Why did I need these musicians? As part of that survival in the market place, some TV commercial producers and directors wanted ‘real instruments’ while others were happy with my more alternative sounds. He was already in his 60s and his father was composer Joseph Holbrooke, a lesser contemporary of Elgar. The memory of how the initial contact occurred has melted into the mists, but it may well have been through its lead bassoonist, Gwydion Brooke, a proper individual. My limited previous experience with musicians had been with the finest soloists from the New Philharmonia Orchestra. Here they were, knackered from too much touring, not able to read music, mine or anyone else’s, and just able to stitch a framework together, into which we were about to enter to force some stuffing and then clad the whole in multifarious material. Here I was, having fetched some musical material from the depths over the last three weeks, not skilled or confident enough to be able to decode it for my friends, not even really knowing what I had conceived at all. ‘Hello Ron, you look relaxed and on top of things.’ ‘What? I’ve got this and that going wrong and some bugger’s not paid me for the next thing!’ ‘Ah!’ says he, ‘The Swan Syndrome: appears graceful above the water but paddling furiously below.’ I remember much later meeting a schoolteacher acquaintance in the local high street. The atmosphere was fairly sparky, if one was clairvoyant enough to see beyond the feigned relaxed postures. Compared to my little steaming padded cell of a studio, this was a cathedral complete with a stairway to God, the control room, presided over by the now-famous sound engineer Peter Bown. The lithe men were draped over chairs, couches and desks. on 19 Friday June 1970 I pushed my way through diverse doors into Studio Two at EMI Abbey Road Studios.

In this exclusive extract from The Flaming Cow, renowned composer, Ron Geesin offers an insight into his often fraught collaboration with Pink Floyd and shares his memories of recording Atom Heart Mother, the band’s most controversial album.

Atom father heart