One of These Days

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For other uses, see One of These Days (disambiguation).

"One of These Days"

Single by Pink Floyd
from the album Meddle
B-side(s)	Fearless (US & Italian single) Seamus (Japanese single)
Released	October 30, 1971 (US) November 5, 1971 (UK) November 29, 1971 (US single) ???, 1971 (Italian single) ???, 1971 (Japanese single)
Format	7"
Recorded	July 19-21,23-25, 1971 Morgan Studios, London August 1971 AIR Studios, London
Genre	Progressive rock
Length	5:57 5:32 (US single)
Label	Harvest (UK) Capitol (US)
Writer(s)	Roger Waters Richard Wright Nick Mason David Gilmour
Producer(s)	Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd singles chronology
"The Nile Song" (1969)	"One of These Days" (1971)	"Free Four" (1972)
Meddle track listing
	"One of These Days" (1)	"A Pillow of Winds" (2)

"One of These Days" is the opening track from Pink Floyd's 1971 album Meddle. Save for the spoken line "One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces" (the voice is Nick Mason's, recorded with him saying it fast but the tape slowed down to create that eerie voice) the song is instrumental and features double-tracked bass guitars played by David Gilmour and Roger Waters. The track opens with a sort of "wind sound" emulated by mean of an "echoed" white noise oscillator. One of the two bass guitars sounds quite muted and dull compared to the other. According to Gilmour, this is because that particular instrument had old strings on, and the roadie they had sent to get new strings for it preferred to wander off and see his girlfriend instead^[1]. Gilmour has stated that he considers the song the most collaborative piece ever produced by the group. When the song was played on the BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test, a piece of film was produced by the programme makers, featuring rotoscoped pierrots and gibbons dancing against various backgrounds.

The spoken threat is aimed at Sir Jimmy Young, the then BBC Radio 2 DJ whom the band supposedly disliked because of his tendency to babble. During early 1970s concerts, they sometimes played a sound collage of clips from Young's radio show that was edited to sound completely nonsensical.^[2] The bootleg compilation A Tree Full of Secrets contains a demo version of "One of These Days" in which the Jimmy Young collage loops in the background during the song. However, the authenticity of this demo has not been confirmed.^[3]

[edit] Personnel

David Gilmour - Guitar, Slide Guitar, Bass Guitar
Roger Waters - Bass Guitar, Rhythm Guitar
Nick Mason - Drums, Percussion, Vocals, Engineering
Rick Wright - Synthesizer, Organ, Sound Effects

[edit] Trivia

Hungarian figure skater Krisztina Czakó used "One of These Days" as the music for her long program at the 1992 Winter Olympics, one of the few times that a classic rock song has ever been featured in an elite-level ice skating competition.

On the Live at Pompeii version, Nick Mason loses a drumstick and keeps playing with one hand whilst retrieving another without missing a beat. (This can be seen at about 4:30-35 in this[Video]).

The Live at Pompeii version, was retitled as "One of these Days I'm Going to Cut You into Little Pieces", the full spoken threat.

The single spoken line in this song is a rare vocal contribution by Nick Mason.

The ending solo on the left speaker is David Gilmour playing a regular guitar solo dueling with himself, via multi-tracking, playing slide on right speaker.

At approximately 3:03 minutes into the song, a similar sound is heard to the theme tune of the popular science fiction television series Doctor Who.

The song was a concert staple on the band's 1971, 1972 and 1973 tours. Then it was resurrected for the group's 1987/1988/1989 A Momentary Lapse of Reason world tour and 1994/1995 The Division Bell tour.

"One of These Days" is featured in "The Lives of the Stars" episode of Carl Sagan's television documentary Cosmos.

"One of These Days" is the song playing over the end credits of the Sopranos episode "The Fleshy Part of the Thigh".

"One of These Days" is the entrance music of Abdullah the Butcher (Larry Shreve), a professional wrestler best known from WCW in the early 1990's.

Metallica's Kirk Hammett and Robert Trujillo played a jam-style cover of this song on their latest tour.

Blue Man Group covers this song during their "How to be a Megastar 2.0" tour. They use their Paddle Tubulum instrument to simulate the double-bass guitar effect.