A confession. I don't actually own a copy of Piper At The Gates Of Dawn !
Although my brother had "Relics", a compilation of singles, B-sides and unreleased tracks released in 1971, I only started to get into Pink Floyd in 1975/76, and gradually acquired their back catalogue, until the only album left was Piper.
When I went to my local record store to buy it, I noticed that "Piper At The Gates Of Dawn" was double the price of "A Nice Pair", the double album consisting of Floyd's first two albums, "Piper At The Gates Of Dawn" and "A Saucerful Of Secrets", which was released in 1973 to cash in on the success of "Dark Side Of The Moon". As I already had a copy of "A Saucerful Of Secrets" I ummed and arred for a few minutes, before I decided to buy "A Nice Pair", and the following week sold my copy of "A Saucerful Of Secrets"to a classmate at school, so it was a win-win !
I was already familar with some of the tracks on "Piper At The Gates of Dawn". "Interstellar Overdrive" and "Bike" had been included on "Relics" and an eight minute live version of "Astronomy Dominie" was on "Ummagumma". The other eight songs were all new to me.
Floyd recorded "Piper At The Gates Of Dawn" in the studio next door to the one where the Beatles were recording "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and the two bands reportedly regularly sat in on the other's recording sessions. Consequently, many critics have made comparisons between the two albums and their LSD psychedelia.
Pink Floyd's singer, song-writer and guitarist was Syd Barrett, who had composed their catchy first two singles, "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play", both of which were Top 20 chart successes.
"Piper At The Gates Of Dawn" consists of two distinct types of music, being either mostly instrumental experimental pieces, or Syd's childlike, whimsical melodic pop songs, which covered wide ranging subjects from a cat, a fairy story of a king told by his mother, sitting in clouds, a gnome, a scarecrow, his bike and a mouse named Gerald.
Shortly after the release of Piper, Syd Barrett suffered from what is today referred to as "mental health issues" and was replaced in the band by Dave Gilmour.
"Astronomy Dominie" is the first of the experimental tracks and was probably the start of Floyd being labelled "space cadets". The live version on Ummagumma contains substantial instrumental sections additional to the studio version, which commences with NASA astronaut communication talk and Morse code in the intro before the jerky guitar comes into. The song does have a notable spaced out guitar break. For me it is the most interesting song on the album. "Jupiter and Saturn, Oberon, Miranda and Titania. Neptune, Titan, Stars can frighten.WOOO-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo!!"
"Pow R. Toc H" begins with some weird vocal sounds "Pum, pum, chi chi" and "Doi Doi" but then launches into jazzy piano and tribal drums, and is essentially an instrumental. The middle section has a short guitar piece that might typically come from a Western movie, and organ and guitar in the fade out until a climax of a guitar imitating someone being shot.
The final experimental number is "Interstellar Overdrive", a nine minutes long instrumental with a memorable riff before meandering off into free form jamming. It has featured in
a couple of episodes of "Heartbeat", usually when there is a car chase !
Of the more straight-forward Barrett material, "Lucifer Sam" has a 1960s detective series guitar style riff but is actually a song about his cat ."That cat's something I can't explain". After "Astromony Dominie" it is my favourite song on Piper.
The fairy story of a king told by his mother is "Matilda Mother" which is slow and dreamy, with an organ intro and a psychedelic organ break. The backing harmonies are annoying and it now sounds like a bit of a dirge.
In contrast "Flaming" has a childlike, joyously happy melody with some nice keyboards in the middle break-out. "Alone in the clouds all blue, lying on an eiderdown. Yippee! You can’t see me But I can you"
"The Gnome" is a childlike nursery song with mostly acoustic guitar, drums and bass, although chiming keyboards enter later. 1967 was a good year for Gnomes, with David Bowie also writing The Laughing Gnome"..... "I want to tell you a story,
'bout a little man,
if I can.
A gnome named Grimble Gromble, and little gnomes stay in their homes.
Eating, sleeping, drinking their wine".
"Chapter 24" is a slow dirge, with psychedelic keyboards, but nice backing vocals from Richard Wright. The lyrics are deep and meaningless. " All movement is accomplished in six stages, and the seventh brings return".
"The Scarecrow" is a forgettable song dominated with percussion and tinny keyboards whilst "Bike" is a whimsical song about Syd's bike, his old coat, a mouse named Gerald, gingerbread men and room of musical tunes. It finishes with about a minute and a half of weird clockwork sounds and music box noises, before the sounds of squawking geese to finish.
"Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk" is the only non Syd Barrett composition , written and sung by Roger Walters. It's not particularly any good but the guitar break is quite manic.
In conclusion, Piper At The Gates Of Dawn hasn't aged particularly well. That is not to say it isn't an important album, and there are some inspired moments, but when it comes to childlike whimsy, and rock n'roll for the under 5s, Jonathan Richman And The Modern Lovers did it so much better !
Track Listing :
Side One :
1. Astronomy Dominie
2. Lucifer Sam
3. Matilda Mother
4. Flaming
5. Pow R. Toc H
6. Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk
1. Interstellar Overdrive
2. The Gnome
3. Chapter 24
4. The Scarecrow
5. Bike
Released 1967
UK Chart Position : 6
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