The Recording
The making of the album would extend from January 4 to September 11, 1971, and would require forty or so sessions, some of which are unfortunately not documented. The first Pink Floyd album to have been recorded in three different studios, Meddle was also the first album the musicians produced entirely by themselves. Exit Norman Smith, who graciously acknowledged that “These guys now knew what they wanted, and so it was silly for me to contribute any more […].”13 According to Smith, Roger Waters already had the makings of a producer, as indeed did David Gilmour. “I personally think that the two of them together were a greater force than Syd Barrett ever was.”13
The sessions began at Abbey Road on January 4, 1971, with Peter Bown and John Leckie engineering. While Peter Bown had been a faithful traveling companion of the group ever since The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, John Leckie, hired by EMI in February 1970, was collaborating with Pink Floyd for the first time on this album. Just twenty-two years of age, he already had an impressive CV, having been tape operator on such important albums as John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (1970), George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass (1970), and Barrett by Syd Barrett. (His name would subsequently be associated with Paul McCartney, Simple Minds, Public Image Ltd., the Stone Roses, Radiohead…) “I first saw Pink Floyd at London Free School on the same night that Cream played their second gig at Cooks Ferry Inn, Edmonton,” recalls Leckie. “It was 1967 and we went to see Pink Floyd rather than Cream because we knew they were psychedelic and we wanted to see a ‘San Francisco’ style light show.” He adds: “I was a big fan of Ummagumma and when I saw ‘Engineer: Peter Mew’ on the credits and heard the record I realized, ‘That’s what I want to do.’”46
Throughout the whole of January, the four members of Pink Floyd engaged in experiments that yielded no concrete results other than the twenty-four small pieces entitled “Nothings,” some of which would be recycled into material for the album. “They were left alone,” confirms John Leckie. “Colin Miles, who was the only person at EMI who could ‘relate’ to Pink Floyd, used to turn up occasionally with a couple of bottles of wine. Maybe some spliff. They worked hard, though; it wasn’t a party.”71
Other than for a few sessions in the studio on January 20, 21, and 24, between January 17 (at the Roundhouse in London), and February 26, 1971 (at the Stadthalle in Offenbach, West Germany), Pink Floyd was touring again in Europe. They returned to Abbey Road on March 7—and would remain there until March 25. This hiatus in their recording process brought home to them the need to adopt a different way of working, as David Gilmour explains in May 1971: “We spent about a month in the studios in January, playing around with various ideas and recording them all. Then we went away to think about them. Now we are letting things take a natural pace. We’re refusing to take any pressure on the album. If people ask us about a release date, we just tell them that they can have it when it is ready.”9 It was at this point that the group decided to move to a different studio. The reason? “This was because EMI, in another display of their innate conservatism, would not commit to the new sixteen-track tape machines,” explains Nick Mason. “In a fit of high dudgeon, we insisted we had to have access to one and marched off to AIR, where we did the bulk of the work.”5 It should be explained that at this time, EMI was still using its eight-track tape recorders even though sixteen-tracks had become the norm. This was astonishing behavior from the record company that had produced all the Beatles albums, the biggest-selling records of the era! As a result, Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Rick Wright, and Nick Mason took themselves off to AIR Studios. The Associated Independent Recording Studios had recently been set up by George Martin, who, exasperated by the stinginess of the EMI board, had left Abbey Road in 1965 to become an independent producer. It was therefore in the studio of the former Fab Four producer, equipped with cutting-edge technology, that Meddle was recorded, with Peter Bown and John Leckie still at the controls. Although it is believed that seventeen sessions took place there between March 30 and September 21, not all have been documented. Similarly, there is a lack of technical detail concerning Pink Floyd’s sessions at Morgan Studios in Willesden, London, between July 19 and 29. All that is known are the names of the two sound engineers there: Rob Black and Roger Quested.
The Sleeve
The title chosen for Pink Floyd’s sixth album is most likely the contraction of two words: middle and medley. Perhaps Waters, Gilmour, Wright, and Mason had found the perfect point of artistic equilibrium (“middle”) at which to record the best of their music (“medley”).
