Pink Floyd All the Songs
Page 22
Following a fade-out, the birds return, this time alone in their natural environment. This mood is interrupted by a bellowing chord played on what sounds like a pipe organ (perhaps recorded on the enormous instrument in the Royal Albert Hall?) and accompanied by timpani and a gong. The rest of the sequence is based mainly around two other, naturally dissonant organ parts and an acoustic piano whose strings are not only rubbed, but among which Rick Wright (as he would later reveal) inserted pieces of loose change in order to further distort the sonorities.
The piece concludes with a final sequence that is the aforementioned copy of “Sysyphus Part One,” this time slowed down, during which Rick adds a choir of what sound like female voices to the Mellotron.
For Pink Floyd Addicts
Pink Floyd and Rick Wright seem to have played “Sysyphus” only once onstage. And this was because they had no choice… The occasion was a gig in Birmingham in February 1970, and the reason was the late arrival of the truck carrying their equipment. A brief clip exists that was recorded from Tomorrow’s World on the BBC.
Grantchester Meadows
Roger Waters / 7:26
Musicians
Roger Waters: vocals, classical guitar, special effects
Recorded
Abbey Road Studios, London: March 24, April 25, 28, June 3, 1969 (Studio Two and Room Four)
Technical Team
Producer: Norman Smith
Sound Engineer: Peter Mew
Assistant Sound Engineers: Neil Richmond, Alan Parsons
Genesis
Located just outside the prestigious university city of Cambridge, Grantchester is a green and peaceful village bordered by the River Cam. It was in this enchanting setting that David Gilmour came into the world and Roger Waters spent his childhood. This superb acoustic ballad is not unlike Proust’s madeleine in that it evokes memories of the past. The very first notes plunge the listener into Pink Floyd’s prehistory, into the youth of Waters, Gilmour, and even Syd Barrett, who came to Grantchester Meadows after school to play the guitar. “At Grantchester Meadows, teenagers caroused in the grass, far from parental eyes,” writes Julian Palacios. “Sometimes, they would have drinks or ice cream in the tea gardens at the Orchard, under apple trees that exploded with blossoms in spring. By evening, pink clouds reflected in dark water, outlined by blue sky, as swans and kingfishers glide by.”17
Roger Waters’s lyrics paint a perfect picture of this atmosphere. He describes the crying of birds in the sky, misty morning whisperings, the song of the lark, the barking of the dark fox, and, even more directly, his teenage years (also, in a sense, the birth of Pink Floyd): In the lazy water meadow/I lay me down […] Basking in the sunshine of a bygone afternoon/Bringing sounds of yesterday into this city room. However, change lurks behind this serene musical landscape. Change that can be as sudden as it is brutal and disquieting due to the Icy wind of night (the first line of the song) and the gentle stirring sounds that belie a deathly silence.
Production
Coming after Rick Wright’s harrowing “Sysyphus,” “Grantchester Meadows” offers a salutary return to tranquility and nature. The piece opens with forty seconds of recorded natural sound during which the song of a lark flits around the stereo field before being joined by a bee, completing the bucolic mood. It is interesting to note that the lark is on a relatively short loop of around three seconds (which repeats itself over and over until the end of the song), while the bee loop plays for ten seconds or so. Once this sonic landscape is firmly established, Roger Waters enters on classical guitar (the Levin Classic 3?), playing an arpeggiated pattern mainly on the two lowest strings (E and A). This accompaniment is answered by a solo part on a second guitar, featuring a very pleasing counterpoint played mostly using the hammer-on technique. In keeping with the defined approach for this studio album, Waters also sings lead vocal, adopting a gentle, soothing tone of voice. He gives the impression of being doubled electronically by means of ADT. The effect works perfectly, except that at 3:22 the two voices get slightly out of phase on the word sea, betraying the fact that they were recorded on separate tracks in a stereo configuration. Furthermore, in the refrains, the phrase Gone to ground is mono, one of the two tracks having been muted in order to successfully create a sense of heightened proximity. In the second refrain (at 5:40), Waters harmonizes with himself.
