Pictured above: Pink Floyd, 1970
Shortly after the release of Ummagumma, Pink Floyd recorded three songs for the movie Zabriskie Point in Rome. The ones included in the movie are Crumbling Land, Heart Beat, Pig Meat and a re-recording of Beset By The Creatures of the Deep called Careful With That Axe, Eugene. They headed back to London in early 1970 for rehearsals. A number of outtakes from the Zabriskie Point sessions were worked on further during these rehearsals and were properly recorded around the same time. Still in January, Roger Waters worked together with Ron Geesin to start recording the soundtrack for the documentary The Body. Songs from those sessions (one of which had the participation of the rest of Pink Floyd) were compiled with songs from the Zabriskie Point sessions and a song recorded especially for the album to form the album Embryo.
“Ya know, Embryo kinda has a bit of an accidental theme of birth, so I suppose you can call it a loose concept album if you squint hard enough”
- Richard Wright, 1971
“Honestly, Embryo is my least favorite Pink Floyd album. We just kind of cobbled something together for a quick buck and to appease the record label... There’s not much of a proper concept to it, it’s really just a collection of songs we had lying around at the time”
- Roger Waters, 2010
Embryo
01. Heart Beat, Pig Meat (3:11) [1]
02. The Red Queen (4:40) [2]
03. Baby Blue Blues (9:34) [3]
04. Chain of Life (3:59) [4]
05. Crumbling Land (4:16) [1]
06. Rain in the Country (6:03) [2]
07. Sea Shell and Stone (6:52) [3]
08. Embryo (4:42) [5]
09. Give Birth to a Smile (2:43) [4]
Released: March 9th, 1970
Track sources:
[1] - Zabriskie Point, 1970
[2] - Zabriskie Point, 1970 - 1997 reissue - Country Song (2) / Unknown Song (6)
[4] - Music from The Body, 1970
[5] - 1970 Devi/ation
Pictured above: John Lennon, 1970
Following the release of the Cold Turkey single, John Lennon took the rest of 1969 off to spend time with his wife Yoko Ono. He started 1970 by assembling a group consisting of himself on guitar, piano, and vocals, Alan White on drums, Paul Tennant on rhythm guitar and backing vocals, Dave Slater on bass, and Tim Wells on keyboard and backing vocals, and Yoko Ono on backing vocals.
“I wanted to call over Clapton, Preston, Klaus, and Ringo for the album, but they were busy at that time as you may know... so I decided to call those folks from Focal Point and Alan White to help me out instead.”
- John Lennon, 1979
Recording of John Lennon’s debut album Instant Karma! took place between January and March of 1970, albeit with the inclusion of two acoustic demos of Mean Mr. Mustard and Polythene Pam meant to pad out the tracklisting.
“Hey, if Paul can get away with a whole album that’s basically just that, why can’t I get away with a few of them myself?”
- John Lennon, 1970
The album was preceded by the release of the double A-side single Instant Karma! (We All Shine On) / Come Together on April 2nd, 1970.
Instant Karma!
01. Come Together (4:20) [1]
02. Instant Karma! (We All Shine On) (3:20) [2]
03. The Ballad of John and Yoko (2:59) [3]
04. Mean Mr. Mustard (2:05) [4]
05. Madman (3:09) [5]
06. Sun King (3:21) [6]
07. Polythene Pam (1:26) [4]
08. Cold Turkey (5:03) [2]
09. Because (2:46) [6]
10. Watching Rainbows (4:01) [7]
11. Give Peace a Chance (4:51) [2]
12. I Want You (She’s So Heavy) (7:47) [1]
Released: June 26th, 1970
Track sources:
[1] - Abbey Road, 1969
[2] - Non-album single, 1970/1969
[3] - Past Masters, Vol. 2, 1988
[4] - The Beatles, 1968 - 50th Anniversary Edition
[6] - Mix by The_Lifehouse
[7] - The Lost Album, 2017 - bootleg
Pictured above: Syd Barrett, 1969
Following his participation in Soft Machine’s Volume Two, Syd Barrett moved back to Cambridge with his girlfriend Evelyn “Iggy the Eskimo” Joyce. By then, he met the then-Pretty Things drummer John “Twink” Alder and Delivery’s bass player, Jack Monck.
“It was initially Iggy's suggestion for us to form a band with Syd. She was with us, and we went round to Syd's house and knocked on his door. We started rehearsing in his basement the next day, took all my drums round there and just started jamming. Eventually, we needed a bigger rehearsal place so we started rehearsing in my room in Cambridge, and we were knocking some of Syd's songs, and some of mine, into shape.”
