The Best of bits and bobs – Pink Floyd

Left to right: Wright, Waters, Mason and Gilmour. This was Pink Floyd’s finest line-up from 1968 until 1979 when Wright left, followed by Waters in 1985.

Pink Floyd was an English rock band from London, founded in 1965 by students Syd Barrett on guitar and lead vocals, Nick Mason on drums, Roger Waters on bass and vocals, and Richard Wright on keyboards and vocals. In 1967 David Gilmour joined them and soon after, in march 1968, Syd Barret left the band.

Anyway, their official history is not of my interest this time as I was looking for another kind of facts. Also, I have to admit Pink Floyd used to be one of my favorite 5 rock bands of all time. As I learned about the real factors of success in music industry – which is in essence family connections to Intel/Army high-ranking officers – I wanted to dissect Pink Floyd too. My expectations were to find just the same type of connections guaranteeing global stardom, but I was wrong. What I found is even more interesting, but I will let you decide.

George Roger Waters : following his mother, he’s descended from Joan Beaufort , Queen of Scots and James Stewart, the Black Night of Lorn. (also descendant of Sutherland, Brodie, Morrice). Beauforts are related to kings of England’s Plantagenets and William I the Conquerer.  Joan Beaufort’s mother was daughter of Thomas Holland and Alice Fitzalan, while James Stewart’s paternal ancestors few generations back are as well Fitzalans.

David Jon Gilmour : his father was Douglas Graham Gilmour, mother Sylvia Wilson. G-grand mother Alice Stiff, her father Samuel Stiff married Emma Eighteen; Stiff was a son of John Steff and Mary Rattiffee* Johnson. Married to Virginia “Ginger” Hasenbein and later to Polly Anne Samson[1].

Polly was a grand-daughter of Heinrich Hermann Elkan, and was born in Hamburg in 1903, to a bourgeois family of assimilated Jews. His father, Carl (Polly’s great- grandfather), was a useless banker but a talented painter acording to her description in her book »The Kindness« ; his mother, Amelie, was a scion of the wealthy Oppenheimers[2].

Polly’s mother is Esther Cheo Ying, who was among others a major in China’s Red Army before she arrived to Europe[3].

*fudge of Ratcliff?

Nicholas Berkeley Mason: the son of film maker Rowland Hill Berkeley Mason, a.k.a. Bill Mason. Berkeleys can be found among ancestors of George Washington, while Masons are among ancestors of John Quincy Adams.

Richard William Wright is completely scrubbed from the internet genealogy sites.

The ‘Dark Side of the Rainbow’ phenomenon is closely linked to an early internet fan forum, alt.music.pink-floyd, and a popular 1995 article by New York Times reporter Charlie Savage, who was then writing for his local newspaper the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.

Sometime in April 1995, an internet user in a Pink Floyd discussion group mentioned that “some people down in Los Angeles” had set him onto a strange pairing. Simultaneously playing “The Wizard of Oz” (sans sound, starting at the MGM lion’s first roar*) and The Dark Side of the Moon, claimed the user, would yield a slew of seemingly synchronized moments.

A few months later, Charlie Savage, a 20-year-old journalist with The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, set out to uncover the truth behind this. He found himself pleasantly shocked:

“The result is astonishing. It’s as if the movie were one long art-film music video for the album. Song lyrics and titles match the action and plot. The music swells and falls with character’s movements…expect to see enough firm coincidences to make you wonder whether the whole thing was planned.”

The first eyebrow-raising moment arrives when Dorothy (Judy Garland) balances on a fence at her family farm just as David Gilmour begins to sing the line “balanced on the biggest wave” in the song ‘Breathe’. In fact, from around four minutes into the film, the synchronicity is uncanny for a full 45 minutes, with pivotal scenes eerily appearing to coincide with the end of one track and the beginning of the next.

The match-ups, however are undeniable. In his original article, Savage elaborates on a few of the most notable:

*  During [opening track] “Breathe,” Dorothy does a tightrope-like walk along the holding pen to the lyric “and balanced on the biggest wave.”

*  The line “no one told you when to run” from “Time” is sung just as the scene switches to Dorothy running away from home to save Toto.

*  “Home, home again” from the “Breathe” reprise is sung as the fortuneteller tells Dorothy to go home.

*  “Don’t give me that do goody good bullshit” from “Money” comes as Glinda the Good Witch of the North floats in as a bubble.

*  “Black… and blue” from “Us and Them” is sung as the Wicked Witch of the West appears dressed in black. That is shortly followed by “and who knows which is which” (witch is witch) as she and Glenda confront each other.

*  “Brain Damage” — which begins at almost the same time as the movie’s “If I Only Had a Brain” — contains the lines “The lunatic is on the grass” and “Got to keep the loonies on the path.” This is just as the Scarecrow flops around like a madman on the grass and then on the Yellow Brick Road.

Members of Pink Floyd have adamantly – and repeatedly – brushed the synchronicities off as mere coincidence.

Whether or not you buy the correlations discussed, trying it out for yourself won’t do any harm. “Hey, worst case scenario, you don’t see the commonalities,” wrote one Pink Floyd forum user in 1997. “So what. You’ll hear a great album, and see a great film. Worse things could happen.”

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You can access synchronized version here :

*some advocate pressing play after lion’s third roar

 

The Pink Floyd’s movie, »The Wall«, is filled with the patterns or symbols used by the so-called »illuminati«, more commonly known as Phoenicians:

• senseless wars,
• the phoenix,
• a »wall« (or pyramid, in 3D for the imaginative ones) made of blocks which are cut out of the materialistic drives of humans,
• mass mind control (»education«),
• hate rallies.

Pink Floyd’s album »The Dark Side of the Moon« was produced by Alan Parsons, who was obviously a wonder kid – he got world’s famous studio job of apprentice and later full-time producer at the age of 18. He’s the founder of the Alan Parson’s Project, another spook band, who published the hit »Eye in the Sky« with the spookiest lyrics ever published in my opinion:

I am the eye in the sky

Looking at you

I can read your mind

I am the maker of rules

Dealing with fools

I can cheat you blind

And I don’t need to see any more

To know that

I can read your mind, I can read your mind.

 

 

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I welcome everybody to leave their bits and bobs about the Pink Floyd in the comment section.

 

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End notes:

[1] From the Hebrew name שִׁמְשׁוֹן (Shimshon), derived from שֶׁמֶשׁ (shemesh) meaning “sun”. Samson was an Old Testament hero granted exceptional strength by God. Source

[2] Source: https://www.thejc.com/culture/books/the-painful-secrets-of-my-jewish-past-1.65995

[3] ibid

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