The Manager's Tale

http://pink-floyd.org/artint/68.htm

Who would imagine that Peter Jenner, manager of Pink Floyd, didn't have any faith in the band members; except for Syd Barret, so if that's true, then what happened to him when Syd left the band? On the article called "The manager's tale" which is taken from an interview by Robert Sandall made to Peter Jenner; the author says that the first edition of Pink Floyd was a six-way partnership, and that Peter Jenner was very important to it. What the writer really wants to inform his audience is what Jenner thought about the band when he first met them and also what happened with him after Syd left the band.

Peter Jenner says that the first time he saw the band playing during mid-60s at the Marquee, he was fascinated with their music, and he didn't know how could they play such a good music. Their music had weird breaks and espectacular solos. So he instantly thought of working with them, supposedly a "pop band", and like everyone knows, pop can sell more records than anything else.

Jenner mentioned working with Eric Clapton before working with the Floyd. But he says that Clapton was harder to work with than the Floyd. Why? Because Eric didn't have a 'comfortable background' as the Floyd did. These guys didn't care about money, they were all middle-class boys, and for Peter it was better to work with people with no financial needs. Peter claims to be the one to build the Pink Floyd's first light show, which wasn't as good as those that came after when they had more money to produce better shows. He also gave them ideas of how to do their new materials and stuff like that.

Jenner says that when he first met them, they didn't do drugs. Well, only Syd, but he only used to smoke marijuana. But that was only the starting point of damaged life like his. Then he started doing acid, and Jenner says that Syd even got into the religious aspect of it. Meanwhile, the rest of them were clean of everything. No alchohol, nor drugs. He also says the reason why he got on with Syd, was because they used to smoke "a lot" of pot together. No wonder they liked eachother!

Peter talked about the qualities, weaknesses and stregths of the band members. For him, Syd was the main artist. The one with the most creativity to write songs; with drawings and paintings with different coloured circles Syd represented his his songs, Peter says. The lyrics of his songs would just poured out. Without difficulties. It was Syd's best quality.
Roger. Peter wasn't very friendly with him as with the rest, even though Roger was very argumentative, very intelligent, they didn't have too much communication between them. But he respected him as a businessman. Also because he was the only one in the band with the courage to kick Syd out of the band, because he knew that syd wasn't contributing to the group's work. We know how bad drugs can take us.
As for Rick Mason, he was the best, 'strongest' musician. But he was very weak, fragile and a shy, private person; whom fame was very hard to handle with.
By that time Peter didn't know David Gilmour yet. The only think Dave was know for was because he was a very good guitarist, he could do Jimi Hendrix.

Jenner says that when the band asked him what he thought about the idea of being without Syd, he wanted to start laughing, because in reality he never thought that they would do it without Barrett. He never imagined Waters as the leader of the band, but he actually might have put miney on Rick as leader. Peter Jenner says that after all he is happy to admit that he was "absolutely wrong." Since then he has been taking care of the Floyd, and he recognize that they're incredibly honourable. We all know that.