Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 94

Record label: EMI Columbia (UK) Capitol (US)

Produced: Norman Smith

Recorded: Abbey Road Studios, London; March 15–July 5, 1967

Released: August 5, 1967

Chart peaks: 6 (UK) 131 (US)

Personnel: Syd Barrett (g, v); Roger Waters (b, v); Richard Wright (o, p); Nick Mason (d); Peter Brown (e)

Track listing: Astronomy Domine; Lucifer Sam; Matilda Mother; Flaming (S/US); Pow R To H; Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk; Interstellar Overdrive; The Gnome; Chapter 24; Scarecrow; Bike

Running time: 41.57 (stereo); 42.13 (mono)

Current CD: E21S31261 (stereo edition); 724385985720 (mono edition boxed set). The mono mix was the one the band oversaw and is, in many respects, superior to the stereo master.

Further listening: Relics (1971); the spectre of Syd Barrett looms large over Piper follow-up, A Saucerful Of Secrets (1968); Pink Floyd/1967 – The First Three Singles (1997)

Further reading: Syd Barrett And The Pink Floyd (Julian Palacios, 1998); Pink Floyd: Piper At The Gates Of Dawn 33 1/3 (John Cavanagh, 2003); www.pinkfloyd.co.uk

Download: HMV Digital; iTunes

‘The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn was Syd,’ declares Roger Waters, ‘and Syd was a genius.’ Having built up a keen underground club following, Pink Floyd went overground early in 1967. Despite their reputation, two singles – Arnold Layne and See Emily Play – were disarmingly melodic and surprisingly successful. However, the Floyd always saw themselves as an albums band. Some critics, notably Pete Townshend (who said the LP was ‘fucking awful’), doubted whether their live performances would work in the studio, but history proved them wrong: Piper virtually defines British psychedelia. It was completed in just 16 sessions at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios over four months, several of those purely for overdubs. It was long enough, though, for the group to push in two seemingly irreconcilable musical directions, a division that in retrospect clearly mirrored Barrett’s increasingly fractured mental state. Extended pieces born of onstage jamming (Astronomy Domini; Interstellar Overdrive; POW R To H; Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk) sat oddly alongside Barrett’s nursery-rhyme fantasies (Matilda Mother; The Gnome; Bike; Scarecrow), a dichotomy emphasised by further contradictions (electric/acoustic; cosmic/ rural; blissful/fearful; adult/child).

Holding these extremes together inevitably led to conflicts, not least because EMI staff Norman Smith was keen to impress with his first production job. ‘Working with Syd was sheer hell and there are no pleasant memories,’ he said later, citing Barrett’s unpredictability and unwillingness to play songs (or even parts) the same way twice. Incredibly, despite Barrett’s habit of handling the mixing controls as if he were painting a canvas, Smith turned in a remarkable job, capturing both dimensions of the band’s work without sacrificing the edginess or the childlike innocence. ‘Gadzooks, it’s foot-tapping stuff,’ wrote a puzzled Nick Jones in Melody Maker. ‘“Avant garde”, I think it’s called.’ It wasn’t the last time the Floyd would baffle the critics, but with Barrett barely able to function within weeks of the album’s release, it was a rather less extraordinary Floyd that re-emerged without him.