Roger Waters defends labelling Joe Biden a “war criminal”
Read More
Credit: Alamy
Remembering when Roger Waters played David Gilmour’s guitar
Pink Floyd delivered many highlights over their long career. Whether it be their surreal psychedelic debut The Piper at the Gates of Dawn or the cerebral odyssey that is The Dark Side of the Moon, for a time, the English band were both the most exciting group on the planet as well as the most consistent, delivering a succession of albums that rank among the most consequential ever released.
Despite the successes Pink Floyd enjoyed, they also produced many divisive moments, as well as ones that are resoundingly regarded as misfires. From Ummagumma to A Momentary Lapse of Reason, numerous points within their back catalogue have long been the source of impassioned debate, and rightly so, as such experimentation is rarely ever consistent.
One of the most divisive junctures in Pink Floyd’s history comes as a part of 1971’s widely-lauded Meddle. The project is a strange case as the album is one of the most coveted by fans of the band, featuring stellar cuts such as ‘Fearless’ and ‘Echoes’.
It remains an eclectic body of work, given that during the early stages of writing and recording, the quartet didn’t have a coherent idea of the creative direction they wanted to head in. It meant that improvisation was essential and, with the band spending weeks jamming in the studio, each member became isolated from what their bandmates were playing.
This helped to give the album the colourful essence that it now boasts, which can also be taken as inconsistent. With that, one song that continues to confound fans remains the closer of side one, ‘Seamus’. A novelty track in the style of country blues, it is a perplexing listening experience to segue from this to the flawless masterpiece ‘Echoes’.
Notably, a dog is heard barking in the background throughout, and interestingly, it takes its name from the Border Collie of the same name, who was owned by Humble Pie and Small Faces frontman Steve Marriott. Fittingly, it is Seamus the dog that is heard barking on the track.
However, the band struggled to play ‘Seamus’ live, and duly, they only performed it once as part of their iconic 1972 concert documentary, Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii. Here though, they significantly altered the number and renamed it ‘Mademoiselle Nobs’.
Despite all the song’s complexities and how divisive it stands, this performance in 1972 is one of the highlights of the band’s career as in it, we see each member enact a strange role reversal, reflecting their resourcefulness.
Here, bassist Roger Waters plays David Gilmour’s famous Black Stratocaster, as the latter took on the harmonica, confirming what we always knew, that they are some of the most consistently surprising rock musicians of all time, regardless of David Gilmour’s comments on the song: “I guess it wasn’t really as funny to everyone else [as] it was to us”.
