Pink Floyd Online Forums

Recently I was surfing songfacts.com and decided to see what it had to say about OTTA - one of my favourite Floyd songs

Among user comments there was one that left me quite baffled:

"The melody of this song is an old irish folk song. When this album was released, my dad was listening as I played this song over and over again. He brought me an old record of James Galway with the Chieftains and played this exact melody as an instrumental recorded many years before Pink Floyd's new (at the time) album. I was shocked!!! Reduce, Reuse, Recycle? Are there any music buffs out there that know the album I'm referring to? John, W. Orange, NJ"

Do you have any idea if there's truth in it? Some people have said it was celtic flavour in it... It could be case of cryptomnesia, it has happened before to people

Anyway I think there's nothing to fear. Animals' song "A house of the rising sun" is in reality old American folk song.

Sounds like bollocks to me. It may be a similar piece of music, but the album credits Gilmour as writing the music, so it must be a coincidence.

A lot of songs have melodies that are actually reworkings of old folk tunes (Bob Dylan, anybody?) Then again, a lot of folk songs have pretty similar melodies anyway. On The Turning Away does sound somewhat Celtic to me, which could mean that the melody is borrowed or partially borrowed, or it could mean that Dave composed a simple folk melody that happened to sound fairly similar to some other folk tunes.

The tempo of the song has a slight Celtic feel but that's about it. Does anyone else think that David's guitar solo is just a good as CN. A Great Day For Freedom is also under rated.

Xardie Wrote:Alan W Pollack would propably disagree with that doc

Lady Madonna is very deeply grounded in blues though, but rip off??? Bahh

thanks for that site xardie it was really interesting... and i thought i was a beatle fanatic. i never said i agreed with the doco, but it is food for thought. Such musical geniuses like Dave and Lennon mccartney didn't become famous for their covers, but their originality - and i cant imagine any of them sitting around flicking through old 78s for their next big hit