Pink Floyd
"Seamus"

Japanese single
Song by Pink Floyd
Track 5 on the album Meddle
Released October 30, 1971
Recorded May 24 - 28, 1971 (mixed July 26)
Genres Country blues
Studio AIR and Morgan Studios
Length 2:15
Label Harvest
Vocalists David Gilmour
Songwriters Roger Waters • David Gilmour • Richard WrightNick Mason
Producers Pink Floyd

"Seamus" is a song by the English rock band Pink Floyd that was released on their 1971 album Meddle. It was released that same year with "One of These Days" as a single in Japan.

Overview[]

Info[]

  • Also the name of a dog, owned by close associate of the band Steve Marriott.
  • The song was written by Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright one day in 1971 when they found that Seamus could bark in tune with music. They quickly recorded a twelve-bar blues backing track for the dog to 'sing' over, and David Gilmour later overdubbed extra instrumentation as well as lead vocals. Pink Floyd added this novelty song to round out the first side of their new LP, and hastily composed a few lines of lyrics to enhance its brief appearance on the album. Also, some stray speech leaked into the final mix. Some say that about a minute through the recording, one of the band members can be heard saying something akin to "it's better than last time" or "very theatrical". According to Vernon Fitch's "The Pink Floyd Encyclopedia," the words are "Here is the real dog."
  • Film director Adrian Maben captured Pink Floyd's only live performance of "Seamus" (in a greatly altered form, excluding lyrics, changing the key from D-Major to C-Major, and retitled "Mademoiselle Nobs") in his film Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii. To re-create the song, David Gilmour played harmonica instead of singing and (unusually) Roger Waters played one of Gilmour's Stratocaster guitars. The band members were keen to include this track in the film, and gave Maben the task of finding a dog that could duplicate Seamus's performance when they re-made it in front his cameras at les Studios de Boulogne in the Spring of 1972. A female Afghan Hound named Nobs, which belonged to Madonna Bouglione (the daughter of circus director Joseph Bouglione), was brought to the studio and Wright gently coaxed her to provide howling accompaniment as Seamus did in the album version. There is also an audible bass guitar in this recording, likely overdubbed during mixing of the film soundtrack at another studio, but, as with many Pink Floyd songs, it is difficult to tell who is playing it. Pink Floyd never created any demo for the song though.


Template:SongNav