Pink Floyd - The Piper At The Gates of Dawn

 

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is the debut studio album by the English rock band Pink Floyd, and the only one made under founder member Syd Barrett's leadership. The album, named after the title of chapter seven of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows and featuring a kaleidoscopic cover photo of the band taken by Vic Singh, was recorded from February to May 1967 and released on 5 August 1967. It was produced by Beatles engineer Norman Smith and released in 1967 by EMI Columbia in the United Kingdom and Tower in the United States, in August and October respectively.
The release of the album in the US was timed with the band's tour of the US. In the UK, no singles were released from the album, but in the US "Flaming" was offered as a single. The US version of the album has a rearranged track list, and contains the UK non-album single, "See Emily Play". Two of the album's songs, "Astronomy Domine" and "Interstellar Overdrive", became long-term mainstays of the band's live setlist, while other songs were performed live only a handful of times.
Since its release, the album has been hailed as one of the best ever psychedelic rock albums. In 1973, it was packaged with the band's second album, A Saucerful of Secrets, and released as A Nice Pair to introduce new fans to the band's early work after the success of The Dark Side of the Moon. Special limited editions of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn were issued to mark its thirtieth and fortieth anniversaries in 1997 and 2007, respectively, with the latter release containing bonus tracks. In 2012, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn was voted 347th on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time".

The album is made up of two different classes of songs: lengthy improvisations from the band's live performances and shorter songs that Barrett had written. Barrett's LSD intake escalated part-way through the album's recording sessions. Although in his 2005 autobiography Mason recalled the sessions as relatively trouble-free, Smith disagreed and claimed that Barrett was unresponsive to his suggestions and constructive criticism. In an attempt to build a relationship with the band, Smith played jazz on the piano while the band joined in. These jam sessions worked well with Waters, who was apparently helpful, and Wright, who was "laid-back". Smith's attempts to connect with Barrett were less productive: "With Syd, I eventually realised I was wasting my time." Smith later admitted that his traditional ideas of music were somewhat at odds with the psychedelic background from which Pink Floyd had come. Nevertheless, he managed to "discourage the live ramble", as band manager Peter Jenner called it, guiding the band toward producing songs with a more manageable length. Barrett would end up writing eight of the album's songs and contributing to two instrumentals credited to the whole band, with Waters creating the sole remaining composition "Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk". Mason recalled how the album "was recorded in what one might call the old-fashioned way: rather quickly. As time went by we started spending longer and longer."

Track Listing

1. Astronomy Domine
2. Lucifer Sam
3. Matilda Mother
4. Flaming
5. Pow R. Toc H.
6. Take Up Thy Sthethoscope and Walk
7. Interstellar Overdrive
8. The Gnome
9. Chapter 24
10. Scarecrow
11. Bike

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 Pink Floyd - The Piper At The Gates of Dawn