Meddle - A Milestone for Pink Floyd

Today, the 31st of October, is the 49th anniversary of Pink Floyd's sixth studio album Meddle! Although officially the sixth album, Meddle is considered to be the true follow-up to A Saucerful of Secrets because it "was the first album [Pink Floyd] had worked on together as a band in the studio since," according to Nick Mason. While working on the album, the band made use of a variety of content: solo works, a collection of "ideas that were put down extremely roughly," and lyrics that were written by the collaboration of all band members. The album was recorded in between concert dates and thus took about a year to complete. Perhaps the reason why Meddle is considered to be a great contribution to the genre of prog rock is the song Echoes, which takes up the entire second part of the 46 minute album. The solo jams and unusable "Nothings 1-24" had resulted in an inspiration that arose from a single note–a high B– and following this inspiration, the band composed Echoes, a psych-prog song that is considered to be the "masterwork of the album," by David Gilmour, who also describes the song to be "the one where [they] were all discovering what Pink Floyd is about."