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My first encounter with Pink Floyd was when my friend lent me his “The Wall” cassette when I was 17. I already had read about PF’s legendary “The Wall” tour where they had a wall built and torn down in front of the audience. So I was curious. I went home, inserted the cassette (yes, there used to be those things) preparing to listen to some fine music. I still distinctly remember 6 minutes into my first listening that the music was something special. Gilmour’s wailing guitar was acting as the backdrop for the trauma that the young Pink, the central character, was facing. The sound effects were adding a bit of a haunting ambiance, yet the album was getting stronger by the minute. As I reached Another Brick in the Wall Part 1, The Happiest Days of Our Lives, ABITW Part 2 and Mother, I was wondering if music could sound so exceptional. As I was listening through Empty Spaces to Goodbye Cruel World on Side 1, I was blown away. Yet, on Side 2, further gems including Comfortably Numb and Run Like Hell awaited me. Listening to this album for the first time was a surreal experience. Thinking about it still gives me goosebumps. Apart from Waiting for the Worms and The Trial, that I never came around to like, this album was perfection. I still haven’t seen anything so rich in imagination, put together inside such a beautiful music. This was the life of Pink, a character loosely modeled based on Roger Waters own losses. Are you kidding me? A full double album narrating a troubled life? Many years later, I heard that the record company executives didn’t find the album that interesting in their first preview. For any person remotely connected to music, and finding this album average, should be fired on the spot. I still do not understand why this album is not the best of all time (no offense to the Beatles, whom I dearly love, but none of their albums come close to the imagination humming through the Wall) and ranks like 80 something on all-time best albums list. Seriously, you are telling me there are 80 albums better than the Wall? The Wall is one of the best albums. It is probably the best album of all time. It is Roger Waters’ towering achievement, with a strong input from David Gilmour on many of its best songs like Another Brick in the Wall, Empty Spaces, Comfortably Numb and Run Like Hell. Too bad PF broke apart soon after the release of the Wall. They surely would have produced some further masterpieces had they stayed together. They were still in their 30s and were probably hitting their creative primes. Waters did come back with an excellent Amused to Death, but his music was never the same without Gilmour who went on to make excellent Momentary Lapse of Reason and Division Bell. But the second incarnation of PF, after the first with Syd Barrett, was coming to a quick close. Well, if it was ending, The Wall was as good as anything for the final curtain, though the band hung around to make The Final Cut that I never liked that much. Anyways, The Wall is an achievement like nothing else. The goosebumps are still here, 34 years after I first heard it.

Thirty years to its release and I listened to it again. The album seems even better than when I heard it for the first time in 1995. Only time reveals the greatness of the works of art, and so it is, uncovering the genius of David Gilmour and Richard Wright. DB has its own mood. It is a slower paced album with beautiful music and thoughtful lyrics. Put it on, perhaps go on a 45 minute leisurely drive and enjoy the best in rock music that is unfortunately hard to come by in the more modern music.

Momentary Lapse of Reason is a masterpiece. It is a definite break from the Roger Waters dominated PF music of 1970s that is legendary in its own right. MMLOR was different. It was, and is, the exceptional music. I think critics mistakenly judged MMLOR from the standards of the 1970s PF rock. MMLOR was carving out the new path that the third genius of PF had begun working on. This was the third incarnation of PF under David Gilmour, after Syd Barrett and Roger Waters led the first two incarnations. This is what fascinates me most about PF. There is no one PF music. There are three distinct phases of this legendary band’s music. There were not one or two, but three geniuses working on developing the PF catalogue over three decades that is considered legendary today for a good reason. Where would you find in one 51-minute album stunning music like Signs of Life, Learning to Fly, The Dogs of War, One Slip, On the Turning Away, and Sorrow. Each of these songs still warm your soul. The guitar solos in On the Turning Away and Sorrow are simply breathtaking. Gilmour developed them further in his A Delicate Sound of Thunder tour and they remain some of his best work. I predict MMLOR and Division Bell will continue to rise in critics’ esteem with the passage of time. These are the must-have albums that we are privileged to be able to listen to.

DSOTM is rightly considered one of the best albums ever. For me, all songs are unbelievable, except Money. Even after listening to DSOTM for thirty years, I still can’t get around to admiring Money. Its unusual tempo just always seemed out of place in this otherwise seamless music that tied together songs dealing with mortality and loss. Still, the rest of the album is excellent enough for me to give it the full five stars. Alan Parsons work on putting together this masterpiece is one of the big reasons DSOTM is so pleasing to the ears. I think Waters and Gilmour were still working well together by that time and fame has not got to their relationship that went downhill for the rest of the decade. The concluding songs, Any Colour You Like, Brain Damage and Eclipse are some of the most powerful conclusions to an album. DSOTM was and remains the GOAT of an album.