In the years before Morrissey and Radiohead became ubiquitous, Pink Floyd was the band of choice for any self-respecting teenage melancholic inclined towards a good ponder on the state of the human condition. The sporty lads would dismiss Floyd as music for freaks and druggies as they lurched about awkwardly to new romantic tunes at the school disco, no time for all that introspection, there’s legs to break on the football pitch, beer to drink and baying and hollering to do….
I went to see a Floyd tribute band at the weekend and was intrigued that the audience were basically smartly dressed, boisterous young men who wouldn’t have looked out of place in the England cricket team. Some had brought their glamorous WAGgy girlfriends along, and the whole audience seemed to know the words of every song and sing along like it was “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” at Twickenham.
Charlie Brooker recently said that watching the news these days was like “living inside the mind of a depressed hippy” and I wonder if theirs a wider cultural melancholy at work here, seeing 200 Freddie Flintoffs bellowing heartily long with some of the most paranoid, depressing songs of the 20th Century suggests that there is.
The mind of a depressed hippy
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