Pink Floyd
Masters of Rock

THE REVIEW

It seems almost incredible that no one has yet spoken about this old Floydian collection. Certainly, the official discography offers many more points of discussion, but it's also from these archives of singles and scattered early tracks that one can discern the motivations and evolutions of artists of such historical and cultural significance.

"Masters of Rock" - released in 1974 already labeled as Vol. 1 - is a relatively known vinyl that did not achieve the success of "Relics"; perhaps because it contained already familiar tracks from "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn", perhaps due to less appealing packaging, or because it was released at a time when the band had moved far beyond the premises of those very early compositions. In my opinion, indeed, the audience of that time was too focused on the phenomenal success of "Dark Side" and on that type of sound to be motivated to delve into a past too recent. Tastes had changed rapidly, British seminal psychedelia had just died, and Barrett’s legacy was not yet experienced with the contours of a sacred exegesis.

Thus, "Masters of Rock" remained a minor catalog work that only the most radical fans consumed on the turntable.

The title track is, however, very interesting. Apart from the early singles "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play", apart from "Julia Dream" and "Paint Box" seen in the aforementioned "Relics", there are "Candy and a current bun", "Apples and oranges" and "It would be so nice": songs that are also early, forming the backbone of the debut disc and documenting a growth phase where producers' pressures overshadowed the musicians' real inspiration. It's no secret that these three pieces did not receive the anticipated response and today they are part of a set of transitional curiosities with a somewhat Beatles-like and certainly Barrett-like flavor. From this perspective, precisely, they are more interesting on the managerial level than on the strictly artistic one. The Floyd of "Apples and oranges" were striving not to lose pace and to keep the public's attention high. According to Mason and Waters themselves, the semi-psychedelic ballads of that period had less musical significance than some compositions appearing on the debut album.

Compositions that, as mentioned, also peep out in "Masters of Rock" and are somehow set as a stylistic benchmark; among other things, evoking the most fairy-tale and oriental atmospheres of the Barrett era, atmospheres strongly absent from a "It would be so nice" that sounded more pop and more familiar. The dreamy singing of "Chapter 24" and the Arabic mood of "Matilda Mother" provide a kind of counterbalance to the strummed choruses of the other ballads. Hence, the conviction that this heterogeneous collection is a comprehensive and exhaustive tool for understanding what the Pink Floyd were doing in those years.

A collage photograph, in short, that shows us the best and the worst of a group that between 1966 and 1968 marked a fundamental point in the history of rock, without hiding their mistakes and less noble moments.