Author Phil Rose treads on thin ice

by Mike McInnis

Which One's Pink, by Phil Rose, is billed as 'an analysis of the concept albums of Roger Waters and Pink Floyd'. In it, he undertakes to delve as deeply as possible into the thematic material presented in 5 classic Floyd albums: Dark Side of the Moon through The Final Cut. In his preface, he laments that other Floyd books have only provided a cursory commentary about the albums' themes and conceptual content, and later points out that this sort of analysis of rock music is a relatively new endeavor, even as musicians continue to promote their music as 'art'.

Which One's Pink: An Analysis of the Concept Albums of Roger Waters & Pink Floyd by Phil Rose

Over the course of nearly 200 pages (including endnotes, a rather extensive bibliography, and a transcript of an interview with Roger Waters), Rose examines the recordings in painstaking detail, from the nuances of the lyrics and the contemporary interviews given in which Roger Waters discussed the songs' themes, to the actual structures of the chord progressions and guitar solos, the choice of instrumentation, and the multitude of sound effects. In doing so, he seems to have a singular goal in mind--to prove that his own fairly narrow interpretations of the albums' narratives are what Waters had in mind all along. Even as he quotes music historian Lawrence Kramer as saying, "Unlike a true account of something, an interpretation can never exclude rival, incompatible accounts. For any given interpretation, an alternative always exists," Rose does not seem interested in presenting any of these alternative interpretations. Instead, he just plows ahead with his own. The net result does not inspire the reader to explore the albums in search of other possibilities, but instead makes Waters' lyrics seem pedantic and confined in their scope. Rather than seeming universal in their appeal, Rose makes Pink Floyd's records seem disturbingly narrow.

I realize that I'm on shaky ground here. I have, after all, written a number of lyrical interpretations of Floyd songs and albums, and have been known to read far too much into very subtle turns of phrase which were, in all likelihood, a stretch to begin with. But I have always sought to clearly point out what is my own opinion, and never to put forth my own interpretation as 'definitive'. On the contrary, I have always hoped that my own interpretations would stimulate other fans to examine the music more carefully and come up with new insights of their own.

I scribbled a great many notes in the margins of Which One's Pink?, even as I found it increasingly difficult to finish. Some of these point out errors, others highlight interesting points he has made, and still others point out many places where I think Rose has gone right off the deep end. For instance, in discussing the second verse of "Breathe", Rose says that Wright's organ playing is "gospel-like", and that this conceptually supports the "preaching manner" of the lyrics, which he describes as being spoken by a mother to her young child. I'll buy the maternal voice, though to read any 'preaching' into Wright's use of a Hammond organ here would require you to interpret other uses of the Hammond elsewhere in the Floyd's recordings in the same way, wouldn't it? Another example: he claims that Clare Torry's wordless vocal on "The Great Gig in the Sky" represents "the horror that [the character] truly experiences when she conceptualises her non-existence." Wow. I wonder if even Clare knew that's what she was doing.

Rose's interpretations are strongest when he sticks to pure lyrical interpretation, but some of his most compelling (and, at the same time, most vexing) arguments stem from his insistence upon dragging features of musical structure and production techniques into the interpretation. This is shaky ground: we cannot assume that when Gilmour switched from one guitar effect to another during his solo in "Money" he was trying to drive home a specific point about how "our hero has fallen victim to the market forces and lost his position of power." Or that the jazz influences in Dick Parry's "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" represent a loss of innocence. Or that the use of melodic tritones and chromatic scales conveys "the harsh truth about Barrett's story". (At one point, he even pins a bit of thematic meaning to the subtleties of the stereo mix.)

At times he makes fascinating inferences and conjectures, finding meaning where Waters clearly did not intend any. For instance, he connects the end of "Dogs" with Allen Ginsburg's 1956 poem "Howl" (get it? "Dogs"/"Howl"), though in Rose's own 1995 interview, Waters admits that he had never considered such a connection until the moment that Rose mentioned it. And if a D minor 9 chord implies isolation and solitude in "Dogs", doesn't it follow that the same chord must imply the same things every time it is used elsewhere, including non-Floyd songs? How can one chord imply anything all by itself?

Too often Rose's interpretations are tied to his own thematic agenda. His description of how the musical complexity and use of synthesizers in "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" sonically depict the loss of innocence and corruption by the world of rock and roll is compelling. But his premise that Animals is the story of a young "dog" who yearns to become a member of the ruling class of "pigs" is too linear and confining. Rose claims that upon realizing that the "pigs" are keeping "dogs" like him down, his protagonist "dog" decides to lead the hapless "sheep" in an ill-fated revolution (and then, in the end, it turns out that it was--I'm not making this up--"merely a dream"). I'll wager good money that none of the Floyds--least of all Roger Waters--ever had such a story in mind.

The largest part of the book is devoted to The Wall, which he examines specifically from the point of view of the Object Relations Theory of psycholanalysis. Though Rose attempts to explain the theory in detail, he utterly fails to make it accessible to the average reader. I can't help but get the sense that this entire book started out as a term paper for some sort of graduate-level psychology class. (Just look at how many books on psychology are referenced in the bibliography--Rose clearly has done a lot of research on the topic.) He misses a great opportunity, too; if he had really taken the time to explain Object Relations in a way that most Floyd fans could really grasp, he just might have revolutionized the way we view Waters' masterpiece. Rose takes great pains to show the various personality disorders Pink adopts as defense mechanisms, but without good explanations and examples of these disorders, the analysis absolutely falls flat.

What's more, Rose relies far too heavily upon the Wall film for the bulk of his interpretation, mostly ignoring the visual aspects of the concert performances, and at times even relegating discussions of the Wall album itself to the footnotes. Unfortunately, Waters was not intimately involved in the shooting and editing of the film, and as a result it owes nearly as much to the vision of director Alan Parker as it does to Waters (or even Bob Ezrin, who made significant contributions to the album's final form). Since Waters has expressed a lot of reservations about the film (and that's putting it nicely; at one point he simply called it "a bad film"), basing a conceptual analysis of The Wall upon the film seems misguided and dangerous.

In short, Which One's Pink? is a tough read at best, and a misleading and exasperating one at times. Part of me wishes Rose had included analyses of Waters' highly-conceptual post-Floyd solo works, but other parts of me might have revolted if they had been forced to sit still to read any more.

Mike McInnis is a staff writer for Spare Bricks.