How Pink Floyd’s 1970 US Tour Setlist Made Room for ‘Atom Heart Mother’’s Choir and Brass

On the 1970 US tour, Pink Floyd hauled a 23-minute suite into clubs and halls where the only way to play “Atom Heart Mother” was to hire a local choir and brass band for each stop. That meant the band had to schedule at least an hour of rehearsal before every show just to teach the local musicians their parts. To avoid disrupting the flow, the suite was almost always played as the closing piece of the first set or as the final encore—giving the hired players time to warm up and then leave before the rest of the set continued.