At around 3:24, various other sound effects can be heard: a murmuring river that meanders delicately between the notes of the larksong, voices resounding in the distance, wild geese cackling before taking flight (4:15). Against this bucolic background, Waters plays a short guitar solo that is simple but effective. After he starts singing again, the natural sounds gradually gain the upper hand over the music, with the lark becoming ever more present, wheeling faster and faster, as if crazily, within the stereo field before being upstaged and replaced in the foreground by the bee. Someone can then be heard rapidly descending a staircase (Storm Thorgerson, according to some sources), chasing the insect with a flyswatter and eventually dispatching it! End of piece.
The first session for “Grantchester Meadows” is thought to have taken place on March 24, 1969. The song was completed on April 25 and mixed on April 28 and June 3. It was initially named “Roger’s Scene, Parts 1 and 2,” and then “Roger’s Quarter, Second Movement” until Waters sensibly reconsidered… It is in the vein of the superb songs he wrote during the same period for More, such as “Green Is the Colour” and “Cymbaline.” In terms of the melody, a certain similarity can be detected with the future “Goodbye Blue Sky,” composed by the bass player in 1979 for The Wall.
IN YOUR HEADPHONES
Attentive listening at 4:47 will reveal the sound of someone in the distance humming or possibly imitating the sound of a trumpet.
For Pink Floyd Addicts
Under the title “Daybreak,” “Grantchester Meadows” opened the suite The Man and the Journey, kicking off the group’s concerts during the 1970 United States tour. Roger Waters was accompanied by Gilmour and Wright on second acoustic guitar and organ respectively.
Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving with A Pict
Roger Waters / 5:00
Musicians
Roger Waters: voice, special effects
Ron Geesin (?): Scottish voice
Recorded
Abbey Road Studios, London: September 23 and December 17, 1968; March 18, 25, April 28, June 23, 1969 (Studio Two, Studio Three, Room Four)
Technical Team
Producer: Norman Smith
Sound Engineers: Peter Mew, Phil McDonald, Chris Blair
Assistant Sound Engineers: Jeff Jarratt, Neil Richmond, Anthony Mone
Genesis
Because “Grantchester Meadows” undershot Roger Waters’s allotted half side of the LP, the bassist needed to get back to work. He then had the idea for this “naturalistic” collage, which demonstrates a desire to liberate himself from the usual song structure and to explore avenues that often resemble musique concrète (a form of electroacoustic music based on natural sounds). Convoluted as it is, the title “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict” sheds little light on Waters’s intentions. During the first section of the piece, the noises of all sorts of animal (birds, frogs, and so on) can indeed be heard. The word Pict, meanwhile, denotes a member of one of various tribes that inhabited a large swath of Scotland from before the Roman invasion of Britain.
The second section is again a mini symphony of different sound effects over which Roger Waters declaims some rather strange-sounding verse (in the manner of Robert Burns, the great Scottish poet of the eighteenth century). It is possible to glean the following: the narrator has set himself up in Scotland as a mackerel fisherman only to become embroiled in a bloody conflict against the background of a religious war and the accession of the Catholic Mary Stuart to the throne of Scotland (a country that had recently become mainly Protestant). Roger Waters
also mentions a claymore, which is a large sword used by Scottish warriors.
Production
As we have seen, the first section of this piece, the recording of which began in EMI’s Studio Three on September 23, 1968, under the title “Roger’s Tune,” opens with the noises of various animals, all created by Roger Waters. He can even be heard using a duck call! These sounds are all accelerated and steeped in reverb, and the main intended effect is presumably humor. “It’s not actually anything,” Roger Waters would later explain. “It’s a bit of concrete poetry. Those were sounds that I made, the voice and the hand slapping were all human generated—no musical instruments.”57 He can be heard slapping his hands (against his knees?) in order to create a rhythm (once again sped up) that is faded in from 0:26. Over this rhythm he plays a looped phrase that is a mixture of words and onomatopoeia (from 1:10). Around 2:19, piercing, varispeeded screams can be heard that would be just right for Halloween. In response to a journalist who inquired about the origins of the “chick’s screams,” an unidentified member of the group replied, to the amusement of all, that “The chick screaming is a very beautiful chick, she’s very tall and thin and dresses in black, and she sits and drinks, and smokes cigarettes, and her name is Roger Waters.”57 Whether by chance or not, at around 2:51 and 3:13 these screams seem to take up the riff of “Astronomy Dominé.”
