Benutzer:Krächz/Meddle

Krächz/Meddle

Meddle ist das sechste Studioalbum der britischen Progessive-Rock-Band Pink Floyd. Es erschien am 30. Oktober 1971 auf Harvest Records. Das Album wurde von Januar und August 1971 in mehreren Studios im Großraum London aufgenommen, unter anderem in den Abbey Road Studios und den Morgan Studios.

Die Band startete die Arbeit am Album ohne vorhandenes Material oder eine klare Idee, in welche Richtung das Album gehen sollte. So entwickelte sie eine Reihe neuartiger Idee, die schließlich zum Haupttrack Echoes ausgearbeitet wurde. Während viele der späteren Alben der Gruppe von einem zentralen Thema durchzogen waren, deren Texte hauptsächlich von Roger Waters stammten, war Meddle eine Gemeinschaftsarbeit und enthielt Beiträge aller Bandmitglieder. Das Cover zeigt eine Nahaufnahme eines Ohrs unter Wasser nd war wie mehrere Alben zuvor von Hipgnosis entworfen, deren Storm Thorgerson mit dem Ergebnis allerdings unzufrieden war.

Das Album wurde von der Kritik positiv aufgenommen. Während das Album im Vereinigten Königreich kommerziell recht erfolgreich war, verkaufte sich das Album aufgrund der lustlosen Promotion durch das amerikanischen Labels schlecht.

Aufnahme

Nach mehreren Konzertreisen durch Amerika und England zum Album Atom Heart Mother begann die Band Anfang 1971 in den Abbey Road Studios an neuem Material zu arbeiten. Zu dieser Zeit war die Abbey Road nur mit 8-Kanal-Aufnahmetechnik ausgestattet, was die Bandmitglieder mit ihren wachsenden Ansprüche an die Technik für unzureichend hielten. Daher überspielten sie die bisher bisten Aufnahmen, einschließlich dem Intro von Echoes, auf 16-Spur-Geräte in kleineren Studios in London, darunter AIR und Morgan in West Hampstead. So konnten sie mit den Vorteilen flexiblerer Aufnahmetechnik weiterarbeiten. Die Toningeniuere John Leckie und Peter Bown nahmen die Haupt-Sessions in der Abbey Road und bei AIR auf, während Rob Black und Roger Quested kleinere Sachen in den Morgan-Studios verantworteten.

Lacking a central theme for the project, the band used several experimental methods in an attempt to spur the creative process. One exercise involved each member playing on a separate track, with no reference to what the other members were doing. The tempo was entirely random while the band played around an agreed chord structure, and moods such as 'first two minutes romantic, next two up tempo'. Each recorded section was named, but the process was largely unproductive; after several weeks no complete songs had been created.

John Leckie had worked on albums such as George Harrison's All Things Must Pass and Ringo Starr's Sentimental Journey, and was employed as a tape-operator on Meddle, partly for his proclivity for working into the early hours of the morning. Pink Floyd's sessions would often begin in the afternoon, and end early the next morning, "...during which time nothing would get done. There was no record company contact whatsoever, except when their label manager would show up now and again with a couple of bottles of wine and a couple of joints." The band would apparently spend long periods of time working on simple sounds, or a particular guitar riff. They also spent several days at Air Studios, attempting to create music using a variety of household objects, a project which would be revisited between their next albums, The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here.

Following these early experiments—called "Nothings"—the band developed "Son of Nothings", which was followed by "Return of the Son of Nothings"—the working title of the new album. One of these early works involved the use of Richard Wright's piano. Wright had fed a single note through a Leslie speaker, producing a submarine-like ping. The band tried repeatedly to recreate this sound in the studio but were unsuccessful, and so the demo version was used on what would later become "Echoes", mixed almost exclusively at Air Studios. Combined with David Gilmour's guitar, the band were able to develop the track further, experimenting with accidental sound effects (such as Gilmour's guitar being plugged into a wah-wah pedal back to front). Unlike Atom Heart Mother the new multi-track capabilities of the studio enabled them to create the track in stages, rather than performing it in a single take. The final 23-minute piece would eventually take up the entire second side of the album.

"One of These Days" was developed around an ostinato bassline created by Roger Waters, by feeding the output through a Binson Echorec. The bass line was performed by Waters and David Gilmour using two bass guitars, one on old strings. Nick Mason's abstruse "One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces" line was recorded at double speed using a falsetto voice, and replayed at normal speed.

