Not a single member of Pink Floyd could assert that they had an easy time going through every phase of their career. There was always a certain degree of anguish associated with everyone attempting to have their artistic voices heard, from dealing with Syd Barrett’s breakup to directing their sadness into their best works. While the band may have suffered several times for their craft, David Gilmour identified a particular song as the pinnacle of the group’s cohesiveness.
Barrett led the charge in the band’s first iteration with success after hit, but following his dismissal because of serious mental health issues, Roger Waters took over. Even though he occasionally stuck to the space rock genre, Waters soon emerged as the group’s leader and would frequently prescribe the song’s arrangement each time the musicians entered the recording studio.
However, a lot of the group’s efforts to achieve the ideal sound during their initial attempts to figure out how to make their sound work were trial and error. Working on the album Ummagumma as a half-studio, half-live disk, the band created a number of avant-garde experiments during the studio sessions that never quite worked out as complete songs.
The group was dissatisfied with what they were doing and believed that much of the material didn’t have a purpose, even as they began to compose elaborate pieces for the album Atom Heart Mother. Although Gilmour and Waters have been known to distance themselves from Atom Heart Mother, everything started to come together with the next album.
Regarding Pink Floyd’s masterpieces, “Echoes” from Meddle has received a lot of attention. Spanning 23 minutes, the majestic song transports the listener to the ocean’s depths through sound. Although the song marked a turning point for the group, Gilmour insisted that its preceding tune was one of their best-ever collaborations.
Regarding the other tracks on the album, Gilmour described “One Of These Days” as “the most collaborative effort of anything we ever did,” noting that it was a great example of the band playing off one another in just the right manner. Nevertheless, it’s clear from the song’s progression that Gilmour liked the band’s emphasis on teamwork.
Gilmour would later recall that the song began with various delay effects as the group prepared to record it, and Waters added his own elements to complete the song. The tune became an ideal blend of rock and roll and experimental music after Richard Wright and Nick Mason put their signatures on it. It even had a guitar riff that may have been part of a long-lost Rolling Stones song.
Subsequently, the group proceeded to explore new creative frontiers with their subsequent release, Dark Side of the Moon, crafting a seamless musical composition that revolved around life’s diverse facets and the preservation of mankind. While Gilmour and Waters would go on to compose other excellent songs individually for the band, “One Of These Days” is the perfect example of their collaboration at its best.