The 20th of February 1972
Official U.K. Albums Chart results from Sunday the 20th to Saturday the 26th of February 1972
Cut-off for sales figures was up to the end of Saturday the 19th of February
Results counted from Sunday the 20th,
announced on Tuesday the 22nd,
and broadcast on B.B.C. Radio 1 on Sunday the 27th of February 1972.
Pink Floyd
Meddle
At No.46, on the “The Top 50 U.K. Albums Chart” on the day I am born, is Pink Floyd with “Meddle”.
Pink Floyd’s latest offering at this time…
…was just starting a phase of kicking around the Top 40 perimeter for it’s last 6 weeks of it’s initial 20 week run.
“Meddle” had entered the chart at No.9 the year before, on the 14th of November 1971, and climbed a further 6 places a week later to achieve it’s highest position of No.3.
It’s almost fatal to look back at this album in hindsight,..
…and think that the group were only one release away from achieving a secured global dominance and a future legendary following most can only dream of; but it wasn’t like that at all.
In fact, at this time, they were still finding their feet, after exploring so many different avenues, just grasping around in a fog, to try and grab hold of something they could all feel comfortable with.
Although the spectre of Syd Barrett was growing ever more distant in their collective, you’ve got to remember, that at this time, Syd was still physically and musically present, after he’d ‘officially’ left the group only four years previously.
Since then, the band had clambered through a difficult second album, a couple of soundtracks, a double album set (half of which was a decent live example of the new look group up to that time, with the other half given up to showcase each member’s individual talents and strengths), and a brave experimental third album, where they threw everything at it just to see if it would work.
Throughout this time, they’d chugged away at the touring circuit, gaining a big following, who were also as much intrigued as to where the group sonically would go next, after they’d witnessed new experimental sound set-ups to take the them on as much of a futuristic auditorily experience, as technology at the time could possibly allow.
All these different things, and many more, had culminated in that third album knocking Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ off the top spot, when it entered the chart in its first week.
An album that, when they weren’t touring or recording it, were helping to get Syd back on track by producing his own second solo album effort; and Syd sneaking in to hear what they were concocting in the adjacent studio.
Now they were back again,..
…building on everything they’d experimented with so far, and taking advantage of new recording hardware to gain a more coherent soundscape than they’d ever managed to get before on record. Expanding out to studios which were now equipped with more tracks than ever, it meant that they could finally grasp something, which before had proved pretty difficult, if not impossible, to put down into something which they could collectively call satisfactory.
For me personally,..
…from the point of Syd’s step into his own abyss, to this album four years later; as a group, they initially seemed lost, while trying desperately to find their way in their own futures. Adrift, as their beloved anchor detached from their vessel, while they were still locked into the depths of the “room of musical tunes” of “Bike”.
To me, it seemed they needed something. Anything,..
…to cling to, to preserve and retain what they’d already gained, but to also find a way musically forward.
So dependant as they were on one person back then, who seemed beyond any help, either musically, lyrically, or productively to the group effort whatsoever, they grabbed at what they did know, first holding onto Nick’s drum patterns and Rogers’ bassline as security, bringing in Syd’s old school friend and fellow traveller Dave, and just hoped for the best, and prayed their audience wouldn’t notice there was now one crucial wheel missing from their wagon, which had been replaced with another, that said replacement has admitted himself years later to have been “not even close” in guitar style to the original.
Still, the efforts of this transition period were commendable under their most challenging circumstances, which actually managed to capture the essence of the band morphing into something new in “Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun” which featured not only the mainstays of Nick, Roger and Rick, but caught both Syd’s and David’s efforts too.
As Nick reminisced years later to ‘Newsweek’s Zach Schonfeld…
“It’s rather nice to have it on one record, where you get both things.
It’s a cross-fade rather than a cut.”
With the difficult second album now behind them,..
….they also explored other avenues to place their music. One such open doorway being film soundtracks.
They were no strangers to providing incidental music in the past. Having supplied atmospheres to a segment highlighting the use of an embryonic light system for a report, simply called ‘Lights’, on the BBC TV programme ‘Tomorrow’s World’.
After Syd’s departure,..
…they’d also contributed to the compelling, fascinating, and somewhat disturbing film ‘The Committee’, which featured ex-Manfred Mann vocalist Paul Jones in the lead role. Himself, exploring and moving beyond his artistic peripheries for music, into the acting world.
For Pink Floyd,..
…their next release would be for the soundtrack to the contemporary film ‘More’.
Although this project was the first the group would embark on without any input from Syd, he wasn’t that far away from their thoughts, as the subject matter dealt with the very real depiction of drug dependency (in this case heroin), and the devastating effects that recreational drugs can have on the younger generation’s experimental tendencies to find a higher level of existence.
