Roger Waters - “Songs from The Body“, 1970

The Story: It was Ron Geesin who landed the job of putting music to a film version of Anthony Smith’s book The Body, written in 1968. When Geesin discovered director and producer Roy Battersby wanted actual songs in addition to background music, he called in Roger Waters “of the Pink Floyd“ (whom he has befriended via Pete Townsend) to help out. Also Roger performed the narration for one scene in the movie. All the material was written and recorded in mono, separately by Waters and Geesin from January to March 1970. After the movie was released, the idea came to release “the body music“ as the LP album. Several pieces were remade, new pieces were added and the album was produced and mixed jointly at Island Studios, London, during August and September 1970, this time in stereo. “Music From The Body“ was of course more of a Geesin musical project. Out of twenty two tracks of very much avant-garde and eccentric (and funny in a strange way) Ron Geesin music Waters’ songs are few and they are simple ones - but there is something special in those early Roger’s dreamy ballads that he wrote during (to my taste) very interesting Pink Floyd period, ’68-’70. My idea was: 1) to collect these songs all together, the movie versions (including Waters narrated scene audio) and the sountrack versions 2) to present them as the self standing tracks - which was a bit of labour to do for originally they are mostly crossfaded with Ron Geesin’s music (especially on the album versions). Some tricky Sound Forge’ing was applied - intros & outros creating, channeling, panning, fading, volume alterations. So here they are, “Songs from The Body“, by Roger Waters. The Content: The Movie tracks 1) a. Sea Shell and Stone / b. Sea Shell and Soft Stone / c. Breathe 2) Chain of Life 3) Roger’s Proposition 4) Give Birth to A Smile The Album tracks 5) Sea Shell and Stone 6) Chain of Life 7) Breathe 8) Sea Shell and Soft Stone 9) Give Birth to A Smile Roger Waters: all the words and the music, acoustic guitar, bass, vocals, narration (on 2) Ron Geesin: arrangements (for 1b. & 8), acoustic guitar, piano (on 4 & 9) Haflidi Hallgrimsson: cello (on 1b. & 8) David Gilmour – acoustic guitar (on 4), electric guitar (on 9), back vocal (on 4) Richard Wright – Hammond organ (on 9) Nick Mason – drums (on 4 & 9) Unknown female vocalists: back vocals (on 9)