Pink Floyd's "madness"...in modern textbook terms?

General discussion about Pink Floyd.
ZiggyZipgun
Hammer
Hammer
Posts: 1236
Joined: Mon May 05, 2008 3:04 pm

Pink Floyd's "madness"...in modern textbook terms?

Post by ZiggyZipgun »

Where's David Smith when you need him?

Lots of rock music is about being "insane" or "crazy" or "deranged", and even Roger Waters threw these terms around from time to time. Some artists built their whole careers around a fairly cartoonish/glamorized approach to mental illness, but since a lot of the Pink Floyd's songs are about actual people and events, can we update our terminology when discussing their work?

And full disclosure: I'm no expert! I took one psychology course... maybe twenty years ago.

Dark Side of the Moon is almost always referred to as being about going crazy, but it really just focuses on the stress of everyday life - the things that drive one "insane"! I know all of those things can be triggers for people that are already susceptible to mental illness, but can stress actually cause mental illness? Substance abuse can, which may have been true in Syd's case, whether or not he had an underlying condition. "Shine On" is alluding to whatever happened to Syd - possibly undiagnosed schizophrenia, but more likely just the side-effects of substance abuse. Roger has even stated that he himself had a "nervous breakdown" in the EMI canteen while going through his first divorce during the Wish You Were Here sessions, and that it changed his life - but "nervous breakdown" isn't a clinical term, and just implies being temporarily overwhelmed by stress.

Anyone care to weigh in? It appears all of the psychology debates that have sprung up on the forum over the past decade or so were just trying to pin down what happened to Syd, but I'm curious about what exactly is discussed in the songs.
User avatar
mosespa
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 11555
Joined: Thu Sep 12, 2002 5:54 pm
Location: In the editing bay...working on the final cut...

Re: Pink Floyd's "madness"...in modern textbook terms?

Post by mosespa »

Whether or not stress can "cause" mental illness is something I'll leave for Dr. Smith to answer; but it is my understanding that stress can exacerbate an underlying illness, perhaps even trigger it in the same way that substance abuse can.

Makes sense to me. *shrug*
Kerry King
Hammer
Hammer
Posts: 537
Joined: Wed Dec 16, 2009 8:54 am

Re: Pink Floyd's "madness"...in modern textbook terms?

Post by Kerry King »

ZiggyZipgun wrote: Tue Feb 23, 2021 4:41 pm And full disclosure: I'm no expert! I took one psychology course... maybe twenty years ago.
There are no experts in the field of psychology. There's ambition.

Of course stress can cause illness. However, "mental illness" is a non specific term. It's a huge umbrella under which the self proclaimed experts pile bodies.
ZiggyZipgun
Hammer
Hammer
Posts: 1236
Joined: Mon May 05, 2008 3:04 pm

Re: Pink Floyd's "madness"...in modern textbook terms?

Post by ZiggyZipgun »

I'll post this here to avoid more tears being shed, but I may use a quote or two. Be strong.

The Wall: Live in Berlin project was kicked off by the most decorated RAF bomber pilot in history, Group Captain Leonard Cheshire, to raise money for his new charity, Memorial Fund For Disaster Relief. The particular location, outdoor staging, and ensemble cast naturally made Roger Waters want to turn the special effects up to 11, and in addition to the pair of helicopters he had fly over during "The Happiest Days of Our Lives", he also wanted four tanks and two WWII bombers - which Cheshire thought was a real bad idea, since it could trigger PTSD for the veterans and survivors in attendance.

Waters: "He said, 'You cant do that!' I said, 'But that's what this is all about!' Anyway, we had an argument. I think he felt bad about it because he still has things to deal with, knowing he'd been up there dropping bombs on the poor bastards.”

Cheshire: "Roger hasn't had the experience, you see. My instinct was that it was wrong. You shouldn't revive horrible memories like that."

Wouldn't that be the case with nearly all of Roger's stage shows? During his last Wall tour, he was firing a prop machine gun into the crowd. One of the stops on that tour happened to be just a few hours after someone opened fire in a shopping mall, killing six people, though it's completely understandable if Roger hadn't heard about the tragedy - but he'd also played there the night before, and again two days later, and still stuck to the script.