunderstands
# She often inclined to borrow somebody's dreams till tomorrow
# There is no other day
# Let's try it another way
# You'll lose your mind and play
# Free games for may
# See Emily play
It had 'hit' written all over it.
Suddenly it took the band from being a sort of underground band
and turned them into a 'top of the pops' pop phenomenon.
And that meant that there was an awful lot of idiot questions,
and an awful lot of pressure on Syd to do interviews.
Why has it all got to be so terribly loud? I just can't bear it.
I happen to have grown up in the String Quartet, which is a bit softer,
so, why has it got to be so loud?
Well, I don't guess it has to be but that's just the way we like it.
# See Emily play
"See Emily Play" was a top ten hit,
and Syd and the Floyd became household names.
But Syd didn't want to be a household name.
I think by the time we got on "Top of the Pops" Syd was already...
struggling with the whole concept of being a commercial rock musician
rather than being an artist.
What Syd wanted was a return to the band's early experimental days,
when he created musical happenings.
Syd was responsible for "Interstellar Overdrive"
which was improvised, lengthy, no lyrics, atmospheric,
and actually ran through a whole series of musical ideas in one piece.
"Interstellar Overdrive" became the centerpiece of the band's live show,
it lasted anything from 10 to 30 minutes.
It's built like a piece of experimental music.
These four musicians, even the drummer, really are just exploring and seeing
what they could do.
So it's rock music, but it's not rock music
really as it'd been understood as rock music prior to that point.
There are analogies you can draw between that
and what the Velvet Underground were doing at that point in New York.
The Velvet Underground were testing the limits of rock
in a way no other band had ever dared.
# White light, White light goin' messin' up my mind
# White light, and don't you know its gonna make me go blind
# White heat, aww white heat it tickle me down to my toes
# White light, Ooo have mercy while I'll have it goodness knows
# White light, White light goin' messin' up my brain
# White light, Aww white light its gonna drive me insane
# White heat, Aww white heat it tickle me down to my toes
# White light, Aww white light I said now goodness knows, do it
The Velvets were formed by singer and songwriter Lou Reed,
guitarist Sterling Morrison,
drummer Maureen "Moe" Tucker,
and British viola player, John Cale.
We put three-chord rock into one-chord rock, you know,
we just had a drone through everything.
And one of the things that the drone did for a lot of the songs is that
it created a tapestry for the ideas we were very insistent on, breaking rules.
The Velvet Underground used New York's dark underbelly,
with its mean streets and drug deals, as raw material for their songs.
This was unheard of in rock music at the time.
# I'm waiting for my man
# Twenty-six dollars in my hand
# Up to Lexington, 125
# Feel sick and dirty, more dead than alive
# I'm waiting for my man
There was a big deal about what we were writing about
but in novels it would be a big nothing.
It was just really absurd.
The godfather of American pop-art, Andy Warhol, was intrigued,
and went to see the band at the aptly named, "Café Bizarre".
# Oh pardon me sir, it's the furthest from my mind
He liked what he saw
and invited the Velvets to hang out and rehearse at the Factory,
his Manhattan studio.
He also decided to become the band's manager.
We're sponsoring a new band, it's called the Velvet Underground.
Well, since I don’t really believe in painting anymore
I thought it would be a nice way
of combining music and art and films all together.
And the whole thing is being auditioned tomorrow at 9:00.
And if it works out it might be very glamorous.
# First thing you learn is you always gotta wait
The audition was provocatively held at the annual dinner
of the New York Society for Clinical Psychiatry,
at the swish, little Monaco Hotel.
Warhol had been asked to give a lecture,
but instead, decided to give the Velvet's announcing.
He brought everybody from the Factory down, including us.
But I don't remember whether we played
or people just run around interviewing psychiatrists.
One commentator described the night as "shock treatment"
administered by the Velvets to an increasingly nervous group of shrinks.
# I'm waiting for my man
With Warhol now in charge of the asylum he landed the Velvets a recording deal,
but insisted on adding his new discovery, German singer, Nico, to the line-up.
# And what costume shall the poor girl wear
# To all tomorrow's parties
Andy made everything possible.
I don't know if I ever would've been able to keep writing what I was writing
if it hadn't been for Andy and his...
umbrella of protection and his approval.
When we got a record contract, which was really based on him,
I could write whatever and they wouldn't change it
or try to change it because Andy was there.
