Beset by creatures of the night

Floyd have the 3rd best selling album of all time and single handedly invented prog rock and concept albums. Much appreciated in their pomp they produced a catalog of incredibly diverse music. The following is a celebration of their less explored earlier catalog, all of these are pre-Dark Side of the Moon, hopefully the best Floyd playlist you probably never heard

Early Floyd is dominated by two contrasting themes, the extended jams and the whimsy and picaresque tales from Syd Barret who for the first 2 years was technically the leader of the group. The live shows featured heavily on the long jams around Astronomie Domine, Interstellar Overdrive and later Saucerful of Secrets, interspersed with Barret’s quite poppy psychedelia. Barret became a consumer of copious amounts of LSD and over a 12 month period between the release of Piper at The Gates of Dawn and the recording of Saucerful of Secrets the acid combined with the stress of being on stage and his fragile mental state collided, resulting in an increasingly catatonic presence. There were gigs and a live TV show where he was fine in rehearsal but the reduced to standing on stage with the guitar drooping around his neck frozen at crunch time. Dave Gilmour was originally brought in to cover these lapses, which frutsrated his band mates as they were starting to get some traction and attention. Syd blew their disastrous first US tour.

He wrote one song on the final released version of Saucerful and contributed to two others, Gilmour played guitar on nearly all songs and as had been agreed Syd was no longer part of the band. Gilmour’s arrival coincided with a move for all of the members to write material and from being Barrett’s band it swung to being more and more Roger Waters band. I still think of the 5 year period between 1968 and 1973 as being peak Floyd, when there was a sense of it being a collaborative effort rather than the war of attrition between Roger and Dave it became. As well as the studio albums Atom Heart Mother, Meddle and the studio half of Umma Gumma they managed to crank out two full soundtracks, More and Obscured by Clouds and part of the aborted sound track to Zabriskie Point.

Their sound evolved over this period from the basics of their earlier jams into more imposing slow building epics yet they never lost the knack of writing catchy fun rock songs and their harmonies make for some great quiet songs led by acoustic guitars. They were fans of found sounds and lots of bird song is a classic mid period Floyd touch. They experimented in this period in early synthesizers and bought one of the early VCS-3s from the BBC’s Radiophonics lab. They also loved reverb so their electric sound always had a nice hard edge, assisted by Mason’s increasing competence as a drummer. This period saw the end of their working together, they had always worked individually and each had invested the fruits of their early success into home studios but they toured extensively and worked the individual songs into group pieces live on the road. They had an agreement that each one would contribute at least one song per album and the royalties were split by song, regardless of length. This caused some of the internal bitterness later but forced for example, the reluctant Gilmour, to write material that he would not have otherwise done, Fat Old Sun being an example.

They used the soundtrack gigs as a way of forced improvisation too, sometimes jetting off to interesting places as an excuse to get out of London and take a break from regular touring. The failed Zabriskie Point efforts were written and recorded in Rome, Obscured by Clouds was written in Paris. More was written and recorded in London in less than two weeks and was officially the first album post Barrett. The songs start with the very Barret influenced very 60’s pysch pop but you already see signs of their more majestic brooding side with Point Me At The Sky, then we transition into more straight forward rock of the early 70’s and then they get more pastoral through the Atom Heart Mother and Ummagumma tracks chosen. I was given Saucerful of Secrets in mono no less, by my cousin Chris Britton in late 1968. I missed going to the Bath Blues Festival in 1970, which was 12 miles down the road in Shepton Mallet. My friend Alan went as his older bother Mervyn was going, if I had gone I would have seen the first public performance of Atom Heart Mother. Mervyn Jones was a massive fan of the Floyd and through him I was introduced to Umma Gumma, More, Atom Heart Mother and Zabriskie Point. I was dumbfounded years later to discover through a guy I played rugby with that not only did I miss the Mothers, Hot Tuna, Zeppelin, Floyd and the Airplane at the festival but that Frank and the Mothers stayed in Frome at the now closed Portway Hotel over that weekend. I bought Meddle and Dark Side of the Moon myself but by the time Animals came out in 1977 I saw the Floyd as emblematic of the overblown stadium rock that needed sweeping away and punk was much more inspirational than majestic, theatrical progressive rock. Ironically Floyd’s early output has a punk like simplicity and freshness, so the cycle goes……These are my favorites from those heady early years. You can stream here.

See Emily Play 2:54 The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn

Arnold Layne 2:56 The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn

Let There Be More Light (25 Jun 68) 4:19 BBC Archives 1967-1969

Point Me At The Sky 4:14 BBC Broadcasts Disc 2

Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk 3:06 The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn

Lucifer Sam 3:07 The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn

Cymbaline 4:50 More (Original motion picture soundtrack)

Free Four 4:17 Obscured by Clouds

The Gold It’s In The . . . 3:08 Obscured by Clouds

Fearless 6:09 Meddle

Summer ’68 5:29 Atom Heart Mother

Baby Blue Shuffle in D (12 May 69) 4:46 BBC Archives 1967-1969