PINK FLOYD: The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (ROCK): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

Just recently, a friend of mine said to me: "You know, I like Pink Floyd. Well! I listened to "The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn", I didn't understand anything".

A little musical historical reference can certainly explain this misunderstanding. For the general public, Pink Floyd is the band of "Money", "Another Brick In The Wall" or "The Division Bell", the only titles that we can have a chance to hear on FM stations. It is true that the international fame of Pink Floyd begins with the album "Dark Side Of The Moon" and their planetary hit "Money", where the group developed a clever alchemy able to delight the most demanding followers of progressive music while enchanting by tracks with unforgettable melodies a large public less disposed to complex music.

It is also true that the band itself seems to have drawn a line on its past career by practically never playing live any tracks previous to "The Dark Side Of The Moon". However, when this album was released in 1973, Pink Floyd already had a solid track record behind it: 5 studio albums, 1 live album, 3 soundtracks ("More", "Zabriskie Point" and "Obscured By Clouds") and 1 concert (without audience!) filmed in the ruins of Pompeii. So many rich and exciting works, but less immediately accessible. In all this production, "The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn" has an even more particular place and for two reasons: on the one hand, it is the first Pink Floyd album, and often the first record does not yet reflect what the group will give at a cruising speed, but above all it is the only album where the role of group leader is held by the singer and guitarist Syd Barrett.

Syd Barrett's musical vision is very different from those of Waters, Wright or Gilmour, the latter only appearing on the second album. If drug abuse and schizophrenic tendencies had not prematurely ended his career, Syd Barrett might have led Pink Floyd down other paths than those the band eventually followed.

It is therefore not necessary to look for what will characterize the following albums in "The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn". Syd Barrett writes short songs, with a conventional format but with an eccentric interpretation, where the very articulate vocals stretch the syllables or compress them to try to respect the metric of the bars. "Mathilda Mother", "The Gnome", "The Sarecrow", or the crazy "Bike" are all nursery rhymes where Syd Barrett's poetic and melancholic universe works wonders. The only exceptions are the opening track, "Astronomy Domine", a space rock that sounds more like some of the tracks on the following albums, and "Interstellar Overdrive", a long guitar improvisation, such as the Floyd liked to do in concert, difficult to access and rather hermetic. - Official website

PINK FLOYD

THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN

COLUMBIA

ROCK