There was no problem with the songs or what they were about
because the people of the record company couldn't stand the music,
they wouldn't listen to the records in the first place.
And in the studio, the engineers didn't like it, they would leave.
And say, "I don't have to listen to this shit."
In late 1966, the band recorded their debut album...
in just two days.
During the Velvet's stay at the Factory,
the band became part of Warhol's traveling circus
known as "The Exploding Plastic Inevitable".
Warhol came up with the idea of projecting images over the band.
There were four projectors, all projecting different kind of film.
There were slides. There was the mirror ball overhead
on which was shone several different coloured pin lights.
So, it was swimming in stars and
the one wall was covered with multiple images.
And then Nico would stand in white in the middle of this darkened stage.
The Velvet Underground performances
became the most elaborate multi-media show
rock music had ever experienced.
It seemed the very natural thing to do
even though it hadn't been done before.
Lou and Andy wanted to break the boundaries
but they didn't know exactly where that was gonna take them so
it took on the form of experimentation.
By creating a total environment, music, art and film, all combined,
the Velvets and Andy Warhol were to sow the seeds
for the next generation of rock.
It was that... The Velvet Underground sold very few records
but just about everybody who bought one of their records
later went out and started a band.
Pink Floyd's manager, Peter Jenner, had heard a tape of the Velvet Underground,
and saw his band as the British equivalent.
# Lime and limpid green, a second scene
# A fight between the blue you once knew.
# Floating down, the sound resounds
# Around the icy waters underground.
Like the Velvet Underground, the Floyd were about breaking the barriers
between art and music.
Lights were very important
and encouraged the idea of what they were doing as being art,
rather than just being a rock band.
# Neptune, Titan, Stars can frighten.
Like the Velvet Underground before them,
Pink Floyd understood how manipulating their stage presentation
could add to the power of their music.
Why the Floyd became so big so quickly?
It was because what they were doing
was culturally and musically different and radical.
In a context of a socially radical and political time.
And when the lights and music of Pink Floyd
were combined with the drug of the moment, LSD,
rock entered its psychedelic phase.
But LSD was also to be the undoing of lead singer, Syd Barrett,
who indulged in ever increasing quantities
to cope with the band's success.
As the drugs took over,
Syd wrote about his world falling apart around him.
# It's awfully considerate of you to think of me here
# And I'm much obliged to you for making it clear
# That I'm not here.
'Jugband Blues' is Syd Barrett's kind of last word
within the context of the Floyd.
It's really the sound of someone going mad.
The absence of structure and the idea of pushing the envelope
by that point has turned absolutely crazy.
So it's about being disjointed from oneself.
# ...instead dressed in red
# And I'm wondering who could be writing this song.
It's so sort of disjointed and chaotic. And on a whim, in Jugband Blues,
what sounds like a salvation army band
suddenly sort of intrudes on the whole thing.
If you want to understand what it's like loosing your mind,
'Jugband Blues' isn't a bad place to start.
Syd's days in the Floyd were numbered.
His erratic behaviour led to a group decision
to employ one of his old friends, David Gilmour,
to fill in on Syd's off days.
It was awkward, I mean, initially it was me adding on.
I became a fifth member, initially, for a few weeks.
So that part wasn't too bad.
I'd just come along, play a bit, sing a bit and uh...
Syd would sit there and play a bit and sing a bit too.
He wasn't really functioning particularly well.
# And what exactly is a dream
# And what exactly is a joke.
On the 15th of January, 1968,
Syd Barrett played the last concert of his life with the Pink Floyd,
on a faded pier in Hastings, on the South coast.
But although Syd was gone, he had kick-started a revolution
that would take rock music to a different planet.
# Let's try it another way.
# Ground Control to Major Tom
A planet inhabited by a struggling young singer called David Bowie,
who'd been watching every move Syd had made.
Syd Barrett probably started an idea in David's head.
He definitely found not only the music inspirational but...
what actually had happened to Syd. The way he walked away from the Pink Floyd,
the way he went slowly mad and retreated into the background.
For sure, it was one of his great, great inspirations.
# This is Ground Control to Major Tom
# You've really made the grade
But Syd Barrett was only part of the mix for David Bowie,
as he morphed from one character to another in his search for success.
I wanted to make a mark,
and I didn't know quite how to do it.
