• Meddle
  • "One Of These Days"
  • "Fearless"
  • "Seamus"
  • "Echoes"
  • "Looking Through the Knotholes..."
  • "All these different names are confusing me"
  • "What were the early lyrics for Echoes?"
  • "Is it summery or submarine?"

Meddle

"One Of These Days"

The voice in the middle of ``One of These Days'' is Nick Mason, and he says ``One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces.''

At about 3:00 or so, there's a faint organ riff that sounds a lot like the Dr. Who theme to a lot of people.

Also, (based on a posting from Scott Eberline)

In the Westwood One broadcast of Waters' Quebec performance of _Radio KAOS_, a member of the audience asked Waters who it was he wanted to cut into little pieces. Apparently this brought back fond memories for Waters, who replied that it was an English disk jockey named Jimmy Young. The song was meant as a personal attack. The band used to play bits and pieces of Jimmy Young's radio show spliced together in a completely nonsensical manner, immediately before playing ``One of These Days''.

However I (Gerhard) have never heard a RoIO where this happened before OOTD. On the other hand, on the Sheffield 22dec70 show you can hear this tape segment during Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast, and during the British Winter tour of 1974 this tape segment came before Raving and Drooling, though not on all shows.

Also on the One of These Days demos that are in circulation you can hear a similar tape loop.

The opening bass is double tracked, with Dave Gilmour playing in one channel, and Roger Waters playing in the other.

"Fearless"

The chanting you hear at the end of ``Fearless'' is from a football (or soccer, if you're American) game in Liverpool. It's ``You'll Never Walk Alone,'' originally from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical ``Carousel.'' A really popular cover of ``You'll Never Walk...'' was done by Gerry and The Pacemakers, and it was this version which was ``adopted'' as the sort of anthem for the Liverpool team, and is even engraved over the gate at their home stadium. The recording on _Meddle_ is sung by Liverpool's loyal fans, and includes:

   And you'll never walk / alone / in the dark / alone
 
Followed by some screaming, whistling, then 

   LIVERPOOL  LIVERPOOL  LIVERPOOL!

For ``Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' fans, part of ``You'll Never Walk Alone'' is sung by Eddie, the ship's computer, at the end of Chapter 17.

"Seamus"

Seamus is named after Seamus, the dog of Steve Marriot. The inspiration for this song came when the band noticed how the dog started to howl when someone played the harmonica.

"Echoes"

Echoes is considered by many Pink Floyd fans to be the best Pink Floyd song ever written. Echoes started out as a collection of 36 unrelated musical ideas, which led to the tracks working title ``Nothing, parts 1-24.'' (This title despite the fact that there were actually 36 bits of music involved.) Further development of those ideas led to a working title of ``The Son Of Nothing.'' When the band felt the piece was ready to go on the road, it was named (in true B-monster movie fashion) ``Return of the Son of Nothing.''

"Looking Through the Knotholes..."

Tim Banks offered these remarks:

    I am listening to an episode of The Goon Show from the late 50's.

    I am listening to an episode entitled "The 50 Pound Cure". At the
    beginning of the episode, the following silliness is taking place:

    <various wails, moans and laments fading to the background...> "By
    Jove!! It's a merry, singing funeral!! Ha Ha Ha.  Ah, don't take
    it so hard, folks. It's only a trial one for Eccles! And now, for
    an encore, I'll sing a little song entitled, 'LOOKING THROUGH THE
    KNOTHOLE IN GRANDMA'S WOODEN LEG'."

To which Michael Teige added

    > from Spike?

    There was also an old Bugs Bunny Loony Tunes cartoon in which Bugs
    was playing a song called just that on a banjo.

To which Christopher K. Coffman added``

    I ran across a reference to a popular song called "Looking Through
    the Knothole" in Joyce's _Ulysses_.  Since that book was pretty
    much finished in 1920, the phrase is at least that old. Judging by
    the fact that the novel is set in 1904, it seems likely that the
    lyric is even older--Joyce was hardly one to let an anachronism
    slip into the text. For you Joyce fans the reference is 'and
    papa's pants will soon fit Willy' on lines 953-4 of the Nausicaa
    episode (page 373, lines 4-5, if you have the RH edition).

"All these different names are confusing me"

They don't have to. Dave Ward (with help from Sohnosuke Imai, Ian Russel and Vernon Fitch) provided the following timeline:

    4 Jan 1971 -- recording starts at Abbey Road. The result is
        a collection of idea fragments called "Nothing,
        Parts 1-24" (often mislabeled as "Nothing, Parts
        1-36" -- there really were only 24 pieces, not 36)

    22 April 1971 -- first live performance. It's called "Return
        of the Son of Nothing." The song retains this name
        until August 1971.

    late July 1971 -- the first verse ("planets meeting face to
        face") is dropped from the song. I'm not sure offhand
        of the exact date it was first played without that verse.