Meddle was recorded between the band's various concert commitments, and therefore its production was spread over a considerable period of time. The band recorded in the first half of April, but in the latter half played at Doncaster and Norwich before returning to record at the end of the month. In May they split their time between sessions at Abbey Road, and rehearsals and concerts in London, Lancaster, Stirling, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Nottingham. June and July were spent mainly performing at venues across Europe. August was spent in the far east and Australia, September in Europe, and October to November in the US. In the same period the band also produced Relics, a compilation album of some of Pink Floyd's earlier works. A quadraphonic mix of the album was prepared at Command Studios on 21 and 26 September, but remains unreleased.

Composition

Vorlage:Listen Though the tracks possess a variety of moods, Meddle is generally considered more cohesive than its 1970 predecessor Atom Heart Mother. The largely instrumental "One of These Days" is followed by "A Pillow of Winds", which is distinguished by being one of the few quiet, acoustic love songs in the Pink Floyd catalogue. These two songs segue into each other across windy sound effects, anticipating the technique that would later be used on Wish You Were Here. The title of "A Pillow of Winds" was inspired by the games of Mahjong that Waters and Mason, and their wives, played while in the south of France.

The song "Fearless" employs field recordings of the Liverpool F.C. Kop choir singing "You'll Never Walk Alone", their anthem, which brings the song to an end in a heavily reverberated fade-out. "San Tropez", by contrast, is a jazz-inflected pop song with a shuffle tempo, composed by Waters in his increasingly deployed style of breezy, off-the-cuff song-writing. The song was inspired by the band's trip to the south of France in 1970. Pink Floyd uncharacteristically displayed their sense of humour with "Seamus", a pseudo-blues novelty track featuring Steve Marriott's dog (which Gilmour was looking after) howling along to the music. "Seamus" often tops polls as the worst song Pink Floyd ever created, but the band would later use animal sounds again, in Animals.

The final song on the album is the 23-minute "Echoes". First performed as "Return of the Son of Nothing" on 22 April 1971 in Norwich, the band spent about six months on the track in three studios (Morgan, Air, and Abbey Road). The track opens with Richard Wright's 'ping'. "Echoes" was recorded almost entirely at Air Studios, and completed in July 1971. "Echoes" also gave its name to the compilation album Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd, on which a much-edited version of the title track was included. In the compilation, multiple edits throughout the entire song cut the running length of the piece down by some seven minutes. Some of the material composed during creation of Meddle was not used; however, one song would eventually become "Brain Damage", on The Dark Side of the Moon.

Packaging

The album's title Meddle is a play on words; a medal, and to interfere. Storm Thorgerson originally suggested a close-up shot of a baboon's anus for the album cover photograph. He was overruled by the band, who informed him via an inter-continental telephone call while on tour in Japan that they would rather have "an ear underwater". The cover image was photographed by Bob Dowling. The image represents an ear, underwater, collecting waves of sound (represented by ripples in the water). Thorgerson has expressed dissatisfaction with the cover, claiming it to be his least favourite Pink Floyd album sleeve: "I think Meddle is a much better album than its cover". Aubrey Powell (Thorgerson's colleague) shares his sentiments—"Meddle was a mess. I hated that cover. I don't think we did them justice with that at all; it's half-hearted." The gatefold contains a group photograph of the band (Floyd's last until 1987's A Momentary Lapse of Reason).

Release and reception

Vorlage:Album ratings Meddle was released on 30 October 1971 in the US, and 13 November in the UK. Meddle was later released as a remastered LP by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, and in April 1989 on their "Ultradisc" gold CD format. The album was included as part of the box set Shine On on 2 November 1992.

Although in the UK it reached number three, lacklustre publicity on the part of Capitol Records led to weak sales in the US, and a chart position of number 70. On 29 November 1971, "One of These Days" was released as a 7-inch single in the US, with "Fearless" on the B-side. "One of These Days" and "Echoes" were performed during Live At Pompeii (the latter in two parts) and also on the BBC's 1971 In Concert. Meddle was later certified gold by the RIAA on 29 October 1973 and then double platinum on 11 March 1994, following the added attention garnered by the band's later successes in the United States.

