Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Rock star best known as the lead guitarist and vocalist of Pink Floyd, integral to their albums Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall.
On the island
Eight records
on a lovely warm beach to listen to this in a somewhere else sunset and missing London would be a wonderful moment.
I had lived through a lot of his heavy protest stuff, but this was another side I'm very keen on this sort of love song approach.
It's from a recent album called Alice. Which I think was some songs he'd done for a theatrical production in Germany about ten years ago, but he's only recently recorded the music. Um I love this song.
Dancing in the StreetFavourite
Marvin Gaye, William "Mickey" Stevenson, Ivy Jo Hunter
I need a little bit of Tamla Motown sort of dance music to accompany me on this beach wherever I am.
He's one of my favourite artists. This one's the anthem which I think has a slight the Islamic thing to it of the imperfection that all Islamic art has to have in it. Otherwise nothing can be seen to be perfect in the eyes of Allah.
Well, I'm being non-gender specific, of course, when I'm on my desert island. It could be a Man Friday.
you know, a song about the same sort of struggle that I've been talking about, this is Jenny Mitchell's struggle with her her wall, if you like, struggle with her conscience. With being a rich person. But still being an artist.
It's about sitting out in your garden round a nice camp fire and which is something we do at home in the summer a lot. Pointing torches at the sky, just be a lovely thing.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:13Is [performing in an intimate venue like the Royal Festival Hall] more or less nerve-wracking than when you used to go out there with Pink Floyd?
Yeah, it's definitely more nerve wracking by a considerable factor. You can see every face, you know, you see the whites of their eyes right there in front of you. It's much, much more nerve wracking.
Presenter asks
3:25What motives are you suspicious of [with aging rock stars who continue to tour]?
Love is a drug, as they say, you know. Um the those massive audiences are a drug. And it's very nice to be loved that much. I think a lot of people... [are] hooked on their own success. Can't let go.
Presenter asks
4:38Unlike the Stones and the Beatles, we never really knew you as individuals... Did you do that on purpose?
Um w it didn't really start off being on purpose. We just had a huge aversion to having our photographs taken... it just seems silly, and we had the chance to put in inverted commas artistic sort of things on the fronts of our albums... we got the best of both worlds... without affecting our own personal lives.
The keepsakes
The book
Traditional
I think I'll take a translation of the Koran with me. Try to better my mind and understand other peoples of the world better
Presenter asks
8:57What did [your parents] want you to be?
My brothers and sisters, you know, all went on to universities and stuff. I'm sure that's what they wanted from me and um they pushed it fairly heavily when I was young until it became a fait accompli that it wasn't what I was going to do. And I was going to do my music and they'd uttered the eternal lines that every parent tells their children at these times. Why didn't you finish your education and have something to fall back on? which I promptly ignored.
Presenter asks
12:08How sad was [Syd Barrett's decline] for you, because he was a guy you'd admired... and at the end of the day, it was his demise that meant that you got into the group?
Well, you're young, cruel and ambitious, you know... and the sort of depths of his problems and unhappiness became more apparent as the years rolled by and one realized that one have should have tried a little bit harder to help him. But uh I think these days things that can be done with the help of modern psychiatric help and medicine would have... done him a lot of good, but it wasn't the prevailing fashion at the time.
Presenter asks
25:12What's the feeling of giving that much money away [from selling your London house]?
Well, I have more than I need, quite frankly. It's one of those things one spends one's life struggling with, these strange inequalities that happen through chance. I guess I think it's a good idea for me to get rid of a little bit of the excess to causes that could use it.
“We had many, many years of artistic satisfaction, great joy, and a lot of pleasure in each other's company. But, you know, there comes a time when things get a little sticky, differences of opinion become insurmountable. And things change, but that's pretty common in all walks of life.”
“The ability to pluck emotions out of a musical instrument is something that I try to encourage all my children to learn how to do, because it is an incomparable feeling.”
“Happiness and contentment are there, absolutely. Which um but you can't put too much happiness and contentment into into music. It's you don't want to turn into John Denver, do you?”