This brings us to the third and final section: “Morning Glory.” At precisely 8:16, the edit joining this sequence to the preceding one can be clearly heard. Chords ring out (against the background sounds of still-frying bacon) and the piece then gets into its stride with Nick on drums, Rick on piano and Hammond organ, and Roger on bass. David does not come in until later (9:52), playing a kind of improvised melody on his Fender with Fuzz Face distortion and at the same time relaunching Alan’s monologue. The roadie continues to drone on about marmalade, concluding with the highly revealing phrase: “My head’s a blank.” The psychedelic breakfast draws to a close with a return to the kitchen and the sound of the sink filling with water, slippers shuffling about, a cupboard being closed, a bowl and cup being placed into the water, a door slamming, and the tap dripping just as badly as it was at the beginning of the track.
During the Floyd concert at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on January 23, 1970, one of the first public presentations of “Atom Heart Mother” was given. A European radio station transmitted the show. The journalist Michel Lancelot introduced the four musicians to listeners, who learned that Waters has “a face of Christ,” that Wright is fond of composer Stockhausen, that Gilmour is “the beautiful kid of the group,” and that Mason is the drummer…
For Pink Floyd Addicts
Morning glory is also the name of a flowering plant whose seeds contain ergine, a hallucinogenic alkaloid that produces effects similar to LSD. Hence Alan’s highly “psychedelic” breakfast!
IN YOUR HEADPHONES
Attentive listening will reveal that at the end of the track, after declaring “My head’s a blank,” Alan picks up a set of car keys and opens a door. A car can then be heard starting…
At 7:52, toward the end of “Sunny Side Up,” Alan’s monologue seems to contain the words: “Do you know Elton John?” At this point in time the singer-songwriter was in the early stages of his long career, having just released his second, eponymous album containing the superb “Your Song.”
RELICS
ALBUM
RELICS
RELEASE DATE
United Kingdom: May 14, 1971
Label: Starline
RECORD NUMBER: SRS 5071
Number 32 (United Kingdom), number 152 (United States), number 29 (Australia)
Arnold Layne/Interstellar Overdrive/See Emily Play/Remember A Day/Paint Box/Julia Dream/Careful With That Axe, Eugene/Cirrus Minor/The Nile Song/Biding My Time/Bike
Relics, “A Bizarre Collection of Antiques & Curious”
By summer 1970, Pink Floyd had resumed their punishing touring schedule: firstly in France and the United Kingdom (July 26–September 12, 1970), followed by the United States and Canada (September 26–October 23), and then Europe again (November 6–29). On December 11 the group embarked on a promotional tour for Atom Heart Mother, which had been released on October 10. Nearly seventy concerts were scheduled in Europe and the United States between December 11, 1970 (Brighton), and November 20, 1971 (Cincinnati, Ohio). In the meantime, the recording sessions for the Floyd’s sixth album, Meddle, had begun in January 1971.
Two Eras in One Compilation
Because of the touring and because the release date for the next album was some way off, the EMI bosses decided to issue a compilation LP (the second after The Best of the Pink Floyd, released in 1970) in order to maintain Pink Floyd’s popularity at its peak. Relics covers the group’s two distinct eras up to this point—the Syd Barrett era and the David Gilmour era, uniting singles, album tracks, and the unreleased “Biding My Time” in the following order: “Arnold Layne” (single), “Interstellar Overdrive” (The Piper at the Gates of Dawn), “See Emily Play” (single), “Remember a Day” (A Saucerful of Secrets), “Paint Box” (the B-side of “Apples and Oranges”), “Julia Dream” (the B-side of “It Would Be So Nice”), “Careful with That Axe, Eugene” (B-side of “Point Me at the Sky”), “Cirrus Minor” (More), “The Nile Song” (More), “Biding My Time” (unreleased), and “Bike” (The Piper at the Gates of Dawn).
