The members of the band were deeply impressed by Torry's performance but did not tell her this, and she left the studio, with a standard £30 flat fee, under the impression that her vocals would not make the final cut. The final album track was assembled from all three takes. Torry performed two complete takes, the second more emotional than the first, but when David Gilmour asked for a third take she stopped halfway through, feeling that she was getting repetitive and had already done the best she could. At first she struggled to find what was needed, but then she was inspired to sing as if she were an instrument herself. The band played the instrumental track to Torry and asked her to improvise a vocal.
Torry was contacted to arrange a session for the same evening but she had other commitments, including tickets to see Chuck Berry, so a three-hour session was scheduled for the following Sunday. The band began casting around for a singer, and studio engineer Alan Parsons suggested Clare Torry, a 25-year-old songwriter and session vocalist he had worked with on a Top of The Pops covers album. Various sound effects were tried over the track, including recordings of NASA astronauts communicating on space missions, but none was satisfactory.įinally, a couple of weeks before the album was due to be finished, the band thought of having a female singer "wail" over the music. The song began as a Richard Wright chord progression which was known as "The Mortality Sequence" or "The Religion Song".ĭuring the first half of 1972 it was performed live as a simple organ instrumental, accompanied by spoken-word samples from the Bible and snippets of speeches by Malcolm Muggeridge, a British writer known for his conservative religious views.īy September 1972, the lead instrument had been switched to a piano, with an arrangement very similar to the final form but without vocals, and with a slightly different chord sequence in the middle. Fender 'Duo 1000' double-neck steel guitar (1962), purchased in Seattle in October 1970 by David Gilmour, and used on 'Great Gig in the Sky' displayed at the Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains exhibition
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