Pink Floyd
The Piper at the gates of dawn

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The origin of the Pink Floyd planetary system was Syd Barrett.

And Syd Barrett created Pink Floyd, the sick psychedelia, the strobe light shows, the sonic exploration, and a naive guitar style... And on the seventh day, like blue stars that shine too brightly, fused forever, radiantly exploding in the sky, an immense supernova.

Here is a rock record so ancient yet so current: "eppur si muove" despite being 40 years old-well-.Year of grace 1967, the Beatles are at the peak of their career, having abandoned their now triumphant live performances to devote themselves entirely to studio albums, while P.Floyd is at their debut album after two singles that did quite well on the charts (Arnold Layne and See Emily Play) and especially strong from a large underground following due to their psychedelic "light show" at the UFO club, which consisted of directly projecting onto the band hallucinated slides on which ink had been placed. In contact with the heat of the lamp, the ink would melt and create highly impactful visual effects. With the change in rhythm, the images also changed, in a triumph of visionary art. The band then also introduced another innovation in live performances, that of the quadraphonic sound: by connecting the instruments to amplifiers placed on all four sides of the venue, different sounds came from distant points, thus giving the impression that the music enveloped the audience.

At Abbey Road in the EMI studios, the Beatles recorded Sgt. Pepper, which was released on 1/6/1967, and the P.Floyd The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, released on August 5th of 1967. It is said that the mixing was carried out with the help of Barrett himself, who moved the faders as he saw fit - perhaps randomly - but was determined to achieve that suspended, spatial sound.

The production is by Norman Smith, who had been the principal sound engineer for the Beatles in the early '60s. But the Floyds go much further beyond the musical boundaries of the Fab Four: ranging from avant-garde and almost neo-jazz improvisations of the suite to pop songs like nursery rhyme (nursery rhymes / lullabies for children). Syd Barrett, golden boy and space minstrel, due to too much LSD and perhaps a schizophrenic predisposition, would gradually withdraw from the scene, after collaborating on only a couple of songs from the second Floyd album and two solo albums in the early '70s. The paradox will be that his exit from the scene would fuel his myth.

Kevin Ayers dedicates a song to him; a Syd Barrett Appreciation Society is even born, with its own publication, the Terrapin magazine. By the mid-decade, more than one band from the emerging punk scene wanted him as a collaborator or producer: the Damned and the Sex Pistols themselves, Jimmy Page would dream for years of producing an album by the Testa Matta, it is said, even the Blue Oyster Cult-but is it an urban legend or something I read in an old book of Pink’s lyrics? Boh someone help me-; David Bowie would make a cover of See Emily Play on Pin-ups, it is said he influenced the Xtc, various new wave groups - True West - Robin Hitchcock, and would receive tributes from the most varied artists...

SONG BY SONG

Straightforward and immediate, as every debut should be, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn is destined to withstand the wear and tear of time and trends. The album gathers 11 perfect songs, different from one another but united by the red thread of the dream: it was an instant success, reaching sixth place on the UK charts, where it remained for 20 weeks in the Top 20.

The message of an inspired work is already revealed by the choice of cover, a blended overlay of the musicians' faces, with strongly hallucinated colors. Eight of the eleven tracks are signed by Syd Barrett, the remaining three are the work of Roger Waters, in collaboration with Barrett, Wright, and Mason. In Italy, the album was released with a cover different from the original English one, featuring Gilmour instead of Syd Barrett, even though the former would actually become a member of the band on the second record. The title of this LP comes from the title of the seventh chapter of Kenneth Graham's book "Wind in the Willows", where Ratty and Molly search for a lost animal and have a sort of religious experience when they meet, indeed, "The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn", the Piper at the Gates of Dawn (which many identify as the god Pan). In 1967, the band had a quartet lineup, with Syd Barrett on guitar, vocals, Roger Waters on bass, Richard Wright on keyboards, and Nick Mason on drums. In this record, Barrett and his companions carry out a real Copernican revolution in the rock universe. Syd Barrett's production stems largely from his LSD "trips" in a visionary mind. The "Piper" marries, absolutely alternatively for the time, a mix of pop and daring psychedelia, accompanying this with "acid" texts strongly suggestive under that veil of childlike innocence. The natural continuation of the success of the first two Floyd singles, "Arnold Layne", censored by the radio for the references to the story of a transvestite, and then the masterful "See Emily Play", apparently a simple beat song with a slightly flower power text and an enigmatic ending. Emily is a sharp madness of distorted and saturated slide guitars, oriental tones, tape delays, superimpositions, space organs, and music boxes, becoming a masterpiece of the late 60s. After the success of the single, the group enters the studio for the first album.

