2. The Pink Room.

My mum remarried and we went to live in Mawdesley, "the best kept village in Lancashire". Our step father had two grown up daughters, who lived in a pink bedroom. They had flown the coup, he'd never got round to redecorating. So my brother and I shared a pink room for the next five years. 
It was an experience he later described as "doing my jail time". 


We were living in the country again. There was a stereo record player in the pink room and by 1971, my vinyl addiction was full on.


I bought the first records of my own in Manchester in December 1970. My mum took us Christmas shopping. We were in a department store and I heard this song drift out of the music department. "Well, I dreamed I saw the knights in armour coming, saying something about a queen". It was "After the Goldrush" by Neil Young. I had to have it. I bought the first two albums by Led Zeppelin at the same time. These were the building blocks of my collection. It expanded rapidly. The following year, I was buying two or three albums a week. 


There weren't any record shops locally, there was Rumbelows in Wigan. That was a white goods shop with a record department in the basement that stocked middle of the road releases by Tom Jones and Englebert Humperdink. Useless for long haired teenage counter revolutionaries. Then there was a market stall in Skem. That was close to the new school I'd been moved to. I bought Led Zeppelin 3 there, complete with the volvelle cover and "do what thou wilt" etched in the run off groove. 


I also bought records from Virgin mail order, a hip new company that advertised in the NME. The Yes Album. In Rock by Deep Purple. Barrett by Syd Barrett. Prog and heavy metal were on the rise. John Peel's Top Gear was king. I'd listen to it when I was supposed to be asleep. Writing down the names of the top gear he was playing, then trying to hunt it down during the rest of the week. I was obsessed with hunting down back catalogue too. My shelf soon groaned under the weight of all that vinyl.


October 2nd 1971.
 "This is radio one. (crowd cheers). on medium wave. (crowd cheers) and this is John Peel with another concert. (huge crowd cheers). No. You blew it. You did it all wrong. Anyway. The Pink Floyd."


Rick Wright plays a haunting melody on Hammond organ to introduce "Fat Old Sun" and they're off. The John Peel Live Concert, broadcast straight after The Top 40 chart run down every Sunday evening was also essential listening in 1971. A hot band from the musical underground live at London's Paris Cinema, often performing brand new material few had heard before. Led Zeppelin premièred a brilliant "Stairway To Heaven" to the nation on that show, you can hear how good that was on disc 2 of their BBC Sessions CD. 

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"And er, if you'd listened to this programme a year ago, you'd have heard the Floyd doing Dave Gilmour's "Fat Old Sun" then, but its changed quite a bit I think during the past 12 months. This next one is described by Roger Waters as a poignant appraisal of a contemporary social situation, er you can make what you will of that. Erm, during the course of it too, erm, Nick Mason's vocal debut to come round. And er, although you'll hear his voice, at no time, if you are here in the studio, of course, at no time will you see his lips move, which is something of a technical tour de force. And its called, one of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces, or for the benefit of the LP, one of these days". 


The LP in question was "Meddle", released 6 weeks after this broadcast on November 13th. Engineered in part by young John Leckie, who later produced the landmark "Stone Roses" album, "Meddle" is noted for containing both Pink Floyd's best song, "Echoes" and their worst, "Seamus Dog". 


"Anyway, that's er on the new LP and its called, one of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces, as you might have gathered. Erm, this next one has been released on a sampler LP by the Floyd's record company and, er,  they weren't too keen on the idea that it should be, infact they didn't know it was going to be until it was, er, because it was basically a demo recording that they'd done for their own edification and so its radically different now, as you will hear, and its called Embryo."


The "Meddle" album was started in Abbey Road, but then moved to Air and Morgan studios where extra tracks were available for recording allowing them to use overdubs and other kinds of experimentation to create what Peel calls their technical tour de force. In retrospect, they were indulging in an early form of “sampling”. Not just with the vocal on "One Of These Days", played back off tape rather than sung live, but also incorporating, amongst other things, the Liverpool FC kop singing “You'll Never Walk Alone” on “Fearless” and a real dog singing on “Seamus Dog”. 


"Fine fine music there from the Pink Floyd and that one's called Embryo. And er, the programmes been produced by Jeff Griffin and the sound balance by Wiper Lycett. Leaping about by John Etchells. This last one takes up the whole of the second side of the Meddle LP and the group's roadies, Pete and Scott say it's an extraordinarily good number, and it's called Echoes."


Originally titled, amongst other things, "The Return of the Son of Nothing" and "Looking Through the Knothole in Granny's Wooden Leg", if you want to hear the BBC John Peel version of "Echoes", click here. 
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