The Psych Ward–The Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Pink Floyd
The Psych Ward–The Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Pink Floyd
B’boom a ch’ ch’…B’boom a ch’ ch’. “Pow R. Toc H” from Pink Floyd’s debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, features these bizarre band vocalizations plus the first iteration of Roger Waters’s (in)famous scream. It is also a prime example of the band’s most strange and interesting ideas brought to life. Is this just the sort of weirdness bound to happen when three British architecture students with a love for American R&B meet a charismatic art student with similar musical interests and cut an album in the late sixties?
Beatles engineer Norman Smith sat at the production helm on this landmark 1967 recording session—a stroke of luck for the burgeoning band. Piper was recorded in EMI studio 1, while the Beatles themselves were recording Sgt Pepper in studio 2. Something vibrant was in the air at Abbey Road that winter and spring. Lyrically, the album is the confluence of whimsical English fairy stories (“The Gnome,” “Matilda Mother”), ancient Eastern texts (“Chapter 24”), mixed with the retelling of the mundanities of life (“The Scarecrow,” “Bike”). Musically, the album was something brand new to ears at the time—fantastical sounds mingling with commonplace chords punctuated by unusual sound effects such as wind-up toys, laughing boxes, and slide whistles.
Guitarist, singer, and lyricist Syd Barrett invented a glissando style of playing guitar, taking blues slide guitar and adding an echo unit to make spacey, cosmic sounds. This approach was noticed by the Soft Machine’s Daevid Allen during their shows together at UFO and Middle Earth and later adopted for his subsequent band Gong. Utilizing this new technique, “Astronomy Domine” and “Interstellar Overdrive” invented a genre we now call space rock. Had ANYTHING like these songs ever been heard before?
Richard Wright’s Farfisa organ flourishes and Barrett’s unbridled guitar leads these songs down twisted, unfamiliar paths of experimental rock music. The gentlemen of Pink Floyd were surely learning their instruments and coaxing whatever sounds they could from the newest electronic devices. One can only imagine what a listener in 1967 thought of the first track, “Astronomy Domine.”
Could The Piper at the Gates of Dawn be the perfect psychedelic album? I’ve listened to it for decades, beginning with my early nineties college days. I’ve heard the next generation of musicians spin it at house parties. One hundred years from now, this album will still be played and dissected for its psychedelic magnificence.
Highlights: Um, all of it?
Related: The Best 100 Psychedelic Rock Albums of the Golden Age
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