The end of the rhythm announces the second part of the astonishing “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict,” whose other working title was “Roger’s Quarter, First Movement.” A voice starts to declaim a text in a strong Scottish accent that makes the words difficult to understand and lends a humorous and caricatural tone. A short and very present delay adds to the formality of the text, creating the impression that it is being recited in an enormous stadium. It is tempting to believe that the orator of this parody is Ron Geesin, himself a native of Stevenston in Scotland, and more than capable of playing the “Pict” in question. “Roger’s ‘Several Species… ’ indicated the influence of his budding friendship with Ron Geesin,”5 Nick Mason would later confirm. This friendship would result in a major collaboration between Geesin and Pink Floyd on Atom Heart Mother in 1970. However, it would seem to be Waters, rather than Geesin, who recites the text. Either way, the voice then merges with numerous animal calls, all of a hallucinatory character, and following a final phrase delivered in a sententious and frenzied tone come four seconds of silence before the declamation eventually concludes with the words: And the wind cried Mary, an allusion to the similarly titled song recorded by Jimi Hendrix in 1967. The very last words of the piece are: Thank you. This Scottish parody was recorded in Room Four on June 23, 1969, not by Peter Mew, who engineered all the other studio tracks, but by Phil McDonald and Chris Blair.
This piece offers an insight into the wide creative range of the Floyd’s bass player. He also displays a sense of humor that would not be greatly in evidence on the group’s future albums—more’s the pity. One swallow does not make a summer, as the saying goes.
“Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict” was included on its own, in other words without “Grantchester Meadows,” in the 1983 compilation Works. Should this be regarded as another example of Roger’s humor?
IN YOUR HEADPHONES
At 4:32, when the recording is slowed down, a voice can be heard saying: That was pretty avant-garde, wasn’t it?
The Narrow Way Part 1-3
David Gilmour / Part One: 3:28 / Part Two: 2:53 / Part Three: 5:57
Musicians
David Gilmour: vocals, backing vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, bass, keyboards, percussion, drums, Jew’s harp, special effects
Recorded
Abbey Road Studios, London: January 16, 29, March 6, 17, 26, May 22, 27, June 17, July 5, 1969 (Studio Two, Studio Three, Room Four)
Technical Team
Producer: Norman Smith
Sound Engineer: Peter Mew
Assistant Sound Engineers: Neil Richmond, Michael Sheady, Richard Langham
Genesis
David Gilmour recalls the genesis of the album with absolute clarity: “We’d decided to make the damn album and each of us to do a piece of music on our own… It was just desperation really, trying to think of something to do, to write by myself. I’d never written anything before. I just went into a studio and started waffling about, tacking bits and pieces together.”3 The Pink Floyd guitarist even asked Roger Waters for help, with the lyrics at least. The reply he received was: “No, do ’em yourself.”36 Later, the author of this piece would deem it a pretentious waste of time.
“The Narrow Way” is a song in three parts. The first two are instrumental, with Part One centered on acoustic guitars, while Part Two is constructed around a pretty heavy electric riff with some keyboards. For Part Three, whose melodic elegance is already typically “Gilmouresque,” the guitarist reused the words of “The Narrow Way,” a segment of the suite The Man and the Journey.
These words are shrouded in mystery and evoke the narrow way that leads to the darkness in the north where weary strangers’ faces show their sympathy. Little by little, the listener begins to grasp that these words are addressed to a person who has undertaken the long journey along this path, a person to whom the night is beckoning, who hears the night birds calling. The narrator describes the folly that lies within this person and urges him to cast his mind back to the time when there was life with every morning. It is difficult not to see this song as an allusion to the deterioration of Syd Barrett, who never really came back from his all-too-frequent psychedelic journeys.