Was it also a little coincidental that the main actor bore more than a little resemblance to the look of Syd.?
The project itself let the band explore different styles musically, given the subject matter and locations. However, there were signs of the sound drifting from a place they felt comfortable (“Cirrus Minor” could almost have been tacked onto the end of the title track of their previous album), to others, which in hindsight, show a clear stepping stone to the early seventies sounds found in ‘Meddle’, such as the “Crying Song”, which captures beautifully the paired vocal of David’s lead with the support of Rick, amongst other factors such as David’s delicate slide guitar motifs that would gain more prominence later on.
With the group feeling ever more optimistic…
…(the ‘More’ soundtrack album having entered the Top 10 on its initial release in the final summer of the sixties), they decided to bring to a close some of their past works, and to capture their live performances for prosperity, with the intention of closing a chapter, and leaving them in the past, along with their work with Syd.
This feeling, which was probably being felt by countless other artists, would be due to the unavoidable realisation that the decade was drawing ever closer. It was inevitable to look back, take stock, give thanks, and wave goodbye to the old, and look forward (for them anyway) to, not so much a reset, but more a rebirth, and expectation to new celestial horizons.
With this in mind,..
…the fascinating thing about the final product of ‘Ummagumma’, is not what is on the album, but what isn’t.
Although, as I mentioned earlier, the second of the two LPs is given up to each members contributions as an individual, accommodating half a side each. It wasn’t every member’s preference to go it alone, with David not really having a clue what to do, and later being quoted in Hugh Fielder’s book ‘Pink Floyd: Behind The Wall’ that he “went into a studio and started waffling about, tacking bits and pieces together”, and Rick later summarising that the whole idea in hindsight was a “pretentious” one.
The idea had surfaced after the group had only one other track in them at the time which could have been included on the album. A track they prophetically named “Embryo”.
The piece, initially ran to just under 5 minutes, and had been written by Roger in a rare glimpse of looking forward to embracing a new world and future with a positive outlook.
Originally recorded back in the previous December of 1968, the music, just like it’s subject matter, would grow within its confines.
By the time they were comfortable enough with it to present it for radio exposure, long after ‘Ummagumma’ had released, it had inevitably expanded in cellular structure to run past the 10 minute mark, when it was recorded for the BBC in the summer of 1970.
The expanded version had developed significantly from its tentative softer beginnings, which could be easily linked to the group’s recent past, to it now growing in confidence and assurance. With BBC radio presenter John Peel describing it as “very hopeful, optimistic music”.
And it’s here where the next most defining stepping stone is laid, especially in the second half of the piece, highlighting effects that would come to define their musical structures going forward; including prominent sound effects (in this case the sound of a young human infant), and David’s ever-growing guitar prominence, introducing guitar effects which would come to be familiar on “Echoes”.
Another factor which most probably decided the fate of the quality and content of the album…
…was the desire of David and Roger to give an old friend all the help they could give with his own troubled venture.
With rumours escalating that, after two problematic attempts, with two separate producers, to finish his debut album, Syd was in danger of having his whole project aborted altogether.
Endearingly, the two group members decided to go across to the adjoining studio and try and clear up the remaining mess in the short space of time they had left, and which Syd was left to be allowed to work on it.
So, working on mixing their own album in one studio, they would then head over to Syd and try and get his remaining tracks laid down for his. All happening in the same building, at the same time.
Because of their own schedules, their double LP set took precedence over Syd’s, who then had to wait until they’d not only finished their album, but also let them complete a short tour as well, before they could return to hurriedly focus further work on Syd’s record as the summer progressed.
Eventually, between these further touring commitments, the pair managed to finish all songs by August, with David returning one final time in the autumn to sit with Syd and work out the sequence for each song and how they should be placed on the album.
Ultimately, David would also contribute musically as well as productively, when he provided accompaniment with 12 string acoustic, and electric bass guitars, as well as drums, for the stand-out track “Octopus”, which would also give the album its name.
With work on ‘Ummagumma’, and ‘The Madcap Laughs’ completed,..
…they then contributed to another soundtrack (this time only as part of a wider range of artists) for the film ‘Zabriskie Point’. A project directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, which attempted to portray the current generation’s push back against corporation and industrialisation, which in turn formed a pseudo-fake dystopian police state where the older generation were basically trying to live like the mannequins they were portraying in their business advertisements. The movie instead championing the destruction of the consumable world, and trying to show that all that was needed was free love, free spirit, and free thinking. Oh and hijacking a plane and knowing how to miraculously fly it.
