On October 30, 1971 – Pink Floyd: Meddle is released.
Meddle is the sixth studio album by Pink Floyd, released on October 30, 1971, in the US. It reached #70 on the Billboard 200 Top LP's chart and #3 on the UK Album chart.
The album was recorded at a series of locations around London, including Abbey Road Studios. With no material to work with and no clear idea of the album's direction, the band devised a series of novel experiments that eventually inspired the album's signature track, "Echoes". Although many of the group's later albums would be unified by a central theme with lyrics written mainly by Roger Waters, Meddle was a group effort with lyrical contributions from each member.
Meddle was the first album to hint at the musical identity that would define Pink Floyd in the mid- to late-'70s. Whereas prior releases like Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother announced the presence of new singer/guitarist/songwriter David Gilmour, Meddle represents the band's Gilmour-influenced evolution toward a sleek, epic, spacey sound. In "Echoes," an ambitious 23-minute soundscape, the pinging of a synthesizer greets the listener before Gilmour's warm, open guitar and gentle crooning gives way to a repetitious, workmanlike rhythm. From here, the music fades into an abyss of whale calls and eerie sonic reverberations.
Elsewhere, Floyd dabbles with straightforward cocktail-hour jazz ("San Tropez") and a twisted slow blues ("Seamus"). But it is "One of These Days," Meddle's opening track and lone radio staple, that truly previews things to come. Roger Waters's bass, played through a Binson echo unit, establishes the song's manically hypnotic groove, as Richard Wright's synthesizer bursts in and out, Nick Mason's off-kilter drum fills get tossed around, and Gilmour's guitar dive-bombs through it all. These varied sound effects, packaged in a song that clocked in at less than six minutes, were a precedent for the masterpiece that was two years away: Dark Side of the Moon.