And it took me all the 60s to try every thing that I could think of,
in terms of theater and arts and music.
# Ground Control to Major Tom
# Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong
# Can you hear me, Major Tom?
# Can you hear...
# am I floating round my tin can
Although Bowie had a novelty hit with "Space Oddity",
real success was still proving elusive.
But then, in 1971, he went to New York
and met a band that would provide him with a new direction.
The Velvet Underground became very important to me
as I felt there was something so expressive
about that sense of otherness.
And the Underground were, I thought, the most incredible sound.
There was this sort of mixture between rock and avant-garde.
And the combination was so brutal.
Inspired by the Velvet Underground, Bowie's first move in the new decade
was to create a rock band with a difference.
He called it "The Hype",
and it was to be the turning point in Bowie's career.
We played a gig at the Roundhouse in London.
We decided, let's do something different,
let's not just go out wearing plaid shirts.
Let's not go up on the stage wearing jeans,
and having long hair and, you know, doing what everyone else was doing.
# I'm waiting for the man
Hype was much more rock oriented than anything that he'd done before.
And clearly in the songs, and perhaps in the stage presentation,
was influenced by what he'd heard of the Velvet Underground.
Most obviously, one of the songs that Hype covered was "Waiting for the Man".
# I'm waiting for the man
But even a Velvet's number
couldn't rescue the evening for Bowie and his band of rockers.
# ...what you doin' uptown?
We weren't even booed.
It was really just the most depressive night of our lives.
'Cause we thought we were kind of, you know, smart,
but nobody even looked at the stage.
So it was all to no avail, but that was a wonderful show inasmuch that
then I knew that theater was for me after that.
I think that this was a very pivotal evening for David.
It is my theory that this is the night it all started.
Hype was definitely the precursor to Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
# Ziggy played guitar,
# jammin' good with Weird and Gilly,
# The spiders from Mars...
David Bowie's most iconic creation to date was called Ziggy Stardust.
The character of Ziggy Stardust himself,
this messianic, space-age, plastic rock 'n roller
is obviously created out of many, many different bits and pieces,
and there are all sorts of different people,
characters real and fictional in there.
But Syd is certainly in there. This glamourous, British,
slightly unstable rock 'n roller.
And also, of course, Lou Reed and the Velvet are definitely in there
in terms of this very cool, street-wise rock.
# ...and snow white tan
# So where were the spiders while the fly tried to break our balls
# Just a beer light to guide us
# So we bitched about his fans and should we crush his sweet hands?
To immortalise his new creation,
Bowie created a concept album for Ziggy.
The album began with an apocalyptic vision of the future.
The slow, ominous drumbeat at the beginning of "Five years"
is one of the most iconic album opening moments in rock history.
And Five Years is a fascinating song.
On the surface of it, of course, is the story of society
and interaction breaking down as the news comes
that the Earth is going to die in five years time.
# Pushing thru the market square, so many mothers crying
# News had just come over, we had five years left to sigh in
But on another level, you almost get the impression of Bowie/Ziggy
calling together his disciples.
All these dispossessed, lonely, wounded characters.
All being drawn in towards Bowie.
# ...I think she would have killed them
# A soldier with a broken arm, fixed his stare to the wheels of a Cadillac
# A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest,
# and a queer threw up at the sight of that
With Ziggy, Bowie now had a vision
which he hoped would give him the success he so craved.
But there was still one thing missing.
# Smiling and waving and looking so fine...
We handed 'Ziggy Stardust' in and RCA didn't hear a single on it so...
they asked us to go back in and David came up with the song 'Starman',
and they thought it was great.
# Didnt know what time it was the lights were low oh how
# I leaned back on my radio oh oh
# Some cat was layin down some rock 'n roll lotta soul, he said
# Then the loud sound did seem to fade
# Came back like a slow voice on a wave of phase
# That weren't no d.j. that was hazy cosmic jive
'Starman' made Bowie... a star.
# There's a starman waiting in the sky
# He'd like to come and meet us
# But he thinks he'd blow our minds
# There's a starman waiting in the sky
# He's told us not to blow it
# Cause he knows its all worthwhile
# He told me: Let the children...
Ziggymania hit Britain.
The tear-shaped mascara and a little lippy
had put the glamour into rock.
