- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the debut album by Pink Floyd, is one of the earliest and best psychedelic rock albums.
Pink Floyd – The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967): The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the debut album by Pink Floyd – whose name is taken from two obscure American bluesmen, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council – is one of the earliest and best psychedelic rock albums. Even considering how far English musicians had pushed the boundaries of rock music in the British Invasion period – the Beatles’ legendary Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album was released just three months prior to The Piper at the Gates of Dawn – the combination of whimsical, child-like lyrics and concepts with music that is downright weird and even tortured in places was and is irresistible. The beautiful striped record label is also an attraction for my copy of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
Masterminded by Pink Floyd’s original bandleader Syd Barrett, this is the American edition of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn – whose title is the name of one of the chapters in Barrett’s favorite children’s book The Wind in the Willows (1908) – and there are significant differences in the songs included and also their order on the album, as can be seen by comparing the song listing on my album with the image of the back cover of the original English release. This was commonplace throughout the British Invasion period, even for albums by the biggest stars like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. In this case, Pink Floyd’s delightful second single “See Emily Play” is the opening track, while it is not on the British album at all; while one of their best-known early songs, “Astronomy Domine” is omitted from my copy of the album. Pink Floyd released six more albums of varying appeal that all sold tolerably well, until their space-rock masterpiece The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) became one of the largest selling albums of all time and stayed on the Billboard album chart for an astounding 741 weeks (more than 14 years). Even when The Piper at the Gates of Dawn was being recorded, Syd Barrett was exhibiting mental troubles that were greatly exacerbated in later years by his overuse of LSD. Syd Barrett made only minimal contributions to the Pink Floyd recordings after this album, and he was replaced on lead guitar by David Gilmour just one year later, in 1968. Pink Floyd’s follow-up album to The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here (1975) is dedicated to Syd Barrett; and the nine-part composition “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” was written specifically about Syd Barrett. Although the disc looks a little like a Pringle’s potato chip, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn has played just fine for me post-Katrina, other than a warble or two on “See Emily Play”.