Atom Heart Mother

In October 1970, Pink Floyd released Atom Heart Mother . An early version premièred in England in January, but disagreements over the mix prompted the hiring of Ron Geesin to work out the sound problems. Geesin worked to improve the score, but with little creative input from the band, production was troublesome. Geesin completed the project with the aid of John Alldis , the director of the choir hired to perform on the record. Smith earned an executive producer credit, and the album marked his final official contribution to Pink Floyd’s discography. Gilmour said it was “a neat way of saying that he didn’t … do anything”. Atom Heart Mother became Pink Floyd’s first number-one album and spent 18 weeks on the UK chart. Waters was critical of Atom Heart Mother , saying he would prefer if it were “thrown into the dustbin and never listened to by anyone ever again”. Gilmour once described it as “a load of rubbish”, and said “we were scraping the barrel a bit at that period”.