The first Floyd album is truly psychedelic and all the tracks hide a hint of madness making them unique and innovative for their genre. The beep-beep of "Astronomy domine", the Lord of astronomy, kicks off the proceedings in the spirit of the most ill psychedelia, the same that shook Barrett's mind, to the point of being obsessed with extraterrestrial dangers and spies: reality and illusion merge, while the anguish slowly grows and eventually takes over, just like in the life of the late Syd.

"Astronomy domine" is practically the account of a stellar journey undertaken by Barrett through LSD use (it is even said that to orient himself he brought along an astronomy manual, because of the text references to Dan Dare, an English author of booklets of the genre or that he orbited around some round fruit in acid, booh!).

The Pink Floyd spaceship takes off to the stars, among equipment noises and the sounds of comets followed by a pulsing and continuous bass, the last radio connection with earth, while the omnipresent guitar, along with a solemn yet absent-minded singing, seems to wander in a dark and gloomy cosmic panorama. The stellar tapestry woven by the keyboards solidifies everything, amplifying the unsettling sensation of infinity. In the text, there is also a mention of Oberon and Titania as a reference to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and the nonsense of a fake space radio station talking about a horoscope: "Moon in both [houses]..." ..... "...Scorpio, [Arabian Skies], Libra...".... two/ten] seconds to [ignition]..."..... "...all systems satisfied..."."...just completed orbital...". As Gilmour said in an interview of the times of Ummagumma, performing Astronomy domine live gave him the feeling of playing rock'n'roll at super volume; and in fact, the blues of Bo Diddley and the old rock'n'roll were the repertoire that teenage Syd played at house parties. But of all this, there is now a complete transfiguration, of the past remains only a distant echo: our man is now suspended in the middle of the universe, knowing its immensity and experiencing the thrill mixed with the anguish of being the "lord"..., so much so that he is pushed into flight by the vital pulsations of his guitar and Mason's drums, which emphasize the most dramatic parts. When the group (bass, keyboard, and drums) created solid and compact melodic lines, Barrett was free to travel with his own guitar to places known only in his mind, in his distorted imagination.

Syd is not a guitar-hero of the late sixties, but his essential technique gives way to a very original and almost impressionistic way of playing - he was also a decent painter - perhaps due to the fact that his first instrument was a banjo: attentive to noise, to the painted sound, the roots in Bo Diddley combined with a very personal use of the slide, along with the incisiveness of the Rolling Stones Brian Jones, the rhythmic violence and feedback from Hendrix, to finish with the space drone of McGuinn's 12-string guitar of the Byrds.

The second song is "Lucifer Sam", a futuristic and quirky proto-hard rock, with a nimble, haunting, and pressing riff and a keyboard accompaniment that seems to evoke an oriental atmosphere. The text is arcane, with references to a witch, Jennifer, and there are those who have even seen references to the right and left hemispheres of the brain, while the nursery rhyme-style chorus talks about a magical cat (Lucifer) that has something inexplicable.

