The tour opened on 9 September in Ottawa’s Lansdowne Park Stadium. The set’s greatest surprise came with its choice of opening number, ‘Echoes’ from Meddle, which was given its first airing in over a decade. A challenge for all concerned, the piece would be dropped before the end of the month, with Nick Mason later claiming that the band’s new young musicians were simply too good to replicate the shoddy, hippie-ish feel of the original recording.
‘There’s a bit in “Echoes” we call “the wind section” where it all falls apart, and then comes back in,’ explains Guy Pratt. ‘Some of the younger players, mentioning no names, couldn’t get their heads around it not being a set number of bars. It was like, “You have to feel it and know instinctively when to come back in.” David’s great line about that was, “The trouble with modern musicians is that they don’t know how to disintegrate.”
– Mark Blake, Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd
And here’s the song!
