CLASSIC ALBUM: Pink Floyd ‘The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn’ (1967)

This was the first full album from Pink Floyd and a sparkling testament to the genius of Syd Barrett, whose songs take flight on a magic carpet of cosmic philosophy (Astronomy Domine, Chapter 24), surreal whimsy (Matilda Mother, Flaming), and sublime nursery rhyme lyrics (The Gnome, Scarecrow, Bike), bolstered by trippy, technicolour instrumentals (Interstellar Overdrive, Pow R Toc H). The rest of the band are willing and able fellow travellers. The album was immediately pronounced sacred by the small cult of flower children and it remains the musical Mecca for British psychedelia. Sadly for Syd it was a brief flowering followed by a nervous breakdown. But his spirit has hovered over the band ever since.

Ground-breaking, unique and influential, ‘The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn’ was not an ‘easy’ first listen in 1967 and it still isn’t today. The fact that it spent several weeks in the UK Top 10 probably had as much to do with the consumption of acid by people who bought it as by those who recorded it. But for all the seemingly disparate elements, the potentially clashing musical personalities end up being remarkably well-balanced.

In retrospect, looking back on their whole career, it’s difficult to overstate the influence of Pink Floyd as a defining force in rock culture, a phenomenon that has affected every generation since, simply because they made some of the most amazing, most singular music in rock.