Album: Piper at the Gates of Dawn
Artist: Pink Floyd
Born: Cambridge
Released: August 1967
Genre: Psychedelia
Influenced: The Beatles, David Bowie, Brian Eno, Flaming Lips, Smashing Pumpkins
Back in the UK, a very different form of psychedelia was brewing. Though Piper at the Gates of Dawn doesn't capture the chaos and improvised jams of Pink Floyd playing at London's UFO Club in '66 and '67, it is the best distillation of Syd Barrett's very English type of surrealism, whimsy and wordplay. Just as in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, one of the album's many inspirations, there are also very sinister undertones in the songs. This was by far the most unsettling music I listened to in my early teenage years, and it left a huge impression on me. I used to obsess over the lyrics of Chapter 24, thinking there were many secrets to be uncovered in the lyrics, which led to me buying a copy of the "I Ching" and falling down a few rabbit holes myself. Syd wrote all of the songs on the album bar one, and at the time was the charismatic driving force behind the band, like the flute-playing Piper / Pan figure alluded to in the album title, calling the tune not just for Pink Floyd but for the entire London music scene in the mid-to-late Sixties.
Cosmic opener Astronomy Domine, unlike Interstellar Overdrive, is not given the full extended treatment on Piper (there's an even better version of the song on Ummagamma) but it certainly makes for a disorientating, majestic opening to the album. Then there's a run of three sublime pyschedelic songs, starting with Lucifer Sam ("that cat's something I can't explain"), followed by my personal favourite on side one, Matilda Mother, and finally Flaming, released as a single in the US. Matilda Mother evokes Syd's nostalgia for his youth and bedtime fairy tales read by his mother in his room ("the doll's house darkness old perfume"), and features some bizarre and genuinely innovative guitar and organ sounds and a brilliant vocal performance from Richard Wright.
Of the many highlights on side two, Bike is the most brilliant and original. It's one of the weirdest love songs ever written ("you're the kind of girl that fits in with my world"), brilliantly performed by Syd; I used to think the strange sound that closes the album was some kind of bird, until I found out it was a recording of the band laughing (but in reverse). Though there aren't any songs as catchy as See Emily Play or Arnold Layne, Floyd's two brilliant singles from the era, the album is still the best expression of Syd's genius. With his demise, inevitably the band would never be the same again, moving towards a more meditative and musically accomplished sound but lacking the wit & whimsy of Syd's songwriting. The hipster view that Floyd had nothing to offer after Syd is severely misguided though; the title track of A Saucerful of Secrets, plus the live recordings on Ummagumma and at Pompeii, are a brilliant progression of Syd's space rock vision. I also think Floyd's development of a pastoral psychedelic sound has been hugely influential; Cirrus Minor, Grantchester Meadows and Fat Old Sun are all great examples of the band's development post-Syd.
Artist: Pink Floyd
Born: Cambridge
Released: August 1967
Genre: Psychedelia
Influenced: The Beatles, David Bowie, Brian Eno, Flaming Lips, Smashing Pumpkins
Back in the UK, a very different form of psychedelia was brewing. Though Piper at the Gates of Dawn doesn't capture the chaos and improvised jams of Pink Floyd playing at London's UFO Club in '66 and '67, it is the best distillation of Syd Barrett's very English type of surrealism, whimsy and wordplay. Just as in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, one of the album's many inspirations, there are also very sinister undertones in the songs. This was by far the most unsettling music I listened to in my early teenage years, and it left a huge impression on me. I used to obsess over the lyrics of Chapter 24, thinking there were many secrets to be uncovered in the lyrics, which led to me buying a copy of the "I Ching" and falling down a few rabbit holes myself. Syd wrote all of the songs on the album bar one, and at the time was the charismatic driving force behind the band, like the flute-playing Piper / Pan figure alluded to in the album title, calling the tune not just for Pink Floyd but for the entire London music scene in the mid-to-late Sixties.
Cosmic opener Astronomy Domine, unlike Interstellar Overdrive, is not given the full extended treatment on Piper (there's an even better version of the song on Ummagamma) but it certainly makes for a disorientating, majestic opening to the album. Then there's a run of three sublime pyschedelic songs, starting with Lucifer Sam ("that cat's something I can't explain"), followed by my personal favourite on side one, Matilda Mother, and finally Flaming, released as a single in the US. Matilda Mother evokes Syd's nostalgia for his youth and bedtime fairy tales read by his mother in his room ("the doll's house darkness old perfume"), and features some bizarre and genuinely innovative guitar and organ sounds and a brilliant vocal performance from Richard Wright.
Of the many highlights on side two, Bike is the most brilliant and original. It's one of the weirdest love songs ever written ("you're the kind of girl that fits in with my world"), brilliantly performed by Syd; I used to think the strange sound that closes the album was some kind of bird, until I found out it was a recording of the band laughing (but in reverse). Though there aren't any songs as catchy as See Emily Play or Arnold Layne, Floyd's two brilliant singles from the era, the album is still the best expression of Syd's genius. With his demise, inevitably the band would never be the same again, moving towards a more meditative and musically accomplished sound but lacking the wit & whimsy of Syd's songwriting. The hipster view that Floyd had nothing to offer after Syd is severely misguided though; the title track of A Saucerful of Secrets, plus the live recordings on Ummagumma and at Pompeii, are a brilliant progression of Syd's space rock vision. I also think Floyd's development of a pastoral psychedelic sound has been hugely influential; Cirrus Minor, Grantchester Meadows and Fat Old Sun are all great examples of the band's development post-Syd.
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