EMI released Relics on its Starline label on May 14, 1971, in the United Kingdom and on July 15 across the Atlantic. Circus magazine gave the LP a good review, declaring: “If you want to get into Pink Floyd for the first time, this would be a good album to get.”9 The compilation went on to reach number 32 in the United Kingdom (and was certified gold). In the United States it would climb no higher than number 152 on the Billboard chart. Nick Mason recalls: “Relics came out in May, just before we played at the Crystal Palace Garden Party. This was our first major concert in London for some time and one of the outdoor events that the British can be very good at.”5
The Sleeve
The original cover illustration for Relics was a pen and (black) ink drawing by Nick Mason, which includes various “improbable” items, some of which produce sounds (an organ, bells, drums, cymbals, trumpets, and even a cuckoo), while others derive from the nautical world (a bathyscaphe, an anchor, a lifeboat) brought together on a vessel of a most unusual kind. The artistic style evokes that of the renowned American cartoonist Rube Goldberg. The title of the album and the name Pink Floyd appear in the top left-hand corner as if carved into a mountainside. There is also a subtitle, which runs around a semicircular banner at the foot of the organ pipes: “A Bizarre Collection of Antiques & Curios.” When Relics was released on CD in 1995, a new cover was designed by Storm Thorgerson and Jon Crossland, who have respected the original concept in their illustration of an assembly of weird and wonderful machines against a blue background.
Biding My Time
Roger Waters/5:16
Musicians
David Gilmour: electric rhythm and lead guitar, acoustic guitar
Rick Wright: piano, organ, trombone
Roger Waters: vocals, bass
Nick Mason: drums
Recorded
Abbey Road Studios, London: July 19, 1969 (Studio Three)
Technical Team
Producer: Norman Smith
Sound Engineer:(?)
Genesis
In the suite The Man and the Journey, “Biding My Time” is known by the title “Afternoon” and is positioned between “Tea Time”/“Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast” and “Doing It”/“The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party.” It is one of the most unusual Roger Waters compositions in the Pink Floyd catalog. More specifically, it maintains the link between the group and its rhythm ’n’ blues origins. Although a bluesy number, it ends with a traditional jazz feel.
The words also have something of the blues about them. They amount to a critique of work on an assembly line or in an office. I’ll never pine for the sad days and the bad days/When we was workin’ from nine to five, sings Waters. The message is clear: any form of Taylorism (in other words dismally repetitive work) or exploitation of man by man in order to drive productivity leads inevitably to alienation. For the narrator, however, those days are over. He now plans to spend his time by the fireside, in the warm light, basking in the love in her eyes. The years have gone by and a well-earned time of well-being has arrived… Might this be the reason why “Biding My Time” was never included on an original album by Pink Floyd?
Production
Contrary to the information provided on the sleeve of Relics, “Biding My Time” was recorded not on July 9, but on July 19. The mystery remains, however, of why the Floyd went back to the studio at all at this point, having only just finished mixing Ummagumma. They completed the recording in one session, and it was the fourth take that was used as the basis for the overdubs. David Gilmour opens “Rest”—the working title of “Biding My Time”—in jazz-blues style with a combination of solo line and chords on his white Stratocaster. His guitar sound is gentle and hushed, and he is closely supported by Roger Waters’s bass and Nick Mason’s hi-hat. This New Orleans–inspired intro comes as something of a surprise from a group that had recently recorded tracks as experimental as “Sysyphus” and “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Toget
her in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict” (on Ummagumma). It is Waters who sings lead vocals—in a serene, yet nostalgic voice. Gilmour accompanies him on acoustic guitar, and Rick Wright supports him with a very good piano part. The instrumental bridge that follows possesses a more playful, rocky quality. It is after the second verse (from 1:54) that the New Orleans color truly comes into its own. Here, Rick Wright picks up a trombone—an instrument he had been playing since his teenage years—and delivers a solo that is nothing short of astonishing, particularly as he doubles it with a second track, reinforcing the fanfare-like effect of this section. The piece then develops into more of a rock number, with Gilmour leading the charge on his highly distorted Stratocaster. His playing, including a bold three-minute solo, demonstrates that he had perfectly mastered the styles of the luminaries of the genre, in particular that of Hendrix, one of Gilmour’s major influences. Meanwhile his bandmates are not exactly idle: Nick Mason delivers an excellent drum part, pounding his skins furiously (he can be heard furiously maltreating his two bass drums at 4:26!), Roger Waters plays with feeling and power, and Wright continues to support Gilmour with a (double) harmonizing trombone part and some highly inspired playing on the Hammond organ (3:59).
