Atom Heart Mother

In 1970 Pink Floyd released their fifth studio album titled "Atom Heart Mother". It reached #1 in the UK, #5 in the Netherlands and #55 in the US. The album was made in cooperation with the Scottish composer Ron Geesin. It was a continuation of how they made their previous studio album "Ummagumma" including also a track by all members of the band and tracks written by the members individually. It paved the way to record more experimental progressive material. No singles were released ftom this album. In that same year the band also recorded 2 soundtracks for movies: "Zabriski Point" and " The Body" (soundtrack credited to Roger Waters and Ron Geesin but the rest of the band was also involved).

Soundtracks for: Zabriskie Point and The Body

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The band started recordings for the album in London after they finished their contribution to the "Zabriskie Point" Soundtrack in Rome. The first track and title song was a long piece of 23 minutes resulted from a number of instrumentals they wrote. The track was originally called "The Amazing Pudding". It was split into 6 parts. The first part was "Father's Shout" named after jazz pianist Earl "Fatha" Hines. "Breast Milky" and "Funky Dung" were inspired by the album cover artwork by Hipgnosis. The song was written by the whole band. They decided to change the title of the song after reading an article in a newspaper titled: "Nuclear drive for woman's heart" about a woman with a plutonium-powered pacemaker.

Pink Floyd in 1970

The other album tracks were written by individual members of the band. Waters came up with the folky song titled "If", Wright's "Summer '68" originally titled  "One Night Stand" about Wright and a groupie on tour, Gilmour came up with "Fat Old Sun". The final track titled "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast" is divided into three parts joined by dialogue and sound effects of then-roadie Alan Styles preparing, discussing, and eating breakfast. Stanley Kubrick wanted to use the album's title track in A Clockwork Orange but the band refused. The album received much criticism from the press of being overambitious. The strange music combined with the cows on the cover makes the album so legendary.

ARTWORK

Cows on the back of the cover

Again the artwork was designed by Hipgnosis and they launched a trend to not display the name of the band or title on the front of the album cover. The cover shows a Holstein cow on a meadow landscape. Storm Thorgerson was inspired by Andy Warhol's famous "cow wallpaper". He has said that he simply drove out into a rural area near Potters Bar and photographed the first cow he saw. The owner of the cow later said her name was Lulubelle III. 

Original album cover

Atom Heart Mother (1970)
Atom Heart Mother: Father's Shout, Breast Milky, Mother Fore, Funky Dung, Mind Your Throats Please, Remergence / If / Summer '68 / Fat Old Sun / Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast: Rise and Shine, Sunny Side Up, Morning Glory

AUDIO

Atom Heart Mother

If

Fat Old Sun