Atom Heart Mother

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Atom Heart Mother is the fifth studio album by English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, released in 1970 by Harvest and EMI Records in the United Kingdom and Harvest and Capitol in the United States. It was recorded at Abbey Road Studios, London, England, and reached number one in the United Kingdom, and number 55 in the United States charts, and went gold in the U.S. in March 1994. A re-mastered CD was released in 1994 in the UK, and in 1995 in the US.

This was the first Pink Floyd album to be specially mixed for 4-channel quadraphonic sound as well as conventional 2-channel stereo. The SQ quadraphonic mix was released on LP in a matrix format compatible with standard stereo record players. There was also a release of the quadraphonic version in the UK in fully discrete 4-channel form on the "Quad-8" format, a 4-channel variant of the stereo 8-track tape cartridge.

Cover art

The original album cover, designed by art collective Hipgnosis, shows a cow standing in a pasture with no text nor any other clue as to what might be on the record. Some later editions have the title and artist name added to the cover. This concept was the group's reaction to the psychedelic space rock imagery associated with Pink Floyd at the time of the album's release; the band wanted to explore all sorts of music without being limited to a particular image or style of performance. They thus requested that their new album had "something plain" on the cover, which ended up being the image of the cow. Storm Thorgerson, inspired by Andy Warhol's famous "cow-wallpaper," has said that he simply drove out into a rural area near Potters Bar and photographed the first cow he saw. The cow's owner identified her name as "Lulubelle III". More cows appear on the back cover, again with no text or titles, and on the inside gatefold. Also, a pink balloon shaped like a cow udder accompanied the album as part of Capitol's marketing strategy campaign. The liner notes give a recipe for whole stuffed camel.

The album cover appears in Stanley Kubrick's film A Clockwork Orange. It is viewable on a shelf in the music shop scene.

Song summaries

The title track was to have been called "The Amazing Pudding", though Ron Geesin's original score referred to it as "Epic". Its name was changed after Geesin—who co-wrote the piece and arranged the orchestration on the recording—pointed to a copy of The Evening Standard (dated Thursday 16 July 1970), and suggested to Roger Waters that he would find a title in there. The headline was: "ATOM HEART MOTHER NAMED", a story about a woman being fitted with a nuclear powered pacemaker.

The piece is a progression from Pink Floyd's earlier instrumental pieces such as "A Saucerful of Secrets". The "Atom Heart Mother" suite takes up all of side one, and is split into six parts, featuring a full brass section and choir which take most of the lead melody lines, while Pink Floyd mainly provide the backing tracks; a reverse of the 1960s pop music practice of using orchestration as the background, and putting the rock band in front. However, there is one section where a bluesy electric guitar solo by David Gilmour takes the lead.

Critical reaction to the suite has always been mixed, and all band members have expressed negativity toward it in recent times. But they appear to have been enthusiastic about the suite in the early 1970s, taking a full brass section and choir on tour just for the purpose of performing this piece; a move which caused the tour to lose money. A later arrangement without brass or choir, and pared down from 25 minutes to 15 by omitting the "collage" sections and closing reprise of the main theme, remained in their live repertoire into 1972, performed in concerts that also previewed Dark Side of the Moon.

June 2008 saw Ron Geesin perform "Atom Heart Mother" with Italian tribute band Mun Floyd over two nights as part of the Chelsea Festival. Geesin introduced it with a history and slide show. The performances featured full choir, brass and noted cellist Caroline Dale, who has worked with David Gilmour. The second night saw Gilmour join Geesin on stage for the performance. The song was extended to over 35 minutes and received many excellent reviews.

Side two opens with three five-minute songs: one by each of the band's three resident songwriters, and closes with a suite with sound effects primarily conceived by Nick Mason, but credited to the whole group (and based mostly on musical ideas by Gilmour). Therefore, this album's concept is similar to their previous Ummagumma album, in that it features the full band in the first half, and focuses on individual members in the second half. Roger Waters contributes a folk ballad called "If" which he would play frequently at live shows in support of his Radio KAOS album, more than a decade later. This is followed by Rick Wright's brass-heavy "Summer '68", a critique of the "rock 'n' roll" lifestyle that would soon become characteristic of Pink Floyd. Next is David Gilmour's "Fat Old Sun", for which a 15 minute extended arrangement spent two years as a key part of the band's live set, and is a staple of Gilmour's various solo tours.

