Musicians
David Gilmour: vocals, electric rhythm and lead guitar
Rick Wright: keyboards (?)
Roger Waters: bass
Nick Mason: drums
Unidentified musicians: hand claps
Recorded
Pye Studios, London: early February 1969
Technical Team
Producer: Pink Floyd
Sound Engineer: Brian Humphries
The power chords of “The Nile Song” ring out at the beginning of the movie More, when Stefan first meets Estelle. Roger Waters’s lyrics have no more than a loose connection with this scene, however. Or, rather, he seems to have transposed the birth of the main characters’ romance to Egypt. I was standing by the Nile/When I saw the lady smile, he writes. And then: she spread her wings to fly. A strange creature, then, the heroine of “The Nile Song.” Is she an ancient Egyptian goddess with magical powers? Or a siren? After all, She is calling from the deep/Summoning my soul to endless sleep. Musically, “The Nile Song” is Pink Floyd’s first foray into the world of hard rock, a genre pioneered by Cream that reached its culmination with Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple (three British bands founded in 1968). This song undoubtedly contains the seeds of “Young Lust” and “In the Flesh” on The Wall.
In March 1969, “The Nile Song” was released as a single in various countries, notably France (with “Ibiza Bar” as the B-side) and Japan (with “Main Theme” as the B-side), but not in the United Kingdom or the United States. It was later included on the 1971 compilation Relics.
“The Nile Song” is something of a showcase for David Gilmour’s Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face! The guitarist makes prolific use of the effect on this track, one of the rare cases in which he employs it so freely when playing rhythm (see also “Ibiza Bar”). His white Stratocaster is in all likelihood plugged into his Selmer Stereomaster 100-watt amp (with Selmer Goliath speakers). He delivers a performance that is impassioned, to say the least, in terms of both his guitar playing and his lead vocal. He plays power chords, probably recorded across a number of tracks in order to maximize their presence. In addition to his rhythm part, he also plays various solos strongly influenced by Jimi Hendrix. In places, he double-tracks his Fender licks (listen around 1:48), a technique he would use relatively often in the future, a prime example being the main solo on “Money” in 1973. As for his singing, up to now, we have been used to David delivering the lyrics in a gentle, delicate voice; this time he asserts himself with a distinct rasp. It is also apparent that in order to boost its power, his singing is doubled using the ADT so beloved by Syd Barrett but by no means the usual thing done at Pye Studios. Roger Waters, the author of this hard rock number so uncharacteristic of his writing, provides solid support on his Rickenbacker 4001, although because of the way his bass is recorded, it has insufficient prominence. Instead of being plugged directly into the console as usual, the configuration seems to be the same as the one used by his fellow guitarist, only with different speakers, in this case the Selmer All-Purpose 50 (2 x 12). As for the drummer, Nick Mason gives a show of strength on this track. He can be heard smacking his Premier kit with ferocious power and taking delight in incandescent tom breaks. Rick Wright seems to be absent from the recording, as no keyboards are audible. If, as seems likely, he is laying down accompanying pads on his organ, these are inevitably buried beneath the deluge of sound generated by his bandmates. The avalanche of decibels does not, however, mask the hand claps that can be heard distinctly in the intro.
“The Nile Song” is a muscular number that Barbet Schroeder preferred to use as a musical backdrop, for fear that it would gain the upper hand over the images. Although the same hard rock style can be found on “Ibiza Bar,” it is nevertheless something of a rarity in the Pink Floyd catalog.