Production
Of all the members of the group, David Gilmour took the longest to enter the studio. Whereas his bandmates had been working on their respective pieces since September 1968, it was not until January 16 that he decided to record “Dave’s Scene,” the working title of “The Narrow Way, Part One.” Was he lacking in confidence, having joined the Floyd barely a year before?
This is an instrumental section whose style is a mixture of folk and the blues. Gilmour plays an acoustic guitar, presumably his Levin LT 18, apparently with drop D tuning (that is to say with the bottom E string lowered by a tone in order to obtain a D). He records himself on three tracks: on the first (which can be heard in the left-hand channel) he plays a rhythm part and on the second (in the right-hand channel) a combination of picking and strumming, while the third guitar (in the center) is used to support the other two. To this he adds various slide (bottleneck) licks, again on acoustic, with strong and very present reverb, and a second slide guitar in the form of his Stratocaster, played with a clear tone. On this he produces a series of very high notes close to the bridge with echo courtesy of the Binson Echorec (listen around 1:45). Reverb-laden percussion can also be made out (for example at 1:02). Finally, various electronic effects were added on January 29, notably an intro referred to in the recording notes as the “spiral effect.” These seem to have been obtained from a lick played bottleneck on the Fender, lightly distorted (thanks to the Fuzz Face), looped through the Echorec, varispeeded and finally played backward. This sound is taken up again at various places and is complemented by what sound like notes produced on an organ or the Mellotron that pan around the stereo image (listen at 2:55).
The sessions for “The Narrow Way, Part Two” (working title: “Dave’s Scene Second Movement”) began on January 29. This section is based on a riff played by Gilmour on his Stratocaster with Fuzz Face distortion and a short delay. He doubles this on another track, and again on bass (Roger Waters’s Rickenbacker 4001?). It forms an eight-bar sequence that is repeated virtually to the end of the piece. Gilmour resumed work on the recording on March 6, adding numerous overdubs including some percussion, most likely bongos and toms, which gets slightly out of time at the end of the sequences (listen at 0:32 and 0:51). He also plays a Jew’s harp, although this blends with the numerous effects heard throughout the
piece, making it difficult to identify. It is not at all easy to work out exactly which instruments were used to create these sounds, although guitars can clearly be heard, as can keyboards, including, presumably, the Mellotron. The sonorities are deeply distorted by means of every gadget at the guitarist’s disposal: Binson Echorec, Fuzz Face, wah-wah, Leslie speaker (as on the guitar riff after 1:42), reversed and slowed-down tapes, and so on. Also during this session, Gilmour recorded a keyboard part that would serve as a link with the next section. Finally, he added an organ on March 17 before mixing the section on June 17.
“The Narrow Way, Part Three” (“Dave’s Scene, Third Movement”) the first to be written by David Gilmour for the group… although recorded without the group because he plays all the instruments himself. The sessions took place on March 6, 17, and 26, and then May 27. A keyboard part makes the transition from the previous part to this, before giving way to the faded-in sound of a choir of male voices produced on the Mellotron. Gilmour clearly wanted to give pride of place to his Stratocaster, as there are no fewer than four different guitar parts here (not including the doubling). The first is played rhythm, its sound colored by a Leslie speaker; the second proposes a harmonic line featuring heavy distortion (and played solo at the end of the song); the third is clear-toned slide guitar; and the fourth is another lead guitar part, again played slide, with reasonably strong reverb and echo. Gilmour also plays acoustic piano, Farfisa organ, and bass, on which he seems to have recorded two distinct parts. Finally, as an all-round musician, he also delivers a very credible drum part, his fills curiously resembling Nick Mason’s. First and foremost, however, the song derives its charm from his inimitable voice, alternately gentle and rougher edged, which he harmonizes in the refrains. The three parts of “The Narrow Way” were edited and mixed on July 5.