(Credits: Alamy)
Thu 11 December 2025 15:02, UK
They might now be deemed one of the most significant acts of the classic rock era, but there was a time when Pink Floyd were just another group of inexperienced longhairs trying to reach their ultimate artistic vision, whatever that might have been.
Naturally, their rawest period was their first chapter, the Syd Barrett-fronted period. Emerging as part of the nascent psychedelic scene, the quartet stood out for their incredibly distinctive take on the genre. It was more out there than anything their peers were crafting. This was thanks to the pulsating guitar work of their frontman and his whimsical delivery, evoking the most opium-influenced fantasies of the previous century.
Some fans claim the two albums they recorded with Barrett are their best – 1967’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and the following year’s A Saucerful of Secrets – due to their zeitgeist-capturing essence and the directly psychedelic approach. However, each band member has distanced themselves from this. A period of great upheaval, it was marked by their relative inexperience and the intense mental health decline of Barrett and his ensuing departure in 1968.
Of course, many elements of this chapter occupy the personal space for the group, but some musical moments are equally as forgettable as the living experiences. Most of these are found on their second album, which saw them sack Barrett before finishing it. This saw the remaining members, with new guitarist David Gilmour in tow, plough on to the finish line.
The band were still a composite of different forces. One of those forces, pulling toward jazz and away from pop was keyboardist Richard Wright. “When I was first in The Floyd, I wasn’t into pop music at all,” explained Wright of the time Pink Floyd were still trying to become giant pop icons. “I was listening to jazz and when The Beatles released ‘Please, Please Me’ I didn’t like it at all. In fact, I thought it was utterly puerile. There wasn’t much around at the time that excited me.”
Things would eventually change when he heard The Band, but Wright was firmly in the mindset that pop music was below the stature of music he was used to. But that didn’t stop him from trying to turn Pink Floyd into a huge pop outfit.
Wright even contributed two songs to the album, ‘Remember a Day’ and ‘See-Saw’, a duo he would later decry as an “embarrassment”. However, he did caveat his point by maintaining that the period was significant, as it was a learning curve.
In the Pink Floyd biography Saucerful of Secrets, he explained: “They’re sort of an embarrassment. I don’t think I’ve listened to them ever since we recorded them. It was a learning process. Through writing these songs, I learned that I’m not a lyric writer, for example. But you have to try it before you find out. The lyrics are appalling, terrible, but so were a lot of lyrics in those days.”
Despite its challenges, the recording of A Saucerful of Secrets opened the band up to their future. It saw the balance of power in the group change, with Gilmour and Roger Waters forming a potent partnership that, after only a couple more years of experimentation, would see them strike artistic gold.
Listen to both tracks below.
Related Topics