"Atom Heart Mother"s Unlikely Connection with Stevenston

Pink Floyd is probably the most respected rock band on the planet for the consistently high quality and sophisticated rock albums they produced from the 1960s to the 1980s. One of their classic albums was 1970's Atom Heart Mother, but few will be aware that it was actually an Ayrshire man who played a key role on the album, supplying high level classical musical skills that the band were in need of.

The man in question was Ron Geesin, born in Stevenston in 1943. A naturally gifted musician, he began playing in a revivalist jazz band and branched out from there as a musician, composer, and arranger.

Based in Nottinghill Gate in London, he came into contact with fellow musician Roger Waters of Pink Floyd as both men shared a love of golf. In 1970 the pair collaborated on the music for the documentary film "The Body". When Floyd recorded their fifth studio album Atom Heart Mother later that year, Waters called in Geesin to help him with the main part of the album the Atom Heart Mother Suite, which combined elements of classical music and the kind of "biomusic" and sampled sound effects they had tried out on the soundtrack to "The Body."

The suite is divided into the following parts:

Father's Shout (0:00–2:50) (Gilmour, Geesin)

Breast Milky (2:50–5:23) (Wright, Geesin, Mason, Gilmour)

Mother Fore (5:23–10:13) (Gilmour, Wright, Geesin, Waters)

Funky Dung (10:13–15:28) (Wright, Waters, Gilmour)

Mind Your Throats Please (15:28–17:56) (Wright, Gilmour, Mason, Waters)

Remergence (17:56–23:44) (Gilmour, Geesin, Wright)

Geesin

As you can see, Geesin's name appears in the credits for four of the six parts, but the reality is that the piece was mainly composed by him and Waters, with some elaboration and ad-libbing by guitarist Dave Gilmour and keyboardist Richard Wright, with drummer Nick Mason picking up a couple of credits to keep him happy as well.

In fact, it would not be inaccurate to say that Geesin had the main role in the composition of this over-23-minute long piece of music, especially as he also oversaw the orchestration on which the piece heavily relies. The album was highly successful in the UK, becoming their first number one album.

Despite this, Geesin remains humble if not dismissive about this achievement. In a 2014 interview with the Astronauta Pinguim blog he said:

"My work for this, composing all the brass, choir and cello on Pink Floyd's backing track, was a piece of good crafting: weaving evocative, teasing and exciting material in and out of a rather plain cloth. I do not consider it as a great composition. I have done much better pieces that have not been heard by many people."

Here is a recent full orchestral version of the album played live.