From Pink Floyd to Judas Priest: psychedelia, cocaine and records in the Balearic Islands

PalmaThe Balearic Islands entered the history of records that have little to do with each other. Some musicians wrote songs there; others recorded albums there, found refuge there, or discovered music that they would later take outside the Islands. Between the 60s and the 90s, those stays linked the Archipelago to names like Pink Floyd, Joni Mitchell, Kevin Ayers, Judas Priest and New Order.

That Bob Dylan spent the summer of 1967 at a mill in La Mola, on Formentera, is still a living popular legend, not a true one. Those who did live that summer and the next around La Mola and Migjorn beach were the original members of Pink Floyd, the most influential group of progressive and psychedelic rock of the second half of the 20th century. It was like that because Aubrey Powell 'Po’, founder of the graphic design agency Hipgnosis, which revolutionized design and created half a dozen covers for the group, had a house in Migjorn.

‘More’, by Pink Floyd

At the beginning of 1968 David Gilmour joined the British band and later would end up replacing Barrett, who they removed due to a mental health issue. Afterwards, Pink Floyd released their third album More (1969), the soundtrack for the debut film by the Swiss director Barbet Schroeder, shot in 1968 in Formentera and Ibiza, which portrays the emergence of the counterculture movement hippy to the island.

Recorded in London in early 1969, its cover features the Teuet windmill in Sant Ferran –from the 18th century, it is the first windmill on the island–, in a psychedelic allegory that evokes the giants of Don Quixote.

“It is clearly a transition album, heading towards the sound that Pink Floyd later developed,” notes Shanti Gordi, keyboardist, singer, and leader of the Menorcan band The Other Side, one of the longest-running and most international Pink Floyd tributes. “It is an album that served as a bridge from the Syd Barrett era to David Gilmour's, with much more elaborate guitars and more musical structure. It leaves behind the purest psychedelia and Barrett's chaos,” assesses Gordi.

“It starts to have very clear brushstrokes of what would later be Pink Floyd’s golden age. It is an album with a very dreamlike and very experimental atmosphere, with psychedelic points, and suddenly it has an acoustic, sweet and precious jewel like ‘Green is the colour’”, comments Gordi, a song that Roger Waters has acknowledged breathes the atmosphere of the Pityusic Islands. It also contains “a very rock connotation provided by Gilmour in ‘Ibiza Bar’”.

‘Islands’, by King Crimson

Those who have had a street in Formentera, in Es Pujols, since 2009, are the other British progressive rock icons, King Crimson. The reason, the song ‘Formentera Lady’ with which their fourth album, Islands (1971), began.

Now that Ulysses’ Odyssey is gaining momentum again, this songbook is inspired by this journey through the Mediterranean. Lyricist and guitarist Peter Sinfield lived in Formentera in the late 60s and early 70s and, on the album, the Pityusic island becomes the Ithaca to return to. He sings: “Houses stained white protect a pale coastline, imprisoned by cactus and pine. Formentera Lady, sing your song for me, Formentera Lady, lover of the sun. Here Odysseus, enchanted by dark Circe, fell, her perfume still lingers, still her charm”.

‘Blue’, by Joni Mitchell

Formentera also inspired Joni Mitchell; in fact, one of her creative peaks, her fourth album, Blue (1971), was recorded in Hollywood. In the spring of 1970, the Canadian arrived on the island to disconnect and clarify her relationship with musician Graham Nash, whom she would eventually leave from there by sending him a telegram. She wrote some of the songs for Blue there, some of her best folk and confessional pop.

“Perhaps it is not my favorite album of hers, but it does have my favorite song, ‘A Case of You’, especially the lyrics, which I think are among the best, from an extraordinary lyricist as she was. A Joni Mitchell in emotional crisis decides to take this refuge-trip to Formentera and formalizes her romantic breakup there with another illustrious figure of the music of the time. It is said that the seed of the album was that disconnection trip,” explains the Mallorcan concert promoter and folk enthusiast, Tomeu Gomila.

Once in Los Angeles, her relationship with the American singer-songwriter James Taylor, who was addicted to heroin, would also mark the broken tone of the album. Years earlier, in 1968, Taylor had composed ‘Carolina in My Mind’, from his debut, during a stay in Formentera as well.

‘Deià... Vu’, by Kevin Ayers

In Mallorca, another Briton, Kevin Ayers, recorded his eleventh album in 1980 at the Maller studios in Palma; a tribute to what became his paradise and refuge, and where years earlier the inspiration had come to him to found the twin of English psychedelia that was The Soft Machine, with Robert Wyatt and Daevid Allen.