Once again, the cover sprang from the fertile imagination of Hipgnosis and Storm Thorgerson. The latter is said to have originally been considering photographing a baboon’s bottom, an original and provocative but clearly rapidly abandoned idea. While they were on tour in Japan, the members of Pink Floyd managed to steer their friend Storm Thorgerson in a different direction. The photographer Robert Dowling then took the shot that would ultimately be used: a close-up of an ear combined with luminous ripples in the water. “Good plan,” comments Thorgerson. “The two separate images, ear and water, were sandwiched together—‘sandwich’ being a technical term for superimposition—to produce the final indifferent result.”65
Although the sleeve has to be opened out (the photograph wraps around the front and back) in order to fully appreciate Thorgerson’s design scheme, the artwork and the specific colors chosen (dominated by green and blue) convey a reasonably precise idea of the music, in particular that of “Echoes,” a work that is simultaneously dreamlike, psychedelic, and possesses a distinctly aquatic feel. Another aspect that heightens the sense of mystery (and at the same time says a great deal about the popularity of Pink Floyd) is that as with Atom Heart Mother, neither the name of the group nor the title of the album feature on the cover. Despite all this, Meddle is the least liked by Storm Thorgerson of all the album sleeves he designed for Pink Floyd.
Technical Details
As we have seen, the album Meddle was recorded in three different London studios: EMI’s legendary Abbey Road Studios, AIR Studios, and Morgan Studios.
At George Martin’s AIR Studios, located at 214 Oxford Street in the heart of London, Pink Floyd benefited from a custom Neve 24x16 console (equipped with the renowned 1073 preamp) and a sixteen-track Studer A80 tape recorder. The Floyd took over the smaller Studio Two, which was used mainly for bands, whereas Studio One was reserved predominantly for recording movie music. Having opened its doors on October 6, 1970, AIR Studios became such a success that a second venue was opened in 1979 on the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean. This was devastated by Hurricane Hugo in 1989, after which AIR then recentered its operations on London, opening a new complex at Lyndhurst Hall, a former Victorian church in the suburb of Hampstead.
Morgan Studios, located at 169–171 High Road, Willesden, began life toward the end of 1967 and soon attracted considerable numbers of artists. Among the masterpieces recorded here are Tales from Topographic Oceans by Yes, Berlin by Lou Reed, and Seventeen Seconds by the Cure. In 1971, both studios, each equipped with a Cadac 24x16 console, a 3M M56 sixteen-track tape recorder, and Tannoy Lockwood monitors, were made available to Pink Floyd.
Finally, in September 1971, the group decided to do a quadraphonic mix at Command Studios, also in the British capital (at 201 Piccadilly). Having opened in 1970 in what had formerly been BBC premises, the complex offered three independent studios equipped with automated API 24/24 consoles, Scully sixteen-track tape recorders, and a quadraphonic mixing system that was no doubt the reason Pink Floyd had chosen this place. Command Studios closed down just a few years later, in 1974, but not before a number of highly prestigious clients, such as Roxy Music, Deep Purple, and King Crimson, had availed themselves of its services. Unfortunately, the Meddle quadraphonic mix never saw the light of day.
The Instruments
Around this time, David Gilmour started to expand his guitar collection. The instruments he used on the album included a double
-neck Fender 1000 pedal steel guitar he acquired in Seattle around October and a Bill Lewis custom twenty-four-fret (compared to twenty-one for the Strat) purchased in Vancouver, also in October. But he still preferred his “Black Strat” for studio work. In terms of acoustic, he almost certainly used his Gibson J-45. For guitar effects, he bought a Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face BC108, which was more aggressive than the previous model, and a DeArmond volume pedal. There was no change in his amplification, any more than there was in that of Roger Waters, who moreover continued to use his Fender Precision basses, in particular the Precision Sunburst with the rosewood neck that seemed to have won his favor in the studio as well as onstage. Rick Wright may well have been playing an EMS VCS3 synthesizer for the first time on this record, probably the “Putney,” although there is some doubt about exactly where on the album it is used (other than generating the artificial wind sound on “One of These Days”). As for Nick Mason, the drummer was still playing his Ludwig kit.