Critical response

Upon its release, Meddle received generally positive reviews from music critics. Rolling Stone’s Jean-Charles Costa wrote: "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", and NME called it "an exceptionally good album". Steve Peterson of Hit Parader cited "Fearless" as its best song and said of the album, "This has got to be their best ever." Ed Kelleher of Circus called it "another masterpiece by a masterful group", noting "Fearless" as "fascinating" and praising "Echoes" as "a tone poem that allows all four group members much time to stretch their muscles." However, Melody Maker was more reserved, claiming that it is "...a soundtrack to a non-existent movie". In his consumer guide for The Village Voice, Robert Christgau gave the album a B- rating, indicating "a competent or mildly interesting record that will usually feature at least three worthwhile cuts." He called it "not bad", commenting that "Echoes" "moves through 23:21 of 'Across the Universe' cop with the timeless calm of interstellar overdrive, and the acoustic-type folk songs boast their very own melodies." Although he criticized the lyrics of "A Pillow of Winds", Christgau quipped, "The word 'behold' should never cross their filters again, but this is definitely an improvement: one eensy-weensy step for humanity, one giant step for Pink Floyd."

In a retrospective review, Daryl Easlea of BBC wrote of the album in comparison to Atom Heart Mother, "In many respects, Meddle, released a little over a year later, is the same again, only with much, much, better tunes and less clutter." Easlea commented that "Echoes" "dominates the entire work", calling it "everything right about progressive rock; engaging, intelligent and compelling." In The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), music journalist Rob Sheffield gave the album three-and-a-half out of five stars and stated, "Meddle introduced the Floyd's mature style in the 23-minute instrumental 'Echoes,' coloring the slow guitar ripples with deep-in-the-studio sonic details that only the truly baked would notice, much less appreciate." Allmusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine commented that the album "spends most of its time with sonic textures and elongated compositions, most notably on its epic closer, 'Echoes.'" He noted a "uniform tone", but not song structure, and wrote the album's significance in the group's catalogue, "Pink Floyd were nothing if not masters of texture, and Meddle is one of their greatest excursions into little details, pointing the way to the measured brilliance of Dark Side of the Moon and the entire Roger Waters era [...] [T]he album is one of the Floyd's most consistent explorations of mood, especially from their time at Harvest, and it stands as the strongest record they released between Syd's departure and Dark Side."

Sales chart performance

Year	Chart	Position
1971	UK Albums Chart	3
1971	Billboard Pop Albums	70

Personnel

Credits taken from sleeve notes.

Pink Floyd

• David Gilmour – guitar, bass on "One of These Days", lead vocals, harmonica on "Seamus"
• Roger Waters – bass, lead vocals and acoustic guitar on "San Tropez"
• Richard Wright – Hammond organ, piano, vocals on "Echoes"
• Nick Mason – drums, percussion, vocal phrase on "One of These Days"

Additional personnel

• Rob Black – engineering (Morgan Studio)
• Peter Bown – engineering (Air and EMI Studios)
• Peter Curzon – design on album remaster
• Bob Dowling – outer sleeve photos
• James Guthrie – remastering
• Hipgnosis – band photo
• John Leckie – engineering (Air and EMI Studios)
• Tony May – inner sleeve photos
• Pink Floyd – album cover design
• Roger Quested – engineering (Morgan Studio)
• Doug Sax – remastering
• Seamus the Dog – vocals on "Seamus"
• Storm Thorgerson – design on album remaster

References

Bibliography

• Blake, Mark (2007) Comfortably Numb - The Inside Story of Pink Floyd, Thunder's Mouth Press, ISBN 1-56858-383-4
• Harris, John (2006) The Dark Side of the Moon, Third edition, Harper Perennial, ISBN 978-0-00-779090-6
• Mabbett, Andy (1995) The complete guide to the music of Pink Floyd^[6], Illustrated edition, Omnibus Press, ISBN 0-7119-4301-X
• Mason, Nick (2005), Philip Dodd, editor, Inside Out - A Personal History of Pink Floyd, Paperback edition, Phoenix, ISBN 0-7538-1906-6
• Povey, Glenn (2007) Echoes^[7], Mind Head Publishing, ISBN 0-9554624-0-1
• Schaffner, Nicholas (1991) Saucerful of Secrets, First edition, London : Sidgwick & Jackson, ISBN 0-283-06127-8
• Snider, Charles (2008) The Strawberry Bricks Guide to Progressive Rock^[8], Lulu.com, ISBN 0-615-17566-X

Further reading

• Reising, Russell (2005) Speak to Me^[9], Ashgate Publishing, Ltd, ISBN 0-7546-4019-1

Category:1971 albums Category:Albums produced by David Gilmour Category:Albums produced by Nick Mason Category:Albums produced by Richard Wright (musician) Category:Albums produced by Roger Waters Category:Albums with cover art by Hipgnosis Category:Albums with cover art by Storm Thorgerson Category:Capitol Records albums Category:EMI Records albums Category:English-language albums Category:Harvest Records albums Category:Pink Floyd albums Category:Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab albums