Pink Floyd - “One of These Days”
1971
HAPPY HALLOWEEN: A BRIEF HISTORY OF AXES IN PINK FLOYD SONGS
“Careful With That Axe, Eugene” (1968) - This B-side’s Wikipedia entry leads you through a detailed history of the song. Need to know on which version Roger Waters screams the loudest? Or which movie an alternate version was recorded for? Wiki’s got you covered. A live version - where Waters’ screaming was great for kicks in high school - appears on Ummagumma, a Floyd album with one of the best Hipgnosis album covers. It has one of those pictures where the picture appears within itself ... you know, like the Land O’Lakes logo. Deep, man.
“One of These Days” (1971) - Meddle is a gem that Floyd recorded before superstardom, hence no songs with classic radio airplay. It had a song that appeared in absurdist fave film Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, another song that features “You’ll Never Walk Alone” (rare good use of a show tune), and the second side is one long song. But starting off an album with this song - that is mostly instrumental, where the only vocals are distorted and declaring an intent to commit an axe murder? Almost as audacious as Mott the Hoople kicking off their debut album with an instrumental cover of “You Really Got Me.” Bravo.
“One of My Turns” (1979) - Despite a sly reference to early Floyd experiments (the line: In the suitcase on the left you’ll find my favorite axe), The Wall has not aged well in my mind. Maybe because after all these years I realized all the filler that surrounded the killer songs. Maybe because for a spell in the eighties, there were a few late nights where some guy would say: “Hey we should watch The Wall” and man did those parties end up depressing, the giddiness of a Saturday night crashing into a bad beer buzz and Bob Geldof shaving off his eyebrows. Maybe Floyd is just more interesting to me when they’re not trying to tell a story over four sides. Their masterpiece, The Dark Side of the Moon, was brilliant, weird, funky, and didn’t try to make sense at all. And regarding The Wall: Can you truly trust any Floyd album where the cover wasn’t designed by Hipgnosis?