Barrett even tries to recreate with the guitar the meows of the cat protagonist of the song's lyrics. The atmosphere becomes even more fairy-tale-like in the third song, "Matilda mother", Barrett takes on the role of minstrel (anticipating in practice the fairy-tale narratives of progressive and romantic rock), taking us into the world of a tale, which is interrupted and then resumed. The solemn atmosphere created during the tale is interrupted by a melancholic "Mother, tell me more". "Matilda Mother" delicately evokes the bygone days of a happy childhood, the allure of fairy tales, imagination as a way to escape pain, with those friends existing only in the idyllic fantasy of children."Flaming", the following song, is a collage of sounds, pneumatic breaths, and noises inserted in a dreamy and cosmic atmosphere. Musically quirky and with a clearly hallucinatory text (alone, in the clouds/traveling by phone, I can’t touch you, but later I might), it is the snapshot of a mental journey in a sound universe made of rising echoes, roaring guitars, drums, bells, and a myriad of noises: clicks, sharp thuds, rustlings, almost to convey to us the infinity of sensations that an altered mind can seize from the lights, colors, scents, and sounds of nature... The following "Pow R. Toc. H" consists of a simple bass riff repeated to infinity, creating a very dark atmosphere. The percussion emphasizes the nerve points and highlights the advent of the final screams between lysergic Indians, fake choirs, solemn organ openings that lead nowhere: like images thrown onto the dark and dense atmosphere of a blues jam that constructs, around the obsessive bass riff of Roger Waters, a sort of primitive jungle, overlaying simian verses, whispers, and hisses. The feverish improvisation continues with "Take thy Stetoscope and walk" by Roger Waters, is an experiment based on the obsessive repetition of the words "doctor doctor", and it is perhaps the testimony of the return from a trip or probably the state of a sick and oppressed mind. However, the finale resolves itself by pouring into a beat melody, with overlapping choirs and a hallucinatory monaural organ played by Wright. The next track is "Interstellar overdrive", the chronicle of a human journey into the universe and an essay of visionary art: today it would be defined as "post-rock". Introduced by a horror film riff, developed, and recycled from the riff of a Love song cover by Bacharach, My little red book..mamma mia che giro....

it develops in its eleven minutes following only one rule: at least one instrument must maintain the rhythm. And above this rhythm interpreted now by one, now by another instrument unfolds a very acidic jam session, where Syd's wild guitar vents the sound anxieties sucked in by the cosmic whirlpools of Wright's organ, creating a surreal atmosphere made of speeding spaceships, colliding asteroids, aliens and alienations, space sounds, stellar storms, cosmic quiet, glimpsed paradises, and humanly unreachable. Barrett is completely on a trip.

His mind draws disturbing and frightening scenes or immerses itself in liquid universes that escape human possibilities among mountains of ramshackle chords, under jungles of free shrieks and fierce rhythmic hurricanes meant to evoke the darkest aspect of the vastness. The sounds and noises seem to be created and thrown randomly into the mistico-musical tale: a storm of distorted sounds, pure noise experimentation coming from the most remote cosmic depths, showing us desolate scenarios of lunar craters, growing and taking off again to conquer new galaxies... The interstellar beep beep of this seminal jam will then be taken up by Floyd in the beginning of the suite Echoes, with a piano note instead of a guitar. The same will be for Waters' obsessive bass lines, which from See Emily Play onwards will gradually become a bit more funky in the suites of Echoes and Atom Heart Mother, and in the tracks Money, Sheep, on the tediously dull Shine on you crazy diamond, and finally on Another brick in the wall.

Interstellar Overdrive is also remembered for the great live impact and ends with the spaceship landing with simulated braking whistles on the guitar. Immediately attacks "The Gnome": "Let me tell you the story of a little man, if I may" begins Syd in a bouncing nursery rhyme with fairy-tale tones inspired by "The Lord of the Rings" by R. Tolkien. It continues with the mystical-cabalistic songs and choirs of "Chapter 24", inspired by the book "I Ching", one of the fundamental books of Confucianism, whose title indeed refers to the 24th chapter of this writing, entitled "Fu", meaning change/success. The text is obscure and metaphorical, the keyboards are at the forefront, and the song ends with an almost oriental-sounding little chorus, proceeding solemnly and going nowhere, while a dazed short guitar solo recycled from an excluded piece, Sunshine, fades.

Next is "The scarecrow", where on a rhythmic base of castanets similar to the clatter of horse hooves, Syd sings the rhyme of the inanimate and motionless scarecrow, condemned to scare the birds intent on raiding the ears of corn... This song is a minimalist rock jewel, with few electric guitar chords and Wright's "renaissance" mellotron, which accentuates the feeling of sweet melancholy of the piece, while the text is an allegory of a human state of depression and powerlessness, which Syd will take up again when already very unbalanced, he will compose Vegetable Man. The record ends with the crazy "Bike" where Syd's freak soul emerges and the first oddities of this album closer unfortunately foreshadow the imminent "implosion" of the leader, almost a premature epitaph of Barrett who shortly after loses his measure, shows signs of mental imbalance, and enters a sort of impenetrable trance.

