Album title: Meddle
Artist: Pink Floyd
Nationality: English
Label: Harvest
Chronology: Sixth
Grade: A
Factsheet: What self-respecting proghead does not know this album? The perhaps last gasps of the Barrett era on most of side one with the new direction Floyd were to pursue typified by the side-long final track, this album is generally regarded in the light of that last track, the twenty-three-and-a-half-minute “Echoes”, though there are some good tracks besides this. Basically though it must be said it’s a bit of a mess, with country, forties music and the emerging prog that Floyd would perfect on the next few albums. It’s also remembered for its enigmatic cover, which many of us (myself included) believed to be more erotic than is the truth, the picture being, according to the graphic designer Storm Thorgeson, an ear underwater. Boo. The album already shows a shift away from the “everyone write a song” idea behind previous efforts such as
Atom Heart Mother and
Ummagumma, with Roger Waters and Dave Gilmour writing the lion’s share of the music, a situation that would continue throughout Floyd’s career, up to, of course, the departure of Waters, whereupon Gilmour would pretty much take over the compositional duties for the band.
Tracklisting: One of These Days/ A Pillow of Winds/ Fearless/ San Tropez/ Seamus/ Echoes
Comments: Already Floyd are bucking the trend with an instrumental opening the album which turns out to have some sparse vocal content, basically a spoken threat voiced by Nick Mason (one of his only vocal contributions, perhaps his only one) which changes the whole nature of the piece and makes it much darker and scary. The tune rides mostly on a bouncy bass line with hits from Richard Wright’s Hammond organ hopping through it then guitar snarling in from Gilmour. The piece then becomes staggered with effects making it sound like the music is stuttering, then Mason’s heavily-phased vocal before the tune takes off again on guitar and organ with the bass maintaining the rhythm it began. Note that some of Gilmour’s riffs here would surface later in “Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Part 1” on
Wish You Were Here.
After this powerful introduction things tail right back for an acoustic ballad, as “A Pillow of Winds” (which begins with the ultimate cliche, the sound of wind) makes me feel that the guys from The Alan Parsons Project must have been listening to this album. No, he wasn’t the engineer here, before you ask. Lovely laid back gentle little song, featuring of course some beautiful acoustic guitar from Gilmour. “Fearless” uses the crowd chant at Liverpool Football Club’s Anfield singing the club theme “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and is another soft acoustic style song with a very gentle crooned vocal from Gilmour and acoustic guitar played by Roger Waters. As a matter of fact, from a very powerful, energetic start the album has really fallen into quite a laconic, relaxed groove.
This more or less relaxed, breezy direction continues on “St. Tropez”, with a lounge, easy-listening style faintly reminiscent of the forties or something we might later hear from the likes of The Divine Comedy. Nice slide guitar in it, but can’t say too much more about it other than that. Not one of my favourites, though it’s well above “Seamus”, the “joke track”, set to a country/blues slow rhythm with Gilmour affecting a country redneck drawl. I suppose it’s not without its charm but as Gilmour himself later admitted "I guess it wasn't really as funny to everyone else [as] it was to us". No, Dave, it wasn’t.
That of course leads us to the standout on the album, an entire side dedicated to one track, the phenomenal “Echoes”, which nods back to improvisational experimentation such as “Interstellar Overdrive” and “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”. Opening with echoey beeps made by a grand piano apparently. It’s all very technical and if you’re so inclined and wish to you can read all about the compositional technique
here. After the mostly guitar and organ intro the vocal comes in, and again keeping with the tone of most of the album it’s laid back and gentle, though the song will not remain that way. Running for twenty-three minutes it goes through some major changes, including a lot of experiments in sonic and recording techniques. No doubt “Echoes” influenced many later experimental pieces such as Vangelis’s “Beauborg” and ELO’s “Fire on High”
Favourite track(s): One of These Days/ A Pillow of Winds/ Fearless/ Echoes
Least favourite track(s): F
ucking Seamus!
Personal Rating: 4.0
Legacy Rating: 5.0
Final Rating: 4.5
Musings: I always wondered, and now I know. Andrew Lloyd-Webber stole the main riff from “Echoes” for his “Phantom of the Opera”! I knew it sounded the same. Roger Waters thinks so too, but recognised the futility and expense of suing the rich bastard. “Yeah, the beginning of that bloody Phantom song is from Echoes. *DAAAA-da-da-da-da-da*. I couldn't believe it when I heard it. It's the same time signature—it's 12/8—and it's the same structure and it's the same notes and it's the same everything. Bastard. It probably is actionable. It really is! But I think that life's too long to bother with suing Andrew fu
cking Lloyd Webber.”
I wonder if he meant “life’s too short”? He probably meant life's too short.