Twelve years ago when Roger Waters came to India for the first time, a group of men and women from Kerala boarded packed buses and trains that took them to Bangalore for the show. Dr Abraham George and his wife were amongst the enthusiastic group. He, a diehard fan, and she, not knowing who Roger Waters was! After the show he overheard someone say, how it was like attaining Nirvana, how much of a religion Pink Floyd was. Eight years later Pink Floyd came to Mumbai. Abraham went again and went though the same psychedelic experience.
Today, as he along with other fans waits for the new album by the band after a decade The Endless River Abraham feels a tad disappointed. “It would be so for all the hardcore fans, who loved their earlier stuff that sent them on a psychedelic trip. For, I hear it is a continuation of their last album The Division Bell. The younger generation who has listened to their more pop and commercial music would be happy,” he says. He belongs to a generation that waited outside Pai & Co and the Light House in Thiruvananthapuram, back in the days when these shops sold the new English albums in cassettes.
Nandu Leo, another Pink Floyd fan and a Thiruvananthapuram-based musician, loved the group for its melodic guitar sound and lyrics. “I hear the new album has the work of Rick Wright, who has always remained a silent performer with a low profile. So, I am really looking forward to listen to more of Rick’s work.”
So is Jobin Joseph, of Fly Council, a band formed in Thiruvananthapuram, inspired by the music of Pink Floyd. “Like Pink Floyd got its name from jazz musicians Pink Anderson and Floyd Council, we named our band Fly Council as in one’s thoughts could fly, and Council comes from Floyd’s last name. The band has not only influenced us in music, but art as a whole. Now to hear it is a sort of tribute to the late Richard Wright, it means so much to us, for this will be the last time one will hear his music.” For some other fans it is David Gilmour’s mesmerising guitar. Guitarist Rex Vijayan for one feels rejuvenated every time he hears High Hopes.
“It takes you to another level, it is an out-of-the-world experience.” For bassist Binny Isaac Pink Floyd’s music came to his guitar when on a day he played at South Park hotel, someone requested him to play Hey You... The requests were innumerable, and sometimes people would give him cassettes. John Thomas of Motherjane too names Hey You… and Time... “An experimental socialist band that must have influenced generations, their ideology and sound will always be unique.”
