Grantchester Meadows (song)

"Grantchester Meadows" is a song from the second half of the experimental Pink Floyd album Ummagumma. It was written and performed entirely by Roger Waters. The song features Waters' lyrics accompanied by an acoustic guitar, while a tape loop of a skylark chirps in the background throughout the entire song. At approximately 4:13, the sound of a honking goose is temporarily introduced, followed by the sound of it taking off. The lyrics describe a pastoral and dream-like scene at the Grantchester meadows in Cambridgeshire, England. This is where fellow band member David Gilmour grew up and former member Syd Barrett lived. This type of Pastoral Ballad was typical of Roger Waters' compositional approach in the late sixties and early seventies. It was a style that he was to continue on his first solo album - Music from "The Body" and "If" from Atom Heart Mother. Interestingly, considering the song's idyllic setting, a fly can be heard being swatted and killed at its end (segueing into the following song, "Several Species...").

Some of the lyrics seem to describe the playback, in someone's urban dwelling, of some type of recording previously made in the meadow, for example: "Basking in the sunshine of a bygone afternoon / Bringing sounds of yesterday into this city room." This seems to imply only audio playback, but there are references to visual reproductions, as well: "See the splashing of the kingfisher flashing to the water." In addition, there are hints at physical immersion in the scene: "In the lazy water meadow I lay me down. / All around me, golden sunflakes covering the ground." This leads to speculation that the song may refer to some future advanced multisensory, fully-immersive recording and playback system similar to that seen in some science fiction works (for example, the movie Strange Days). However, the song may instead be purely about playing a conventional audio recording with the visual and scene-immersion references merely referring to the listener's imagination or memory. Or, the entire set of sensory impressions, including the audio, may merely be imagination or memory. It's not possible to tell from the lyrics.

"Grantchester Meadows" was incorporated into Pink Floyd's The Man and the Journey concert suite as "Daybreak." It was performed live during the American 1970 tour, often opening the show.

This song was one of several to be considered for the band's "best of" album, Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd^[1], and would have been the only song from Ummagumma to be included on the compilation.