The lyrics allude to a somewhat dazed love for a girl, like an extravagant -not to say schizoide-, serenade in which Syd addresses his young lady and closes with a foray into the avant-garde, between maddened bells and crazy trumpets and music boxes playing from all sides, almost wanting to say: the alarm rings, the dream is over...

This album is a "milestone vinyl" of psychedelic rock. The undisputed protagonist is Syd, whose incredible compositional approach, capability for guitar experimentation, the boldness of the contrived solutions should be noted. His right arm Rick Wright, who with his "organetto" mono - I think of Gem, Farfisa - would manage to change oriental melodies into universe visions.

Are or aren't these, in truth, the real Pink Floyd, the titanic and perhaps more authentic ones? And to think that even A Saucerful of Secrets was a great album, even with Barrett reduced to a stone guest. And the band of 5 in the flying saucer of Saucerful is light years away from the billionaire P.Floyd of the '70s, with that dull and omnipresent slow 4/4 seasoned with super-keyboards, noise - and mellifluous sounds...

Syd had surely become an vegetable man or an unmanageable scarecrow, supported by Waters and Gilmour on the two solo albums, but he is the real Pink, the ghost in the machine, the Floyd ghost in the machine. He is the dark side of the Moon, that touch of creative madness that will eclipse from the Leviathan Pink Floyd. What to say about the others...

About Mason and Wright, nothing to complain about, very good and reserved, perhaps Wright would have deserved a bit more space, but about the other 2 something can be added. Do we want to talk about Gilmour's guitar flair, but also his lack of compositional inspiration without the leader, Roger Waters? And about the latter, great composer but closed, contradictory, now a socialist preacher and anti-militarist with acoustic ballads with the omnipresent little birds from Arcadia lost (over 4 discs 4, Ummagumma, More, Animals and The Wall, too many!), now technocratic director of mega-multi-millionaire and overpaid shows and concepts. Also regarding the lyrics, Barrett appears more convincing than Waters, whose poetic ambitions are often focused on a pompous and ultimately paranoid critique of modern society and its mechanisms, lacking Barrett's agility, more surreal yet ultimately more convincing. Waters' double standard of caviar communism and living room is completely revealed in Dark Side, the "Thriller" of the '70s, the planetary icon of rock from that period: "Money is a crime/share it fairly/but don’t take a slice of my pie" sounds "silly", considering that Dark Side for those times was crazily expensive, with a post-production of about eight months eight by Alan Parson. With a similar setup, today the declarations of the group's lost virginity are laughable, with the series we did not expect such success, now we are in crisis... Waters, Gilmour, Mason, and Wright were, in all respects, superstars of a market strangled through the cartel of major labels.

But I say: only politicized fools like the Clash sold discs like Sandinista at a discounted price... Have you ever noted that so many pseudo-engaged rockstars like Waters have ever given anything away? Not even to poor Syd, who appeared like a Martian in the Emi studios during the Wish you were here sessions, the album dedicated to him. Fat, bald, Syd asked "when do I record my guitar?" and Waters answered that all the guitars had already been recorded and when asked what he thought of Wish You Were Here Syd tersely replied "'Sounds a bit old." - "It sounds a bit old"... Waters cried crocodile tears, perhaps for the critique? but politely, Syd was shown the door.

Perhaps Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols was right to even include the P.Floyd in the rock fraud cauldron in the song The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle. "I hate Pink Floyd" read a t-shirt that Johnny Rotten wore on more than one occasion in '77, when the Pistols released Never Mind The Bollocks. "Did you hate the Pistols?" a journalist once asked Waters, while he played golf on prestigious courses - and with serene composure, after furrowing his brow, he replied: "Uhm... no... I don't think so... we were very taken with the recording of Animals". And this while the black decade of the English economy had just started, the "British Disease". Great Britain was falling apart under the blows of the IRA, inflation, and miners' strikes.

Better the pure but real Pink Floyd of 1967, or the aseptic musical technocrats of The dark side of the moon? To posterity....