Deià…Vu (1984), however, was not released until practically four years later, produced by Joan Bibiloni from Manacor. “I have no opinion on what it meant for Kevin, nor can I place this album anywhere, but I believe there have been others that have been more transcendent in popularity and probably perhaps in content, which is not that I think so either. All the pieces have their own aura and life and I suppose it reflects a precise era when Kevin was more around Deià and did not travel as much or did not have as much contact abroad. It is an album that is not so Saxon,” comments the musician, and adds: “I proposed the title, although the work is choral. Always activating the memory of Kevin is endearing, as is the environment up there in the Tramuntana, from when we lived there. The particularity of the album is that the only Saxon is Kevin, the rest are Latin people and there is a saxophone solo by Jorge Pardo that I like a lot on ‘Champagne and Valium’”.

‘Technique’, by New Order

New Order, with their fifth album, Technique (1990), left behind the long shadow of their embryonic group, Joy Division, cut short by the suicide of Ian Curtis in 1980. In the summer of 1988, they took refuge on the white island where English clubbers were captivated by the eclectic night sessions at Amnesia hosted by the Argentine DJ Alfredo Fiorito, a resident of Ibiza since 1976 who passed away in 2024. He created the balearic beat, a genre born in the Islands that mixed pop and rock, Latin music, ambient, house, and disco.

The English ended up exporting those sessions to the United Kingdom, and thus the balearic beat spread across the world. House and rave culture exploded, acid house married with rock, and Ibiza, turned into an emporium, became the world mecca of club culture.

“The story is very delirious because Peter Hook was commissioned to produce the first album by The Stone Roses, considered one of the best musical debuts of all time. Hook, who had already produced the track ‘Elephant Stone’ for The Stone Roses, said no in order to go to Ibiza. They were supposed to record most of the album at Estudios Mediterráneo, but they only managed to record tracks for a few songs because they spent two weeks partying, going to all the nightclubs,” explains the music journalist and Barcelona DJ Luis Costa.

The album, in fact, begins with ‘Fun Time’, “based on a night of excesses, partying, and drugs at Amnesia,” recalls Costa, who paraphrases Hook by saying that “all the money to record the album was spent on drugs and partying,” as he recounts in his book The Haçienda: How Not to Run a Club (Contra, 2019) in the chapter ‘Interlude. A night in Ibiza, 1988’.

New Order and Tony Wilson, from the band's label Factory Records, were co-owners of The Haçienda, the Manchester club turned into a mecca of dance music. Costa recalls what Wilson said to bassist Peter Hook after the stay in Ibiza: “You’ve never had such an expensive vacation in your life.”

The album would be finished at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios in the autumn and "would become the masterpiece that it is", says Luis Costa, co-author of the book Balearic. Historia oral de la cultura de club en Ibiza (Contra, 2020) in which he recalls: "Peter Hook explains that they decided to go to Ibiza because they wanted to flee the club scene in Manchester and London to have no distractions, but, of course, they landed there in the summer of 1988, the summer of the explosion of club culture and the arrival of ecstasy on the island, where it made its first mass entry and from there it was exported to the United Kingdom and all of Europe. They fled their own club culture and ran headlong into it".

‘Point of Entry’, by J. Priest

And on the same island of excesses, but at the antipodes, Judas Priest, British exponents of heavy metal, arrived to record a trilogy, also at Estudios Mediterráneo, located on the Can Marià Blai estate, in Sant Llorenç de Balàfia, which would end up being destroyed by fire in February 1990. Their drummer, Dave Holland, became a partner, just after an initial period as Ibiza Sound Studios. Judas Priest recorded their seventh album there, Point of Entry (1981), at the end of 1980, and the following ones: Screaming for Vengeance (1982) and Defenders of the Faith (1984).

“Perhaps it is a bit bold to claim that the three ‘Ibiza’ records by Judas Priest are a trilogy. After all, Point of Entry is a minor work sustained by a handful of memorable songs. It was the first time the quintet left the United Kingdom to record a studio album and they chose the lavish studios. The atmosphere, they said, was special, so much so that they decided to return to shape two of the best albums of a career that now spans over half a century,” assesses the Majorcan historian and musician Tomeu Canyelles.

“Perhaps it is that they acclimated to a space that also offered them luxury suites, a swimming pool and sports areas, or that their classic lineup had already consolidated. They refined their style until they achieved a winning formula: the precise balance between melody, epic, and aggression. Rob Halford felt so secure with the new songs that he began to write lyrics with homosexual themes to free himself from the great secret that tormented his sexuality. No one, however, managed to decipher them because the hedonism did not leave them much time for reflection. Long nights devoted to nightclubs, promiscuity, and cocaine. The band would remember their time in Ibiza as being of “a disordered life”, while Halford, reflects Canyelles, “however, will always have the final word: ‘Well... And who wouldn't have wanted a life like that?’”