The Lost 'Ummagumma' Version of 'Grantchester Meadows' with Nick Mason on Flute and Extended Bird Calls

During the June 1969 sessions at Manor Studio—while Pink Floyd was assembling the live half of Ummagumma and tinkering with studio material—they cut a version of “Grantchester Meadows” that feels more like a field recording than the album track. Instead of the clean, pastoral mix we know, this take lets a long improvisation of layered bird chirps and rustling leaves run wild, almost burying David Gilmour’s acoustic guitar. The weirdest detail? Nick Mason picks up a flute and plays a brief, wobbly countermelody—a rare moment where the drummer steps away from the kit and into waters he’d never wade again.

On the released Ummagumma studio side, “Grantchester Meadows” is a pristine, solo-Rick-Wright piece: his voice floats over fingerpicked guitar and a few overdubbed birdsong effects cut from a library record. The unreleased version, likely recorded live in the room with minimal overdubs, swaps that polish for spontaneity. Mason’s flute part is tentative but audible during the second verse, adding a reedy texture that Wright’s piano later replaced. The extended bird improvisation—lasting nearly two minutes longer—turns the song into a miniature soundscape, closer to the experimental streak of “Several Species of Small Furry Animals” than the gentle folk of the final cut.

Why did they scrap it? Probably because the raw recording didn’t fit the clean, album-oriented mood they wanted for the studio half. Mason himself admitted in interviews he wasn’t a flautist—he just “tootled around” between takes. The tape remains in the vaults, circulated among collectors as a holy grail for Floyd completists, a glimpse of a band still figuring out how much chaos to let into their pastoral moments.