- Twink, 1989
"We've played in local venues, not as much as we wanted, soon we went back to London to play in bigger venues. My manager, Peter Jenner, liked the idea of our band and wanted us to play at Hyde Park in 1969 with The Rolling Stones but we opted out. At the time we sort of played some of our new stuff and some of Pink Floyd’s old material. Twink and I wanted to do an album while Jack wasn't so committed to the idea so he left. Twink called up Steve (Peregrin Took) and we were reformed, ready to record our songs."
- Syd Barrett, 1992
Recording of Stars’ debut album formally started in December 1969 with producer Mick Farren and concluded in February of 1970. After an unsuccessful attempt to sign with Polydor, Syd called up John Lennon in hopes of perhaps making a deal with Apple Records.
“I don’t remember that phone call all that well, and in all honestly me and Syd were kind of drifting apart at that time anyways, not to mention me being busy with my own stuff, so I just gave him a number to some exec at Apple and that was it.”
- John Lennon, 1979
Stars’ debut album Lean Out Your Window was released three months after recording was concluded under Apple Records. Octopus (with B-side Ten Thousand Words in a Cardboard Box) was the only single off the album, and the album itself made little commercial impact outside of the United Kingdom and France, with a small cult following in the United States, with people like Kurt Cobain, Jeff Magnum, and Panda Bear citing the album as an influence.
Lean Out Your Window
01. Golden Hair (2:22) [1]
02. Dawn of Magic (1:43) [2]
03. The Coming of the Other One (3:37) [2]
04. Amanda (3:16) [3]
05. Three Little Piggies (3:15) [2]
06. Octopus (3:28) [4]
07. Strange Sister (3:02) [3]
08. I Caught You (2:56) [3]
09. No Man’s Land (3:03) [4]
10. Milky Way (3:07) [5]
11. Tiptoe to the Highest Hill (5:32) [2]
12. Ten Thousand Words in a Cardboard Box (4:31) [2]
13. Late Night (3:11) [4]
Released: June 3rd, 1970
Track sources:
[1] - Custom mix by Auran
[2] - Think Pink, 1970
[3] - Lone Star, 2001
[4] - The Madcap Laughs, 1970
[5] - Opel, 1988
Pictured above: King Crimson, 1970
Following the final concert of their 1969 North American tour at Filmore West in San Francisco, King Crimson was in a shaky scenario. While Robert Fripp was neither the frontman nor the primary composer, he was very much the driving force, spokesman and de-facto leader of the band, leading the band into progressively darker and more intense musical areas. In the meantime, multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald and drummer Michael Giles favored a lighter and more romantic style of music and they became increasingly more uncomfortable with their position and resigned from the band during the US tour. Robert Fripp, in an attempt to salvage what he saw as the most important parts of King Crimson, offered to resign himself in order for them to stay, but McDonald and Giles declared that the band was “more him than them” and that they, therefore, should be the ones to leave.
In a last-ditch attempt to keep them in the band for as long as possible, he convinced them to stick around for one more album, which sessions began in January 1970.
“I won’t lie, the Poseidon sessions were very awkward, enough tension to cut with a knife, not to mention McDonald and Giles feeling uncomfortable in the studio. I know they wrote some new songs, yet they withheld them entirely from the album except for one.”
- Robert Fripp, 2014
Attempting to chase the success of their previous effort, Fripp and Peter Sinfield consciously composed most of the album’s tracks in a similar style of that of In The Court of the Crimson King. Among the band’s ranks were the inclusion of Fripp and Giles’ former bandmate Peter Giles on bass as a studio musician following a hand injury which prevented Lake from playing bass for some time and Keith Tippet on piano and keyboards, who was offered full band membership yet opted to merely stay as a studio musician. Recording of the album was concluded in April 1970, after which McDonald and Giles split apart from the rest of the band.
In the Wake of Poseidon
01. Peace - A Beginning (0:50) [1]
02. Pictures of a City (8:01) [1]
03. Cadence and Cascade (4:34) [2]
04. In the Wake of Poseidon (7:57) [1]
05. Peace - A Theme (1:15) [1]
06. Cat Food (4:54) [1]
07. Birdman (21:39) [3]
08. Peace - An End (1:52) [1]
Released: May 15th, 1970
Track sources:
[1] - In the Wake of Poseidon, 1970
[2] - In the Wake of Poseidon, 1970 - 2010 40th anniversary edition - Cadence and Cascade (Greg Lake Guide Vocal)
[3] - McDonald & Giles, 1971
Author's comments:
Credit goes to thefloydianmass (over at A Crazy Gift of Time) for the original Stars timeline
Author's comments:
Credit goes to thefloydianmass (over at A Crazy Gift of Time) for the original Stars timeline
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