Which one The Pink Floyd album David Gilmour dismissed as “just an experiment”

Experimentation is what drives music forward, opening doors to bold new avenues of artistic expression and inspiration. Few bands dedicated themselves to innovative experimentation quite as intensely as Pink Floyd, though. From their initial formation as forerunners of the psychedelic age in the mid-1960s, the group rose to become one of the most renowned and influential rock bands to ever grace the airwaves. According to guitarist David Gilmour, however, that experimentation didn’t always cultivate compelling results.

By the time Gilmour joined the ranks of Pink Floyd in 1967, the band had already established their unique style and songwriting sensibilities, built around the artistic visionary Syd Barrett. However, Barrett’s rapidly deteriorating mental health, exacerbated by his increasing dependency on mind-altering drugs, meant that a change was needed. Gilmour was brought in to alleviate the strain on Barrett, but soon replaced the songwriter entirely, leaving Roger Waters free to take the reins of the band.

The loss of a band’s primary songwriter is something that very few groups recover from, and Pink Floyd struggled to find their artistic feet in the post-Barrett landscape. Initial albums A Saucerful of Secrets and More are now hailed by Floyd obsessives as some of the band’s greatest works, but mainstream audiences of the time certainly disagreed. Still, these albums were essential in carving out the sound and experimentation of this bold new era for Pink Floyd, under the leadership of Waters.

That experimental quality only intensified on Floyd’s 1969 double album Ummagumma. Composed of live recordings from gigs in Manchester and Birmingham, along with studio recordings on the second LP, the album was unlike anything that had been created before, and its pioneering quality arguably set the tone for the band’s subsequent triumphs in The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here.

Ummagumma was a triumphant release by the standards of any other band, cultivating decent reviews upon its original release and even becoming a top-five album in the UK charts. What’s more, the album’s reputation only seems to have increased with age, hailed as an indisputable masterpiece by core sections of Pink Floyd’s ever-expanding fanbase, and it is easy to see why. Nevertheless, the band members themselves have retrospectively criticised the release on multiple occasions over the years.

David Gilmour, in particular, has routinely denounced Ummagumma. During a 1973 interview with the New Musical Express, he downplayed any praise attached to the record, declaring, “For me, it was just an experiment.” The guitarist went on to shed light on his less-than-favourable view of the album, saying, “I think it was badly recorded – the studio side could have been done better. We`re thinking of doing it again.”

While Gimour’s comments are indicative of an artist whose best work is always ahead of him, his dismissive view that the album was “just” an experiment is hard to comprehend.

After all, virtually every Pink Floyd album was an experiment in its own way; the band were always attempting to try something new or establish a unique new sound through their albums. Ultimately, the band never re-recorded Ummagumma, as Gilmour suggested, but it is difficult to see how a re-do would improve on the spontaneous and endlessly inventive genius of the original recording.