Onstage, this number would provide its performers with an opportunity to let it rip, as they did at the gig of September 17, 1969, at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, which is the basis of an excellent bootleg. It seems likely that the atypical character of “Biding My Time” relative to the group’s other work was one of the reasons the song never made it onto an original album.
MEDDLE
ALBUM
MEDDLE
RELEASE DATE
United Kingdom: November 5, 1971 (November 13 according to some sources)
Label: Harvest Records
RECORD NUMBER: SHVL 795
Number 3 (United Kingdom), on the charts for 85 weeks
Number 2 (the Netherlands), number 69 (France), number 70 (United States)
One Of These Days/A Pillow Of Winds/Fearless (You’ll Never Walk Alone)/San Tropez/Seamus/Echoes OUTTAKES Nothing part 1-24/Anything/Play The Blues /Wild Thing/Knozze (Nozzee)/Bottles
Meddle, a Mature Work
Just three months after the British release of Atom Heart Mother, Pink Floyd was back in the studio working on their next album. Over the preceding weeks they had been on tour in the United States and Europe—a schedule they would resume in 1971 in the aim of promoting their new album planetwide: Europe to start with, followed by Japan and Australia for the first time. After this it would be back to Europe and then off to North America again. An infernal cycle that explains why the sessions for Meddle were spread out over almost nine months.
The Culmination of a Concept Based on Little “Nothings”
When they turned up at Abbey Road on January 4, 1971, for the first recording session devoted to their new album, Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Rick Wright, and Nick Mason had not yet written a thing. In an interview given in April 1971, David Gilmour confessed to the interviewer that Pink Floyd was “the laziest group ever,”9 and that other groups would be horrified to see how they wasted their studio time. Nevertheless, the Floyd had a concept they wanted to develop: a sort of follow-up to “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast.” Their idea was to make an album on which kitchen utensils (cutlery, glasses…), tools (a saw), other miscellaneous objects (cigarette lighters), and even “instruments” they had made themselves would replace traditional musical instruments. David Gilmour describes one of their experimental sessions: “We actually built a thing with a stretched rubber band this long [about two feet]. There was a g-clamp this end fixing it to a table and this end there was a cigarette lighter for a bridge. And then there was a set of matchsticks taped down this end. You stretch it and you can get a really good bass sound. Oh, and we used aerosol sprays and pulling rolls of Sellotape out of different lengths—the further away it gets the note changes. We got three or four tracks down.”25
This project, which they would resume under the name Household Objects two years later, after The Dark Side of the Moon, soon revealed its limitations, and the four members of Pink Floyd settled on another concept: “With no new songs, we devised innumerable exercises to try and speed up the process of creating musical ideas,” explains Nick Mason. “This included playing on separate tracks with no reference to what the rest of us were doing—we may have agreed on a basic chord structure, but the tempo was random. We simply suggested moods such as ‘first two minutes romantic, next two up tempo.’ These sound notes were called ‘Nothings 1–24’ and the choice of name was apt.”5
Some of these twenty-four sketches would be assembled, reworked, and renamed “Son of Nothings,” and then “Return of the Son of Nothings.” Like “Atom Heart Mother,” “Return of the Son of Nothings” was a long piece of more than twenty minutes’ duration. It received its first public performance at the Norwich Lads Club on April 22, 1971. Renamed “Echoes,” it was selected as the one and only track for side two of Meddle. Side one, meanwhile, contained five numbers. Two of these are credited to Waters-Gilmour-Wright-Mason (“One of These Days” and “Seamus”), two others, for the first time since “Point Me at the Sky” in 1968, were composed by Gilmour and Waters (“A Pillow of Winds” and “Fearless”), while “San Tropez” was written by Waters alone. More than forty-five minutes of pure bliss!