The final track, "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast", is divided into three segments, each with its own descriptive title, joined by dialogue and sound effects of then-roadie Alan Stiles preparing, discussing, and eating breakfast. A slightly re-worked version was performed onstage only once on 22 December 1970 at Sheffield City Hall, Sheffield, England with the band members pausing between pieces to eat and drink their breakfast.

The original LP ends with the sound of a dripping tap which continues into the inner groove, and thus plays on indefinitely.

Quadraphonic Playback

The surround sound information on matrix quadraphonic LP's can be extracted by today's audio-video receivers using the Dolby Pro Logic setting. It will not be exactly as the engineers intended, but the rear channel information will present nicely.

For this SQ LP, there is a very pronounced effect on track 1 starting at the 15:30 point. The mellotron moves back and forth from front to rear for about 2 minutes. Side two uses the surround info mostly for ambiance and is not as effective as side one.

Track listing

No.	Title	Writer(s)	Lead vocals	Length
1.	"Atom Heart Mother" I. "Father's Shout" II. "Breast Milky" III. "Mother Fore" IV. "Funky Dung" V. "Mind Your Throats, Please" VI. "Remergence"	Gilmour, Mason, Waters, Wright, Ron Geesin	Instrumental	23:44
2.	"If"	Waters	Waters	4:31
3.	"Summer '68"	Wright	Wright	5:29
4.	"Fat Old Sun"	Gilmour	Gilmour	5:22
5.	"Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast" I. "Rise and Shine" II. "Sunny Side Up" III. "Morning Glory"	Gilmour, Mason, Waters, Wright	Instrumental	13:00

Personnel

Pink Floyd

• David Gilmour – guitars, bass guitar, drums, lead vocals on "Fat Old Sun", backing vocals on "Summer '68"
• Nick Mason – drums, percussion, tape editing, tape collage, additional engineering on "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast"
• Roger Waters – bass guitar, acoustic guitar on "If", tape effects, tape collage, vocals on "If"
• Richard Wright – Hammond organ, piano, Mellotron, Farfisa Compact Duo organ,orchestration, vocals on "Summer '68"

Additional musicians

• Abbey Road Session Pops Orchestra – brass and orchestral sections
• John Alldis Choir – vocals
• Philip Jones Brass Ensemble – brass
• Alan Stiles – voice on "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast"

Production

• Peter Bown – engineering
• Ron Geesin – orchestration and co-composition on "Atom Heart Mother"
• James Guthrie – 1994 remastering
• Alan Parsons – engineering

Quotes

Atom Heart Mother is a good case, I think, for being thrown into the dustbin and never listened to by anyone ever again!... It was pretty kind of pompous, it wasn't really about anything.

- Roger Waters — Rock Over London Radio Station - 15 March 1985, for broadcast 7 April/14 April 1985.

I think both [Atom Heart Mother and Ummagumma] are pretty horrible. Well, the live disc of Ummagumma might be all right, but even that isn't recorded well.

- David Gilmour - Der Spiegel No. 23–5 June 1995

I didn't have anything, really, to do with the start of Atom Heart Mother, and when I asked them what it was about, they said they didn't know themselves. It's a conglomeration of pieces that weren't related, or didn't seem to be at the time. The picture isn't related either; in fact, it was an attempt to do a picture that was unrelated, consciously unrelated.

- Storm Thorgerson - Guitar World - February 1998

[Atom Heart Mother] was a good idea but it was dreadful. I listened to that album recently: God, it's shit, possibly our lowest point artistically. Atom Heart Mother sounds like we didn’t have any idea between us, but we became much more prolific after it.

- David Gilmour - Mojo Magazine - October 2001

I think Atom Heart Mother was a good thing to have attempted, but I don't really think the attempt comes off that well

- David Gilmour - Rolling Stone - November 2001

I wouldn't dream of performing anything that embarrassed me. If somebody said to me now: "Right...here's a million pounds, go out and play 'Atom Heart Mother'", I'd say: "You must be fucking joking... I'm not playing that rubbish!". 'Cause then I really would be embarrassed.

- Roger Waters — interviewed by Richard Skinner - BBC Radio 1 - originally broadcast: Saturday 9 June 1984

Sales chart performance

Year	Chart	Position
1970	UK Albums Chart	1
1970	Billboard Pop Albums	55
1970	Norway's album chart	13