Pink Floyd have just released a video for their 1972 track “Childhood’s End,” from the group’s seventh album, Obscured by Clouds. The clip intersperses period footage of Pink Floyd in the studio and clips of demonstrations against the Vietnam war. The track has been remixed from the original master tapes by Andy Jackson and Damon Iddins and is part of the group’s comprehensive 27-disc retrospective The Early Years 1965–1972, which comes out November 11.
“Childhood’s End” is one of 10 pieces of music Pink Floyd were commissioned to write and record for Barbet Schroeder’s feature film La Vallée. It was their second commission from the filmmaker.
The time was February 1972, and the band was already performing and starting to record the songs that would comprise its breakout hit album, The Dark Side of the Moon. Pink Floyd put that effort on hold while they worked on Schroeder’s soundtrack.
“We sat in a room, wrote, recorded, like a production line,” guitarist David Gilmour said, explaining how the band produced the soundtrack. “Childhood’s End,” which is credited solely to Gilmour, was one of the few Obscured by Clouds songs to be included in Pink Floyd’s live shows. It was performed on the band’s European tour beginning on December 1, 1972, and at the beginning of Floyd’s March 1973 tour of North America, often with an extended instrumental passage.
The Early Years: 1965–1972 will contain a wealth of rare audio and video recordings and performances from Pink Floyd’s earliest days to just before the release of The Dark Side of the Moon.
