Happy 45th: Pink Floyd, Atom Heart Mother

45 years ago this week, Pink Floyd released the album that would give them their first #1 album in the UK while giving cow fans something to smile about every time they flipped through the “P” section at their local record store.

The reason we're celebrating the week of the anniversary rather than the specific date is simple enough to explain: we're splitting the difference. Atom Heart Mother was released in the UK on October 2, 1970, but it didn't see release in the US until October 10, and since October 10 is on a Saturday this year, this is about as close to middle ground as we could find. (Besides, surely a 45th anniversary is worth celebrating even if it's a few days late or a few days early.)

Atom Heart Mother is also notable for providing Pink Floyd with another career first: it was their first album to be specially mixed for four-channel quadraphonic sound. This sonic development is one which plays particularly well on the title track, which opens the album and - at nearly 24 minutes - rather unsurprisingly fills the entire first side of the LP. Once you flip the record, you'll find four additional tracks: one each by Roger Waters (“If”), Richard Wright (“Summer '68”), and David Gilmour (“Fat Old Sun”), and one group composition (“Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast”). Wright's contribution is notable for featuring the last Pink Floyd he'd ever write all by his lonesome, but the music's really what sells the song, anyway, as it's a lovely piece of pop that features harmonies which owe no small debt to the Beach Boys.

While Atom Heart Mother was obviously well-received at the time of its initial release, what with topping the charts and all, Waters delivered a bit of a killing blow to its legacy in 1984 when he told a BBC Radio 1 interviewer, “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!'” Gilmour was only slightly less dismissive, calling it at one point “a load of rubbish,” but he managed to pull back somewhat in 2008 when he joined Ron Geesin, who contributed heavily to the title track, to perform that very song in concert.