Fat Old Sun

"Fat Old Sun" is a Pink Floyd song written and sung by David Gilmour. It appeared on the album Atom Heart Mother, and was performed live in a greatly expanded form (often exceeding fourteen minutes), both before and after the album was released. Atom Heart Mother was released on October 10th, 1970; live performances of this song date back to July 16th, 1970.

1 Live performance
2 More information
3 Personnel
4 References

[edit] Live performance

The song was performed live by Pink Floyd from 1970-1971. The track was later adopted by David Gilmour for his 2001/2002 tour and the On an Island tour of 2006. On stage Fat Old Sun was transformed from a folk ballad into an extended rock jam. As on the recording, Gilmour starts with a blues rock solo after the last refrain. Instead of the fade out on the recorded version, Gilmour becomes gradually silent. Then Rick Wright's organ enters with the motif of the song's "Sing To Me" melody line, doing each chord twice as long as the vocal version. Nick Mason then enters with free-form drumming using just the cymbals and the toms. Rick Wright starts a solo over the g minor and the d minor chord. Nick Mason changes into the familiar rock beat after a while. The band stops and Gilmour introduces a new chord sequence with a jazzy feeling ( D minor E 7 #9 A 7 #9). Wright plays a second solo in a more bluesy style. The band then becomes progressively quiet and Gilmour begins to sing the first verse again. The live performances always ended with the "Sing to me, sing to me" vocal line. Good examples can be heard on the John Peel show from September 1971.

More recently, it has been performed acoustically in the 2001/2002 David Gilmour in Concert tour, minus the electric guitar solo. Early during the tour in support of Gilmour's On An Island album in 2006, the song returned to the setlist. This incarnation was composed of the lyrics followed by the concert's backing singers repeating the "sing to me" chorus, then a bluesy version of the guitar solo closer to the length of the album version (the 2006 incarnation clocked in at around seven minutes). A performance from the Royal Albert Hall is featured on Gilmour's new DVD, Remember That Night.

[edit] More information

Gilmour revealed on Johnnie Walker's Radio 2 drivetime show in 2004 that he had made a case for this song to be included on the Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd (2001) compilation, however he was out-voted and the album Atom Heart Mother goes unrepresented on this album. Fat Old Sun is perhaps best described as a pastoral, a hymn of praise to the countryside (as several early Pink Floyd songs were, such as Grantchester Meadows from Ummagumma), with a gentle, yet incisive, melody and lyric.