# There's a starman waiting in the sky
# He'd like to come and meet us
# But he thinks he'd blow our minds
And while Bowie had found his way, Pink Floyd were still experimenting,
searching for a sound that would recapture some of the success
Barrett had brought the band.
We were looking for direction and we didn't want to compromise
the art that we were making.
We wanted to do longer pieces that were connected by ideas,
and that's what we were looking at.
It's just on the first note.
- Say that again. - I went out in one place, didn't I?
With the band's album 'Meddle'
and its 23-minute extended track, 'Echoes',
Pink Floyd found their signature sound.
I was in the studio, playing the piano, and, maybe it was me,
maybe it was Roger, maybe it was Dave, we said,
"I wonder what the piano would sound like going through a 'Leslie'."
- Rick started plonking on the piano... - "Wow! What a great noise."
And they had a tape running and that is the beginning of 'Echoes'.
It's Rick just sitting there, mucking about...
The grand design of 'Echoes'
suited its performance in the dramatic Roman amphitheater at Pompey.
# Overhead the albatross hangs motionless upon the air
# And deep beneath the rolling waves
# In labyrinths of coral caves
# The echo of a distant time
# Comes willowing across the sand
# And everything is green and submarine
Pink Floyd, no longer improvising,
created a cinematic epic into which the listener could escape.
# And no-one knows the wheres or whys
# But something stirs and something tries
# And starts to climb towards the light
The audience feels that they're going on some sort of... a journey with us.
I hesitate to use the word "trip".
'Cause the other sort of trip wasn't where we were at.
Having found musical direction with the album 'Meddle',
Pink Floyd's next project would take them into a new level entirely.
'Dark Side' develops what 'Echoes' did,
which is taking one very long piece of music
and seeing what you can do with it.
It just so happens that in the course of that long piece of music on 'Dark Side',
you get a lot of great and memorable songs...
which stand on their own.
# Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
# You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
# Kicking around...
'Dark Side of the Moon', with its lyrics about the pressure of modern life,
struck a chord with almost everyone who heard it.
It became a rock classic.
# Tired of lying in the sunshine...
It's really about how the machinery of living
comes between us and our potential to develop as human beings, and grow.
It's about the influences that prevent our individual development.
Although individual tracks explored money, war and time,
the overriding theme of the album was insanity.
Lunacy is at the heart of that album.
But it would be hard to make a whole album
about the many pressures in one's life that can drive one to lunacy...
at that point, without Syd being in there, somewhere.
# The lunatic is on the grass
# Remembering games and daisy chains and laughs
# Got to keep the loonies on the path
# The lunatic is in the hall
It's very easy to sing those lyrics with passion, standing on stage,
and it's very easy to understand why all those lips moving in unison out there
could totally understand what it was expressing.
'Dark Side of the Moon' shifted millions and billions of units worldwide.
Pink Floyd, once the darlings of the underground,
were now mainstream rock superstars.
# And if the dam breaks open many years too soon
# And if there is no room upon the hill
# And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too
# I'll see on the dark side of the moon
When we finished the album we had no idea how successful it'd be,
but I think we all said, "That's good.
"We've finally done something that we can all be very proud of."
To complement the album, Floyd moved from their early light shows,
into large scale theatrical spectacles.
# Money get away
From 'Dark Side' on,
I wanted to get away from the visual aspects of the show being abstract,
and not illustrate what the songs were actually about.
And so when we started using films,
it was in order to sort of drive home the message.
# ...with both hands and make a stash
# new car, caviar, four star daydream
# think I'll buy me a football team
'Dark Side' was really the beginning of proper staging.
A big screen behind us, in a circular screen,
which was considered to be wonderfully extraordinary,
we had film running on the screen behind,
and every now and again, there'd be a few explosions, or fireworks,
and in particular the crashing plane.
Anything that could be done to add something to the music.
But spectacular as the Floyd shows were,
the band seemed dwarfed by their theatrics.
Not something that could be said of David Bowie.
On the 17th and 18th of August, 1972, Bowie embarked
on two of the most ambitious and influential shows in rock history
at the Rainbow Theater in London's Finsbury Park.
To help him, he requested the assistance of his old mime teacher from the 60s.
I got a call from David Bowie's wife.
She explained if I would like to go to London to stage
a show which was to be called 'Ziggy Stardust'.
Which for me was quite shocking.
It wasn't the David Bowie that I knew, it was a very rock 'n roll David Bowie.