Questioned in September 1970 by a journalist who wanted to know how he envisaged the future, Roger Waters replied: “I dunno, really. I have no idea what is going to happen next.”9 We, of course, do…
For Pink Floyd Addicts
Rock critics have not always held Meddle in particularly high esteem. Michael Watts of the Melody Maker lambasted it, earning himself the gift of a spring-mounted boxing glove from Nick Mason.
During a Pink Floyd concert on November 15, 1971, the crowd shouted out to the band to play “See Emily Play.” Roger Waters’s retort was: “You must be joking!”9
One Of These Days
Roger Waters, Rick Wright, Nick Mason, David Gilmour/5:59
Musicians
David Gilmour: electric lead guitar, pedal steel guitar, bass
Rick Wright: piano, organ
Roger Waters: bass, EMS VCS3 (?)
Nick Mason: voice, drums
Recorded
Abbey Road Studios, London: March 15, 1971 (Studio Three)
AIR Studios, London: March 30 and May 28, 1971, (Studio Two)
Morgan Studios, London: July (precise dates not known) 1971 (Studios One and Two)
Technical Team
Producer: Pink Floyd
Sound Engineers: Peter Bown (Abbey Road and AIR), Rob Black (Morgan)
Assistant Sound Engineers: John Leckie (Abbey Road and AIR), Roger Quested (Morgan)
Genesis
“One of These Days,” the first track on side one to be recorded by Pink Floyd, is a collective work that in one sense takes the group back to thback to the space-rock era of A Saucerful of Secrets. In reality, of course, it is one of the hardest, edgiest rock tracks they ever wrote. Leaving aside the few words uttered by Nick Mason, this opening track on Meddle is an instrumental in three parts.
The piece begins with a raging wind, the result of a very simple sound effect. The first part is built around two basses that answer each other. Accompanied by Rick Wright on keyboards, this long instrumental development generates a palpable, harrowing tension. For the second section, the Floyd develops an experimental sequence that introduces the following threatening phrase from Nick Mason: “One of these days I’m going to cut you into little pieces.” Which Roger Waters said to Jimmy Young, a BBC presenter who vocally disliked the group’s music. The third and final section is nothing less than a musical maelstrom. This closes the same way the number opened: with the whistling wind.
Pink Floyd started to play “One of These Days” in public in June 1971, five months before the release of Meddle. The song was also issued as the A-side of a single in the United States (with “Fearless” as the B-side) and also in Japan (with “Seamus” on the flip side). A version can be heard on Live at Pompeii, this time under the title “One of These Days I’m Going to Cut You into Little Pieces.” The song was also played on the “Momentary Lapse of Reason Tour” (1987–1990, which appeared on the live album Delicate Sound of Thunder, 1988) and the “Division Bell Tour” (1994, which appeared on the live album Pulse, 1995). The studio version can also be heard on the compilations A Collection of Great Dance Songs (1981), Works (1983), and Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd (2001).
