Meddle

Nobody really thinks of it as a concept album, but there are some common threads between the songs on Meddle. And it's not just about the first and last songs, either. Every time I hear it, there's some kind of movie that I see in front of my mind's eye. This is a sort of rambling, meandering attempt to describe it. Humour me for a few minutes. Anyway, here goes nothing...



ONE OF THESE DAYS: Infinite quiet. Gradually, we start to hear an eerie, hollow kind of wind noise. It's definitely inhuman… and cold, death-cold. Then Dave Gilmour's fingers slide along the frets of a bass guitar: a human intruder on the barren landscape. A single note, on the right side of the stereo image, echoed and repeated as a short blast of Hammond organ issues from the fingers of Richard Wright. Gilmour's bass starts hammering out a rhythm, joined by a duller-toned but just as enthusiastic Roger Waters. Further stabs of organ grow more and more intense. Blindingly quick-fire reverse cymbals scrape the listener, getting louder and louder. Piercing rock guitar wails, then POUNDING tom-toms, not even in time but frantically beating away at something not connected to the square rhythm. Something terrible is being done to somebody. The slide guitar howls away, joined by its double in a sharp, pained squeal.

Then everything drops out. Gilmour’s bass, squeezed and compressed into near-oblivion, executes a dry, bare solo, while the rest of the band make weird nightmare noises and Nicholas Berkeley Mason, swollen with tape speed to gargantuan size, delivers an ultimatum: "One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces!!!" Pink Floyd explodes… and keeps exploding, for two minutes. Then it's gone, leaving only the wind.



A PILLOW OF WINDS: If the last song conjured up images of axe-murder on a polar landscape, this one produces feather beds in a warm, foggy island paradise at midnight. Layer upon layer of acoustic and electric guitars blanket the listener with relaxed, drowsy atmosphere, replacing the memory of a nightmare with luxuriant, deep sleep beside the one you love. Then more dreams come, this time of verdant, hazy landscapes melting into each other. "As darkness falls and waves roll by, the seasons change: the wind is warm... green fields, a cold rain is falling in a golden dawn." The troubled sleeper awakes at sunrise, and is at peace with the world.



FEARLESS: It looks so cheesy on paper... Defiance of oppression; goals met in spite of adversity; camaraderie; the triumph of the underdog, and the jubilation of his devoted fans. But all expressed with such lyrical economy and a perpetually moving yet expressive riff in G major. "And as I rise above the tree-line and the clouds I look down, hear the sound of the things you said today." I love the piano chords leading into the fadeout, and the football crowd works marvelously ("Liver-pool! Liver-POOL!"). Just a brilliant song, really, with personal meanings below the surface and a feeling I can't really visually describe... you have to like watching sports to know it, I guess. That feeling right around the time of sunset when the adrenaline ramps up the game on to another level...



SAN TROPEZ: Sleep again. Our protagonist awakes, dazed, alone and hung over after the previous night's victory celebrations. Was it another dream? Nope. "We won the double!" the newspaper confirms. He takes to the streets, where scruffy hippies are busking on the sidewalk, aristocrats are comparing Rolls-Royces, and pink palm trees are swaying in the breeze. It's a sunny day and a spring creeps into his step. Nothing bad matters because the only thing on his mind is the anticipation of what pleasures the night will bring. "You're leading me down to the place by the sea; I hear your soft voice calling to me, making a date for later by phone, and if you're alone I'll come ho-ho-home..." Sort of a silly mindset, but sometimes you just feel invincible…



SEAMUS: ...and sometimes, you've just got to sing the blues. Or howl it. Some transgression has occurred in the intervening three seconds between the previous song and this little ditty, and our sleepy-eyed would-be Casanova is out on a porch at sunset with only a hound dog and a harmonica to keep him company. The harp might be his, but the porch and dog most certainly are not. Someone preparing food inside the house wonders why their poor old afghan hound is braying so mournfully. Turns out, the blues is contagious. "I was in the kitchen, Seamus, that's the dog, was outside. The sun was setting slowly, and my old hound dog sat right down and cried."



ECHOES. Falling asleep again at dusk, our hero drifts into a dream of his past… a distant, ancestral past, when life thrived deep below the primordial waters. All is dark, and completely silent except for a single clarion call, pinging at a perfect C-sharp. Great birds circle high above the boundary between sea and air. Something inspires life to move forward, rise higher, escape the bounds of the ocean. What is it? A question left unanswered.

Flash forward to millions of years later. Solipsistic loneliness pervades these creatures, freed of the water but trapped inside their selves. Yet there's something just on the edge of definition that binds them all together, a common connection ignored for too long... and for a single moment it appears. "Strangers passing in the street, by chance two separate glances meet: and I am you, and what I see is me..."

But then the moment is gone, and the sea consumes all sound... dark, murky and impenetrable. We hear screams, emotions that can't be expressed in words, and a fearful storm of sound. But the clouds begin to part and the sun shines through, still the same in a relative way for generations of isolated, sleepy wanderers. The sun which defines us, inspires us, haunts us, and keeps watch over our every step as one by one, we shuffle off this mortal coil. A chorus of dead voices rises as the music dies with them, leaving only... infinite silence.


edit: some spelling and grammar corrections

A wonderful piece of writing! I take my hat off to you!!

Absolutely excellent!

An absolutely excellent dissertation, my friend.

I don't think of Meddle as a concept album - more a theme album.

Bravo! I think that works very well.

That was the most enjoyable read I've had for a long time.

Excellent.

I found this at PinkFloyd-co.com, I don't know how reliable their quotes are, but supposedly Nick Mason said "Meddle was the first real Pink Floyd album, it set a tempo, a feel and style that we all liked, and it introduced the idea of the theme that can be returned to. It sounds a bit ham-fisted now, but the concept thing I like."

Here is the link:
http://www.pinkfloyd-co.com/disco/me...dle_album.html

In a way, I guess Meddle is a concept album because it really began to define Floyd as a band--Pink Floyd as a concept

You my friend...have a nice writing style. Perhaps you could do an analysis of another floyd album as I thoroughly enjoyed reading your post.

I am simply awstruck after reading that, that was quite ana zming peice you wrote and i thoughrly enjoyed it. Im going to listen to meddle right and keep in mind what you wrote.

Very well said!

Thanks everyone. I was a little embarrassed at the ramblingness of my post but now...

That's so cool! I'm glad Nick thinks there's something going on with underlying underlying themes, too. Now I'm sure the idea holds at least some water. And after all, isn't water one of the themes? (along with death/rebirth, sleep/dreaming, sunrise/sunset and independence/isolation)

Meddle was in the CD player on repeat throughout my trip to the UK and I came up with a lot of ideas then, gazing at the sea and exploring the countryside. I don't think I can do another album this way because this one is so connected to such a powerful feeling of place and time for me. But I've been listening to More almost non-stop while playing "Dr. Mario" so I might come up with something interesting there...

Definatley a great album!

Wait, Gilmour on bass? Something I don't know?

Dave's playing the first bass. Roger plays the second.

Enjoyed it Bot, great interpretive writing.