Your Possible Pasts

Hey there, Zoo Freaks, the Zoo Crew has got Pink Floyd's "Your Possible Pasts" rolling off the turntable right now, pulled from that heavy 1983 album The Final Cut, and this track is one that digs deep into the kind of memories that stick with you like the smell of old vinyl and road dust. Roger Waters put this one together as a rewritten leftover from the sessions for The Wall, back when the band was piecing together what they first called Spare Bricks, those extra bricks that didn't make the original wall. David Gilmour wasn't too keen on bringing those rejected pieces out again. He laid it out plain in interviews, saying if the songs weren't good enough for The Wall, why call them good enough now, and that Waters was wrong wanting to put some of those duff tracks on the new record. Still, the thing found its way onto the album, and some of the chorus lyrics even showed up in the film version of The Wall, where the character Pink reads them out between "Waiting for the Worms" and "Stop."

The roots of the chorus go back even further, to a song Waters wrote in 1968 called "Incarceration of a Flower Child," with lines like "Do you remember me, how we used to be." Pink Floyd never cut that one themselves, but Marianne Faithfull recorded it years later for her album Vagabond Ways. On the radio promo single, the track got mislabeled as "Your Impossible Pasts," and it still climbed to number eight on the US mainstream rock chart thanks to the airplay it pulled. AllMusic critic Stewart Mason called it one of the best proper songs on the record, the dramatic one that stands out amid the linking tracks. Waters himself looked back in a 2004 Uncut interview and admitted the drums hit too hard for his taste now. He said the song starts melodic then the kit comes in really loud, and he'd rather have a rhythm section that carries you through smoother, toning down those sudden outbursts so you could ride the whole thing without jumping out of your chair.

The lyrics carry weight too, with poppies entwining cattle trucks in derelict sidings, a nod to the railway cars from the Holocaust, and lines about possible pasts fluttering behind you, some bright-eyed and crazy, some frightened and lost, warning those still in command about the future. It was even one of the tracks considered for the best-of collection Echoes. The whole album ties into Waters' take on the Falklands War and the sense that his generation had let down the ones who fought in the earlier war, including his own father. Production was tense, with the band pulling in Michael Kamen and James Guthrie, and Gilmour mostly on guitar while Waters handled the bulk of the writing and vocals. Nick Mason laid down the drums, and guest players like Andy Bown on organ and Ray Cooper on percussion filled things out. No tour followed the album, though Waters later pulled selections into his solo shows.

That kind of deep cut is what keeps the Zoo Crew spinning records for you listeners out there. You can dig into more of the history and the catalog over at the Pink Floyd official website, where the album page lays out the full track list including this one, plus the store and archive of their story. Catch the official posts and updates on their Facebook page, the Instagram feed, and the X account. Fans gather in places like the Pink Floyd Fan Club group on Facebook, sharing the music and the old stories without the noise of other bands.

Now, the way Pink Floyd got rolling started back in the early sixties with a bunch of architecture students at the London Polytechnic on Regent Street. Roger Waters and Nick Mason met there around 1962, and they started jamming with other students like Keith Noble and Clive Metcalfe in a loose group that went by names such as Sigma 6. Richard Wright, another architecture student, joined in on keyboards after starting on guitar. They played covers of rhythm and blues numbers at private functions and rehearsed down in a basement tearoom. Waters was on lead guitar at first, Mason behind the kit, and the lineup kept shifting.

Syd Barrett came into the picture from Cambridge, an old friend of Waters who was studying art. He brought his guitar and that wild creative spark, and the group began playing under names like the Tea Set. Barrett supposedly coined Pink Floyd on the spot one night when another band called the Tea Set was booked at the same gig, pulling the name from two bluesmen in his record collection, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. By late 1965 they were the Pink Floyd Sound, then just Pink Floyd, with Barrett up front on vocals and guitar, Waters switching to bass, Mason on drums, and Wright on keys. They started getting paid bookings, including a spot at the Marquee Club in 1966 where Peter Jenner spotted them and later managed the band with Andrew King.

Those early sets stretched out with long instrumental jams that planted the seeds for the spacey sound, mixing blues roots with psychedelic stretches. They became regulars at the Spontaneous Underground happenings on Sundays at the Marquee, then moved into the UFO Club and the Roundhouse for the International Times launch. The light shows with liquid slides became part of the draw in the London underground scene. Barrett wrote most of the early material, and their first singles, "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play," hit the UK charts in 1967, leading to the debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. That was the start of the ride, from student gigs and R&B covers to the conceptual albums that followed, all before the lineup changes and the later years with The Final Cut marking the end of Waters' time in the band.

The Zoo Crew keeps those old stories alive while the records turn for the Zoo Freaks tuning in. Stick around for more deep cuts and the kind of freeform spins that let the music breathe, the way it was meant to on the airwaves. You can always find the station over at THE ZOO for the next track and the ones that follow.