Originally Posted by
JeffCarney
I would suspect that the reason the little jam and "thanks" prior to "Ritual" was left intact was simple: Squire knew that the only logical place to split "Ritual" was before the bass solo. In terms of time and the flow of the song, this is where it needed to happen. And in order to maintain optimal sonic potential for vinyl, he did need to do it. A good engineer might make a 30 minute side work for Klaus Schulze or something, but with dynamic rock music of this nature, it would not have sounded very good.
And so ... he was able to leave in the whole intro section because with the split where it was and leaving the intro, he had about a 16 minute side. Had he cut that intro, we would have had a very, very short Side 3.
He could have used a version of "On The Silent Wings Of Freedom" and made it work sans the "Ritual" intro, but whether he had a version of this with which he was comfortable, I'm unaware.
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