The First Real Pink Floyd Album
“We did loads of bits of demos which we then pieced together, and for the first time, it worked,” explained David Gilmour to Mojo magazine in May 1994. “This album was a clear forerunner for Dark Side of the Moon, the point when we first got our focus.”39 The sixth Pink Floyd studio album can be regarded in effect as the group’s first magnum opus in which it displays its unique, idiosyncratic touch, the first properly mature Pink Floyd album. A Saucerful of Secrets had been made under the continuing influence of Syd Barrett; More and Zabriskie Point were soundtracks developed in line with the precise instructions of their respective directors; the studio album Ummagumma was the result of individual efforts by the four members of the group rather than a joint project as such, while for many, the follow-up album Atom Heart Mother had been given its definitive form by Ron Geesin. Meddle, by contrast, was the fruit of a collaboration of four like-minded musicians motivated by a shared desire to explore new avenues and to position themselves in the vanguard of musical developments, but without seeking to be elitist.
While demonstrating proper group cohesion, Meddle was also Pink Floyd’s first album to point up David Gilmour’s role as a singer and guitarist, of course, but also as a composer of melodies. For Clive Welham, the drummer of Jokers Wild, “Dave was responsible for the melodic side of Pink Floyd. When he first joined them they were in a form that wasn’t really to his liking. I think it’s Dave who put the form into their music, made them a more mature band in that sense.”53 And it is the same story from Jean-Charles Costa, writing in the columns of Rolling Stone: “Meddle not only confirms lead guitarist David Gilmour’s emergence as a real shaping force with the group, it states forcefully and accurately that the group is well into the growth track again.”66
Meddle was released in the United States on October 30 and in the United Kingdom and continental Europe on November 5, 1971 (November 13 according to some sources). In Britain the album climbed to third place and would remain on the charts for more than a year and a half. In the Netherlands it peaked at number 2, and in West Germany at number 11. In France it was certified double gold (200,000 copies sold) and in the United States double platinum (two million copies sold).
Following the example of Jean-Charles Costa in Rolling Stone, the rock critics were pretty unanimous in emphasizing the artistic merit of Meddle. The British magazine Sounds spoke of a side one that was full of surprises and a side two, “Echoes,” which is one of “the most complete pieces of music Pink Floyd have ever done.” For Allen Evans, writing in the NME, the “Floyd have created dramatic music without having to draw off th
e strength of full brass and a choir… An exceptionally good album.”67 In France, Alain Dister wrote in Rock & Folk that Meddle had been prefigured by Atom Heart Mother, adding: “Even if it makes less of an impact at first hearing than at second, one has to acknowledge that it is key to the group’s musical development because it brings one period—of traditional influences—to a close and provides a blueprint for the next. Both albums are essential to where Pink Floyd are at present: ready to embark upon a new path, to completely renew themselves.”68
For their part, Pink Floyd would retain a fundamentally positive memory of the making of this LP: “Overall, the whole album was immensely satisfying to make,” writes Nick Mason. “As Atom Heart Mother had been a bit of a sidetrack, and Ummagumma a live album combined with solo pieces, Meddle was the first album we had worked on together as a band in the studio since A Saucerful Of Secrets three years earlier.”5
Listening to Meddle, the homogeneity, creativity, and originality of the album are striking, belying the fact not only that the Floyd recorded it in three different studios, but also that their sessions were regularly interrupted by concerts and tours in Europe and far-flung Japan and Australia. To say nothing of a fifth North American tour on which they embarked with the album barely finished. As previously mentioned, this sixth album marked the beginning of their mature period and would define their future sound and identity. “We’re consciously approaching this one differently,”9 declared Nick Mason in February 1971, a month after the start of recording. And the final results bear this out. Meddle is a landmark in their discography and a prelude to the extraordinary The Dark Side of the Moon.
Pink Floyd All the Songs Page 29