    ??? 1971 -- Waters proposes the title "We Won the Double"
        after his favorite team, Arsenal, wins the league
        title and FA Cup. (Not sure of the date. I think
        it's been discussed here though.)

    6 August 1971 -- On the Japanese tour the song is referred to as
        Echoes (see below)

    27 August 1971 -- Mixing of the song is completed.

    17 October 1971 -- A quad mix album of "Echoes" is played
        for press at the Roundhouse, but the quad mix is
        never released.

    30 October 1971 -- "Meddle" is released in the US

    5 November 1971 -- "Meddle" is released in the UK

    15 November 1972 -- Waters introduces Echoes as "Looking
        Through the Knothole in Granny's Wooden Leg" in
        Boblingen, Germany

    16 November 1972 -- Waters introduces Echoes as "The March
        of The Dambusters" at Frankfurt, Germany

As for the Japanese show, Sohnosuke Imai had this to say about the 6aug1971 show:

    I don't forget an announcement by MC, never Roger. Its announcer,
    Goro Itoi, said "This song, bring a full effect by echo, is
    Echoes, Echoes!" (This is my poor translation.) I remember twice
    saying. It lingers in my ears clearly, even now. I cannot recall
    it without tears.

A tape of this show exists (but is very rare ;( ) where Roger announces the song as Echoes.

"What were the early lyrics for Echoes?"

[Original transcription done by Matt Denault, with the assistance of bear, Ray O'Hara and me, I later made some minor corrections to Matt's transcript ]

The Floyd, in their pre-_Animals_ days, often performed as-yet unrecorded tracks in concert (``Murderistic Woman,'' DSotM, ``Raving and Drooling'', etc.) These would often undergo significant changes before appearing on albums, and ``Echoes'' is such a case.

The opening verse of ``Echoes'' originally had a ``space'' theme, and several RoIOs exist with these lyrics. One is from the 5 June 1971 Berlin show, available on ``Lost in the Corridors'' and ``Mauerspecte'' (which, BTW, has been known to be defective many times, so try before you buy). Another is from a few weeks later; 20 June 1971, at Rome. Neither of these recordings is all that great in terms of sound quality, but taken together we're pretty sure of the following...

    Planets singing face to face
    Bound to the air of life, how sweet!
    If purposely we might embrace
    The perfect union deep in space

    Ever might this once relent
    And give us leave to shine as one
    Our two lights {singing better}         <-- these two lines are
    {Than one light can}                        pretty garbled [1]

    And in that longing to be one
    The parting {suns shine as one} [2]
    I'll see you've got to travel on
    And on and on, around the sun

[1] Our two lights shining better than one light can makes the most sense lyrically. [2] While this line make most sense lyrically, it sometimes sounds as if there is an extra syllable sung.

Keep in mind when comparing the above to a version you might have on a tape from a different date, that it is very well possible that the lyrics changed from show to show before Roger settled on the lyrics we have come to know and love.

The above transcription makes some sense in relation to the rest of the song -- which survived unchanged -- if you take the whole third verse (``cloudless everyday...'') to be about sunlight.

There were also some earlier transcriptions of the lyrics done by the people I mentioned above, which I used as aids. These are available at

    http://ultra.gawth.com/~rjones/floyd/lyrics/early.echoes

Roger Waters has stated that Pink Floyd music was ``about inner space, not outer space'' and became annoyed with the ``space'' image Pink Floyd had been labeled with due to their earlier songs (Astronomy Domine, Interstellar Overdrive, Set the Controls and Point Me At the Sky.

Even though the lyrics have changed, in both cases the first verse still conveys a feeling of alienation.

"Is it summery or submarine?"

This used to be a topic of much heated discussion on Echoes way back when.

Okay. We'll get into one particular about this song, and hopefully that will help keep the noise level down. Does the line say ``Everything is green and submarine'' or ``Everything is green and summery?''

Proposition: It says ``submarine.''

Supporting evidence: [thank you, Dean Hebert]

1. )

   ``Overhead the albatross'' - albatrosses are ocean birds.

2. )

   ``Deep beneath the rolling waves'' - Certainly implies the ocean.

3. )

   ``Labyrinths of coral caves'' - Coral, get it? CORAL. OCEANS.

4. )

   ``Everything is green'' - it's the color of the OCEAN WATER.

5. )

   ``And submarine.'' - submarine is being used as an adjective here, not a noun. ADJECTIVE. ADJECTIVE. NOT NOUN. GET IT?

And, of course, in the _Shine On_ book lyrics, it's ``submarine.''