# ...we don't talk much, we just ball and play
# But then we move like tigers on vaseline
# You know the bitter comes out better on a stolen guitar
# You're the blessed, we're the spiders from Mars
# So come on, come on, we've really got a good thing going
# Well come on, well come on, if you think we're gonna make it
# You better hang on to yourself
Bowie wanted the Rainbow concert
to be the ultimate expression of everything he'd learned so far.
David had absorbed so much.
He just took so much from the theatrical elements
many of which I had introduced him to.
The Rainbow shows, in a sense, were
a synthesis of everything that Bowie had worked on up until that point.
Along with the music itself, there was mime, dance, choreography,
there were projections...
# ...five years, stuck on my eyes
# Five years, what a surprise
When I saw that Rainbow show,
it was as if a giant window had opened in front of me,
and it was like, "Yes! This is what the future looks like."
No beards, no flairs*, no grubby grandad vests.
By comparison with the standard issue rock 'n roll show at the time,
this was amazing.
# Five years, that's all we've got
David's a very smart man, and he's bringing in things from everywhere.
If there was music on Pluto and he heard it,
I'm sure he'd work it into his next record.
By special request from Bowie himself,
that night's entertainment also included rock's newest sensation,
# I tried but I could not find a way
# Looking back all I did was look away
I think that was such a good pairing, with us and him.
And we were so different musically
that there was no conflict of interest going on.
And he was very vocally appreciative and supportive of all we were doing.
# She's the sweetest queen I've ever seen...
Roxy Music and Bowie were the perfect combination.
Bowie had turned inventiveness into an art form
and Roxy had just released one of the most innovative singles ever produced.
A single that was to prove a much needed antidote
to gray 1970s Britain.
When we went in to record 'Virginia Plane', I felt I was...
the rhythm guitarist in the Velvet Underground, or something.
The whole thing starts with...
some 'fuzz' thing with the section ...also on the base,
but then when I come in with the rhythm guitar...
# Make me a deal and make it straight
# All signed and sealed, I'll take it
# To Robert E. Lee I'll show it
# I hope and pray he don't blow it 'cause
# We've been around a long time just try try try tryin' to
# Make the big time...
That song itself is a kind of rare collage of ideas of...
almost free association of things which appealed to me...
# Take me on a roller coaster
# Take me for an airplane ride
# Take me for a six days wonder but don´t you
# Don't you throw my pride aside besides
# What's real and make believe
# Baby Jane's in Acapulco we are flyin' down to Rio
Roxy were radical in just about every department.
The idea that a group like Roxy Music could arrive,
put out something like 'Virginia Plain' for their first single,
and have a hit with it, that is an achievement which
definitely rebounds to the great honour of all concerned.
# Far beyond the pale horizon
# Some place near the desert strand
# Where my Studebaker takes me
# That's where I'll make my stand but wait
# Can't you see that holzer mane?
# What's her name Virginia Plain
Roxy Music were the quintessential art school band.
Bryan Ferry, the group's singer and songwriter,
had studied at Newcastle with the English equivalent of Andy Warhol,
artist Richard Hamilton.
He had a reputation amongst progressive thinking art students
of being the absolute guru of modern "cool".
What you tended to learn from Richard was not how to be an artist,
but how to think about art.
Ferry was the latest in a long line of art students turned musicians.
All the artistic energy that I was previously directing into paintings,
it was all now... all of that impulse was going into music, into the songs.
# I would wak a thousand miles...
To showcase his ideas, Ferry formed a band of likeminded individuals,
including Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera and Andy Mackay.
As a collective, they were focused on pushing the boundaries
of what a rock band could be.
We did have an artistic vision.
We all knew about the history of 20th century art and performance,
and we somehow flattered ourselves that it could be got into rock music.
# Blue suns and grey lagoons
# Silver starfish with honeymoons
# All these and more to choose
Rock 'n roll was about what you play and how you look...
the whole thing needed a bit more theater and a bit more fun.
And that's uh... that's what we did, set out to do that.
#... strange goodbyes
In the summer of 1972, the band released their first album,
adorned with a glamourous 50s style pin-up.
Widely regarded as one of the greatest rock debuts ever made,
it was simply called 'Roxy Music'.
It was a musical collage of sounds and moods from the past into the future.
Roxy Music were bringing in all the tone colours
of Andy Mackay's saxophone and oboe.