Production
In 1971, Michael Watts of Melody Maker wrote a damning review of Meddle, criticizing the album as a whole as weak, unhip, and old hat, and the track “One of These Days” in particular as “a throwback to the Ventures’ ‘Telstar.’”9 The critic’s unreliable ears had clearly failed to pick up on the originality and power of this remarkable piece or to identify the real inspiration behind it—the main theme of the cult British science fiction series Doctor Who, first broadcast on BBC One television in 1963. The show’s theme music had been written by Ron Grainer and arranged and realized by Delia Derbyshire, a composer of startling electronic music. As chance had it, in around 1966, Derbyshire was briefly an associate of the brilliant Peter Zinovieff, who went on to develop the EMS VCS3 synthesizer a few years later. Immortalized by the Floyd on The Dark Side of the Moon, the VCS3 is also thought to have been used to create the double-tracked wind effect heard at the beginning and end of “One of These Days.” There can be little doubt that it was the Doctor Who theme music that came to Roger Waters’s mind when he heard David Gilmour trying out ideas on his guitar with the Binson Echorec. “It is Roger who had the idea,” recalls Gilmour. “I was working on rhythms in this style and he decided to do the same thing on the bass. He found this riff on the bass, the same one that I had played on the guitar.”63
Unfortunately there is a dearth of information concerning the recording of “One of These Days.” Some parts almost certainly derive from recordings made in January, when Pink Floyd was working on their twenty-four “Nothings.” The first documented session, however, dates from March 15 and was held in Studio Three at Abbey Road. Once the bass track had been laid down, the group added various guitar, bass, piano, organ, and backward cymbal overdubs. It was probably on this same day that Nick Mason’s voice was recorded, under the titles “Dialogue 1” and “Dialogue 2.” Following the transfer of Abbey Road’s eight tracks to AIR Studios’ Studer sixteen-track on March 30, Glenn Povey has been able to find no other record of this track until May 28, when the Floyd recorded the bridge, under the title “Alien Orchestra,” with various guitar, piano, cymbal, and organ overdubs. In an interview, however, David Gilmour clearly describes the recording of the basses during a session at Morgan Studios. And as this bass part forms the backbone of the piece, either “One of These Days” was recorded mainly in these studios, or else the bass part was rerecorded in its definitive form after the various sessions at Abbey Road and AIR.
“One of These Days” occupies a unique place in the Pink Floyd discography, as David Gilmour explains: “We went to Morgan Studios, and decided that Roger and I would play two basses live.”63 Gilmour adds that he picked up the main bass guitar and Waters the spare. Unfortunately the strings on the spare were completely dead, and a roadie was immediately sent out to buy a new set. “It’s a most unlikely story,” continues Gilmour, “because we waited for around five hours [three hours according to Nick Mason!], counting the minutes and money draining away.”63 Tired of waiting for the roadie to return, they decided to record the two bass parts with the old strings, despite their lack of brilliance and punch. “You can actually hear it if you listen in stereo. The first bass is me. A bar later, Roger joins in on the other side of the stereo picture.”29 John Leckie, the assistant sound engineer, recalls that: “[Roger] had the straight bass through one amp and the Binson signal coming out of another, and a DI line into the mixing desk. He fiddled around with the tape speed on the Binson until the echo was in exact double time with the bass line he was playing.”64
It is over this driving rhythm created by Waters and Gilmour, and against a background of synthesized wind (courtesy of the VCS3), that Wright enters with a series of chords played most probably on a piano strongly colored by a Leslie speaker, each chord announced by a reversed cymbal–Hammond organ combination. This creat
es a fantastic effect that is one of the signatures of the piece. The sound of a reversed hi-hat can also be heard between 1:54 and 2:05. Then comes what sounds like Mason’s bass drum(s), struck with considerable power, and Gilmour’s first intervention on his Bill Lewis, played with equal power. This guitar is plugged into his new Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face BC108, which was far more aggressive than the previous model, and has a highly distorted sound with impressive sustain. Gilmour also uses his whammy bar to add vibrato to his notes. His playing is apparently doubled on a second track, and at 2:35 he can be heard harmonizing with his other guitar line, the two guitars opposite each other in the stereo picture.
The bridge of this track is somewhat experimental in nature. It grows out of a kind of bass solo played by Gilmour and involves a combination of guitar effects, percussion, and reversed sounds. David Gilmour explains: “For the middle section, another piece of technology came into play: an H&H amp with vibrato. I set the vibrato to more or less the same tempo as the delay. But the delay was in ¾ increments of the beat and the vibrato went with the beat. I just played the bass through it and made up that little section, which we then stuck on to a bit of tape and edited in. The tape splices were then camouflaged with cymbal crashes [audible between 3:41 and 3:43].”29 It is also during this sequence that Nick Mason utters his memorable phrase One of these days I’m going to cut you into little pieces. “The line was recorded at double-tape speed using a falsetto voice; the tape was then replayed at slow speed,”5 explains the drummer. But apparently the result was not yet quite right, because the decision was then taken to play it through a ring modulator, producing the final cavernous, quasi-monstrous voice!
Pink Floyd All the Songs Page 30
