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There are two versions of this song, the one that ended up on the record and was recorded with the grand dukes of the soft Canterbury machine, a little thing with a nice acidic and drawn-out sound...
And the one, just voice and guitar, that can be found as a bonus track in certain editions of Madcap...
The grand dukes later declared contrasting things, with Hopper and Wyatt fully satisfied and Ratledge instead quite baffled by an atmosphere where the moment was more to be captured than constructed...
For instance, Syd's "we could make the middle part darker, and the end a bit more like mid-afternoon, it's too windy and chilly now" seems to have been said on this occasion
Unless it's just one of the many legends...
In any case, the result is fantastic, with those organ touches that dart like little snakes...
However, I prefer the other version
Maybe it's because there the soup/song stretches out thanks to a bizarre guitar, which travels alone and incongruous, like a raft on the ocean to the point where you're always there saying, "here it goes, now it's going to sink"...
And on that raft, there are, to keep our company, a rocking horse with a yellow and red mane and a caterpillar with a hood...incongruous too, considering this is a love song, where you wouldn't expect to find these magical and slightly sinister images, full of precious ambiguity...
It's almost unclear, as the supreme Barrettologist Rob Chapman says, whether we are dealing with children playing doctor or with coquettish adults...
The doubt seems to clear at the end, when she, to whom all the recriminations were directed, wanders by car, God knows where, at night...
Doubts or no doubts, at the arrival of the last guitar bridge, we too get on the raft...after all, the waves seem lazy...
So lazy that they recently brought me in front of a children's store window where there was a hooded sleeping bag, shaped like a caterpillar, on display...
Syd's text says "the caterpillar's hood won't cover your head, you should be at home, in bed"...it's just a coincidence, of course...I, more than anything else, would have liked to give one to the little apple seed...but they didn't have the size...
He then keeps like a relic, the drawing of a brightly colored trilobite (yellow, orange, blue, pink) made by one of his nieces...
The first time I saw it, I thought it was a caterpillar...
"But this is the caterpillar from No good trying!!!"
"Yes, and it’s there, hanging on the wall, for the same reason we get on that raft," he replied...
But who is the little apple seed?
One of my doubles, obviously...
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