I mean, when did you last hear an oboe in a rock band?
And Eno with his synthesizers,
they seemed both retro and futurist.
This is a 1950s revival show taking place in the year 2020.
# You've got me girl on the run around run around
# You've got me all around town
On 'Ladytron', that's probably the best example of Eno treating my guitar.
If I just play it straight on this guitar is...
which is one of the beginning bits. But once it went through his synthesizers
it sounded like something that came from the planet Zorg, or something.
# Lady if you want to find a lover
# Then you look no further
# For I'm gonna be your only
# Searching at the start of the season
# And my only reason
# Is that I'll get to you
One of the reasons why Roxy became so popular,
not just with kind of serious, kind of "muso" types,
but with real, high street teen stormtroopers of glam,
was because they offered this imaginary world and invited you to join it.
# I´ll find some way of connection...
Roxy Music, with the way they looked, the way they dressed,
and the physicality they brought to their performance,
that was all the theater you needed.
But there was a band out there, led by Peter Gabriel,
who thought they could push rock theater just one step further
when they mixed the sinister world of English suburbia,
with a dash of Syd Barrett whimsy,
and a dive into the dressing odd-box.
Peter would put on a hat for "I Know What I Like",
and would go around the stage pretending to be the lawn mower.
He always did it in such a way where people would say,
"What's he doing? Is that really a lawn mower?"
You know, he was never literal, which was a good thing.
# There's always been Ethel:
# "Jacob, wake up! you've got to tidy your room now."
# And then Mister Lewis:
# "Isn't it time that he was out on his own?"
# Over the garden wall, two little lovebirds - cuckoo to you!
# Keep them mowing blades sharp...
# I know what I like, and I like what I know
Where Genesis' music and Gabriel's song writing
link up to the Syd Barrett tradition
is their use of imagery derived from
that cozy suburban English banality gone seriously wrong.
The underlying strangeness of English "normality".
Genesis were formed in an English public school by Peter Gabriel,
Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks.
They were later joined by the drummer, Phil Collins.
Their early days were marked by a distinctly understated stage presence.
We were very boring... to look at. That's the first thing.
That's why our albums never had pictures on them.
And we were very quick to understand that we looked like everybody else.
It felt I had this huge responsibility of being the link between
what the band were trying to do and what the audience wanted.
And I had to, somehow, get the two to connect.
Gabriel, like Bowie and Floyd before him,
knew he had to reinvent Genesis to counter the image problem.
His band were in for a shock.
I remember he walked on stage,
and we were all kind of just, you know, playing along...
And it's like...
"What the h--? What is that?"
And Peter Gabriel comes out in a red dress and a fox's head.
You know, you kind of do a double take, as if...
as if the next turn's come on before you've finished.
"Comedians, come on! Comedians, come on! We haven't finished here."
# I've been waiting here so long
So there was a deathly silence when I walked out,
and I thought, "Oh, this is interesting. I'll try some more of this."
There was a bloody argument backstage afterwards, you know, like...
"We demand to be told this thing."
We'd liked to have known, but he said, "If I'd told you, you'd said
"Don't. You can't!""
The next week, Peter was on the front page of a makeup magazine,
so we thought, we're onto something here.
With a new line in stage costumes,
Peter Gabriel and the band produced their most successful album to date,
'Foxtrot', which included
the haunting and surreal epic, 'Supper's Ready'.
'Supper's Ready' began with these very atmospheric chords...
and it seemed a good place to put this story of what had happened to me...
a strange and frightening experience.
I was trying to piece things together lyrically that would tell a story,
or paint pictures.
# ...And it's hello babe with your guardian eyes so blue.
# Hey, my baby don't you know our love is true.
Nearly 23 minutes long, 'Supper's Ready' was one piece
made up of a number of musical sections.
# A flower?
# If you go down to Willow Farm,
# to look for butterflies, flutterbyes, gutterflies
# Open your eyes, it's full of surprise, everyone lies
# like the focks on the rocks,
# and the musical box.
There were a lot of elements of my childhood in 'Supper's Ready'.
'Bill and Ben' was the program that I watched as a 3 or 4 year old,
and there was these flower-pot men, and there was 'Weed' who
was this big, floral character.
It obviously sunk deep into my subconscious.