Apart from that, all could be solved in the world.
The most striking example of the group’s efforts would come at the climax of the film (SPOILER ALERT! if you really care that much), when a corporate boss’ free-spirited daughter envisions the destruction of her fathers modern home set to a reworking of “Careful With That Axe Eugene” which for this, the group renamed “Come In Number 51 Your Time Is Up”.
What I find more jarring is the fact that the scene, along with the music, is cut suddenly in the film into a newly composed title song by the Big ‘O’ himself, Roy Orbison., as the daughter drives away.
With ideas which were surplus to the film director requirements,..
… the band, disillusioned by that movie project, instead accumulated some of these ideas for use in what would be their next studio album, and the first of the new decade.
An ambitious project if ever there was one, the first side is taken by the album’s title track “Atom Heart Mother”.
As the idea would grow ever more grandiose, it ended up becoming too overblown for them to handle. Due to this, they didn’t really hang around to carefully go through the orchestrations on the epic title track. Instead leaving it up to producer Ron Geesin to try and make sense of it all, and project those ideas to the unfortunate session musicians and choirs who had to perform all over it.
The result became an euphuistic orchestral vehicle, for which the band tried to hide behind as support musicians to their own extravagances.
However, it’s within this track that we find more hints at what was to come on their next album, including an almost blink-and-you-miss-it sound emanating from Rick’s keyboards, a pre-echo almost buried in the cacophony, but which manages to surface a few notes that will grow and be given far more prominence when it’s later destined to become a classic signature sound on their next side long epic.
According to the band,..
…the whole project came at possibly the group’s lowest ever artistic point. With David later confessing that…
“We were at a real down point … I think we were scraping the barrel a bit at that period”
While all the barrel-scraping was going on,..
…and caught in the juxtaposition of history repeating itself, Syd would again just so happen to be laying down tracks, this time for his second album, somewhere else in the same building, and now and again sneaking over to have a listen to what his ex-band mates were working on.
Again, there would be two members who would assist with his mission. David once again, who would this time take a more focused view of production proceedings while also contributing bass guitar; and Rick, who would lend his keyboard skills to the cause.
During these sessions, there were brief beautiful glimpses of hope that somewhere in that head of his, Syd was his old self after all, as the drummer Jerry Shirley remembers…
“I was quite happy with ‘Gigolo Aunt’, Syd had played his parts so ‘correctly’ that I can remember at the end of the take we were flabbergasted. It was like we were thinking ‘you’re not that nuts after all, you almost got through this take perfectly!'”
Although no more studio sessions were booked for Syd afterwards,..
…the groups dealings with Syd, in a productive point of view, weren’t quite over just yet.
After leaving to honour a wealth of tour dates, the band would eventually return to begin work on their 4th studio album, with absolutely no material (or clue for that matter), what the plan was.
During the initial experimental phases, for which they came up with hardly anything at all; the record label, sensing that this next album (due to the lack of ideas and their increasing tour schedule), would probably be at least a year away, and so decided to release the compilation ‘Relics’, which would showcase handpicked highlights from their previous output, the majority recorded throughout their (you guessed it) period with Syd.
Although there was one track it included, that at this time had only been performed as part of their live concept at the end of the 1960’s which they’d called ‘The Man and The Journey’.
Roger’s “Biding My Time” (which included a surprising trombone performance by Rick), had never been released anywhere until now. The group therefore decided to give it the glory it deserved and included it on the compilation.
When inspiration did come,..
…for their new album, it would prove to be, in hindsight, the last most collaborative effort between all four members during this line-up’s lifetime. Pulling together the best of everything they’d experimented with so far and setting it down more confidently, due to taking advantage of other nearby studios which had the track capacity for their needs. Something that their main studio in Abbey Road hadn’t caught up with yet.
Due to this concept, and the chance to give this project the care they could finally give it, ‘Meddle’ came together as their most cohesive album so far, and was finally unleashed to the public as autumn was giving way to the winter of 1971.
And, it seemed, there was no sign of their past with Syd evidenced throughout the album at all.
Since the album’s peak position of No.3 back in late November,..
..it had left the Top 10 and wouldn’t return, although a couple of times it would get close.
In recent early weeks in 1972, it had been bouncing up and down between the mid-20’s and the mid-40’s. Although, now February was coming to a close, those peaks would only start to reach the early-30’s.
The album will eventually leave the Top 50 after the 1st of April, but not for long.
The re-entries were not far away at all, and we’ll pick up the UK Chart journey of “Meddle” further along my musical road.
Side 1
Side 2
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Listen to “The Official Top 50 UK Singles Chart: 20th February 1972” Playlist here:
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