The Pink Floyd song Nick Mason considered “sacrilege”
Music wasn’t always the most important thing going on with Pink Floyd at any given time. While the progressive rock pioneers certainly spent most of their time honing their craft, at different points, it was necessary to find time for tea and take breaks in order to watch Monty Python. For Roger Waters, there was no session so important that he wouldn’t drop what he was doing in order to watch his most beloved football club, Arsenal.
Waters was so devoted to the Gunners that, before it had an official name, the bassist would occasionally introduce the Meddle track ‘Echoes’ was ‘We Won The Double’, a reference to Arsenal doing just that in their 1970-71 season. But Waters’ devotion to Arsenal was sidelined while the band recorded another Meddle track, ‘Fearless’.
The song is bookended by a full chorus of football chants. The audio was taken from an unknown field recording of Liverpool F.C. supporters – known as the “Kop Choir” – chanting the team’s signature anthem, ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. According to drummer Nick Mason, using the chant had to come at the expense of the band’s own personal team loyalties.
“That idea of using the Kop Choir was interesting because it was absolutely about the sound the Kop Choir make, and I say that because it’s actually the chant of Liverpool,” Mason told Songfacts in 2022. “Roger was an Arsenal supporter – still is, indeed. We were North London guys, so it felt like sacrilege to use the opposition’s chanting, but it’s very powerful.”
Pink Floyd was still trying to find their identity in 1971. The shadow of former frontman Syd Barrett still very much hung over the group, with albums like Atom Heart Mother and Ummagumma showing off a fairly directionless band. ‘Fearless’ and the rest of Meddle made everyone in the band more comfortable in their abilities to play without Barrett.
“It was very much a transition thing because the song is a much more measured piece than Syd’s songs,” Nick Mason saud. “We’d used sound effects before, but we hadn’t used them in quite that musical way.”
With new confidence in their standing as a creative unit, Pink Floyd entered 1972 intent on making something big. They had to wait, as their first task that year was to record another film soundtrack. The band’s contributions to Barbet Schroeder’s La Vallée were later assembled onto the album Obscured By Clouds in June of 1972, by which point the group had already begun recording The Dark Side of the Moon.
Check out ‘Fearless’ down below.