# We've got everything, we're growing everything,
# We've got some in
# We've got some out
# We've got some wild things floating about.
# Everyone, we're changing everyone,
# you name them all,
# We've had them here,
# And the real stars are still to appear.
In terms of the theatrical tradition in British rock, I think...
the other end of the spectrum from what Bowie and Roxy Music were doing
was Genesis.
Certainly in terms of the costumes he wore,
he took the dressing-up tendency of British rock
several stages beyond even where Bowie had gone.
By comparison with some of the stuff Gabriel wore on stage,
Bowie was dressed for a Sunday afternoon at the pub.
# Momma I want you now.
Rock theater was becoming ever more elaborate,
attracting ever larger audiences in ever bigger venues.
But this came at a price,
spectacle was replacing intimacy.
A dilemma felt even by the kings of rock theater, Pink Floyd.
I famously became very disgruntled on the road with huge audiences.
The audience was just growing exponentially
and I did feel it all got a bit out of control.
That we were being overcome by commerce.
I found myself increasingly upset by people in the audience
just going, "Argh!",
for two hours rather than listening to what we were doing.
Roger Walters' solution to the problem was radical.
He would send up the whole process
while ironically still providing the rock world
with one of the most ambitious shows in its history.
The idea formed in my mind of...
of doing a show where we would actually
physically build a wall across the front of the stage
to express my feeling of alienation from that part of the audience.
# We don't need no education
# We don't need no thought control
Released in 1979, 'The Wall' double album became a huge success,
and delivered an unexpected hit single for the band.
# Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
But not everyone was convinced by Roger Waters' stage concept.
# All in all you're just another brick in the wall.
I thought the idea was crazy, I have to say.
I loved having an audience. I thought, it's a bit illogical this.
If you're going to build a wall between the audience why bother to turn up.
Why do it anyway?
# No! don’t think I’ll need anything at all
The building of the wall went on throughout the whole first half.
And we were gradually becoming obscured.
And at the end of the first half it'd be 'Goodbye Cruel World'...
and then the last brick would go on.
# Goodbye, cruel world, I'm leaving you today
# Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
# Goodbye, all you people, there's nothing you can say
# To make me change my mind
# Goodbye
One of the most iconic moments of the performance
showed off one of Pink Floyd's best loved songs,
sung by David Gilmour from the dizzying heights
on the top of the wall.
# Come on, it's time to go
# There is no pain you are receding
# A distant ship, smoke on the horizon.
# You are only coming through in waves.
# Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying.
# I have become comfortably numb.
As the show progressed, the wall became a vast cinema screen
showing satirical animations created by caricaturist, Gerald Scarfe.
The Floyd were pushing the boundary and I loved the theatricality of their work.
Something of that excitement got into me and made want to
illustrate and enhance them visually.
Taking yourself seriously and trying to make some sort of grand spectacle
had never got as ambitious or overblown,
depending on which way you look at it,
as that before, but certainly in terms of a kind of touring show
that you can sit in an auditorium and see,
'The Wall' was almost preposterously ambitious.
When the show came to its end, the wall came crashing down,
only to be rebuilt again the next night.
It was the ultimate theatrical show that Floyd could put on, that's for sure.
Where could you go from there?
The cost of the performance was prohibitive,
and the show was seen in just four cities,
and then only in massive arenas.
Many questioned whether rock theatricality had gone a brick to far.
With 'The Wall', the great irony was that part of the inspiration
was Roger Waters' increasing distaste for the way that stadium performance
was isolating the band from the audience.
# When we grew up and went to school,
# There were certain teachers who
# Would hurt the children anyway they could
So in order to dramatise this, he created this huge theatrical spectacle
which effectively alienated the band from the audience
more effectively than anything staged by any band beforehand, ever.
# But in the town it was well known
# When they got home at night...
Rock music and performance was now light-years away
from the light shows pioneered by the Velvet Underground.
It had picked up glamour and style from David Bowie and Roxy Music,
gone surreal with Genesis,
and reached epic scale with the Pink Floyd shows.
The ideas and innovations begun in the 1960s and 70s
created a whole new dimension for popular music.
Its pioneers were the godfathers of rock.
Next week on 'Seven Ages of Rock' all bets are off
as "punk" joins the party.
To find out more about 'The Seven Ages of Rock'
and see some extra stories featuring artists in the series,
go to "bbc.co.uk/sevenages".
Transcription and synchronization by Fry.