Pink Floyd All the Songs
Page 10
From a musical point of view, and in keeping with the other two songs in the triptych (“The Gnome” and “Chapter 24”), “Scarecrow” has a folk feel. The influence of the Byrds album Fifth Dimension (in particular the song “I Come and Stand at Every Door”) can be discerned. “Scarecrow” would be chosen as the B-side of the single “See Emily Play” (released on June 16, 1967). It is interesting to note that on later reissues, it has become “The Scarecrow.”
Production
Pink Floyd began the March 20 session with some voice overdubs on “Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk.” They then ended the evening brilliantly by recording “Scarecrow” in a single take. They returned to it two days later in order to add guitar and organ parts, and with that Syd Barrett’s new song was finished. Simple. Peter Jenner testifies to the songwriter’s dazzling speed before Syd was irremediably affected by drugs: “Yes… Syd was so… he’d have an idea and he’d just do it. He was incredibly fast.”10 Once again, the track opens with percussion. This is probably Nick Mason striking what sounds like the metal rim of his snare drum, then a wood block, and finally a cowbell. It also seems logical that his colleagues would have lent him a hand, which might explain a slight drift in the timing, with some parts straying off the beat (for example at 1:21). Curiously, the superimposition of these three percussion instruments evokes the clumsy sound of a trotting horse, perhaps a way of reinforcing the rural aspect of the words. After eight bars (in 3/4), Rick Wright comes in on the organ (with a fade-in). His sound and melody possess an exotic color that calls to mind the musical ambiance of a Chinese restaurant… Syd then enters, singing and playing electric rhythm on his Fender Esquire. This gives rise to a somewhat medieval sonority. Rick supports him with backing vocals on the last line of each of the three verses. Finally, at 1:31, Syd launches into a surprising and highly successful coda on his Harmony Sovereign H1260 (which again is faded in), before Roger Waters joins him on his Rickenbacker 4001, played with the bow. Syd also picks up a second acoustic guitar, this time a twelve-string (Harmony 1270 or Levin LTS5). He plays a short phrase that is both subtle and highly guitaristic and that supports the bowed theme very effectively. The result is a success, making this coda one of the high points of the song. “Scarecrow” was mixed on March 29 (mono) and July 18 (stereo).
This beautiful ballad from Syd Barrett, the penultimate track on the album, indicates the musical direction the group might have taken had the songwriter remained its leader. We would probably have had a very different Pink Floyd, oriented almost certainly toward pop songs, more British-sounding, with the charts in their sights—but without neglecting their taste for improvisation and sonic innovation. This, of course, is mere conjecture…
For Pink Floyd Addicts
A short film of “Scarecrow” was shot by British Pathé in July 1967. The four members of Pink Floyd can be seen walking in a wheat field with a scarecrow planted at its center, and then by the edge of a wood. Barrett picks up the scarecrow and takes it with him, eventually thrusting it into the middle of a pond. Mason and Waters act out a duel with imaginary pistols, and Waters falls down dead in the field…
Bike
Syd Barrett / 3:22
Musicians
Syd Barrett: vocals, electric rhythm guitar, sound effects
Roger Waters: bass, backing vocals, sound effects
Rick Wright: harmonium, acoustic piano, backing vocals, sound effects
Nick Mason: drums, timpani (?), sound effects
Recorded
Abbey Road Studios, London: May 21, June 1, 5, 29, 30, July 18, 1967 (Studio Three)
Technical Team
Producer: Norman Smith
Sound Engineers: Peter Bown, Malcolm Addey, Geoff Emerick, Norman Smith
Assistant Sound Engineers: Jeff Jarratt, Jerry Boys, Graham Kirkby
Genesis
According to Andrew Rawlinson, a Cambridge friend, “Bike” (working title: “The Bike Song”) was one of Syd Barrett’s oldest compositions, one he had heard played at Roger Waters’s home on Rock Road. This song is infused less with the dreamlike, psychedelic atmosphere of the previous three songs than with the atmosphere of a British music hall in the style of Charles Penrose, revealing yet another influence on the songwriter. At the same time, it can also be seen as a very personal adaptation of the children’s verses Now We Are Six by A. A. Milne and even more obviously the fairy tale “The Gingerbread Man.”
The main protagonist is a teenager (possibly Syd himself, as this song may be dedicated to Jenny Spires, his girlfriend of the day) who shows the girl he loves a bicycle he has borrowed, a bike with a basket a bell that rings/Things to make it look good. In doing so he hopes to seduce her, for she is a girl who fits in with his world. Barrett immediately topples the listener into the sphere of the unreal. In this world of his there is an old mouse named Gerald, a whole clan of gingerbread men and, in his room, clocks that chime. Jenny Fabian, co-author of the cult book Groupie (and a veteran of evenings at the UFO and Marquee clubs during the early days of Pink Floyd), describes “Bike” and most of Barrett’s other songs as “signals from freaked-out fairyland.”18
The simplicity of Barrett’s lyrics only seem apparent. More specifically, the songwriter seems to deliberately cultivate ambiguity as he tells his story. The most obvious example occurs in the third verse, when Barrett sings: I know a mouse, and he hasn’t got a house./ I don’t know why I call him Gerald. It is very difficult to tell whether the narrator does not know why the mouse has no house or why it is called Gerald. This confusion corresponds very well to the music, the finale developing into a kind of a collage-like musique concrète.
Production
The last song on The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, “Bike” is also one of the most curious. The words and music are of an apparent lightness of tone, but leave a disquieting impression, if only for the juxtaposition of the main material with the chaotic finale. Some observers would see in this the beginnings of the songwriter’s future psychological collapse, as with Maurice Ravel and his Adagio assai. While this is possible, the main thing we should take from “Bike” is a sense of Barrett’s talent, which expresses itself in a proliferation or teeming of ideas, even if we feel at the same time that he is teetering on the edge of the precipice.
The song was put together mainly on May 21 and June 1 and 5. The eleventh take was the one the group decided to go with. This time there is no intro, Barrett comes in right away with the words, his voice from the very first bar combining his characteristic psychedelic poetry with a semi-pop, semi-aloof timbre brilliantly captured by Peter Bown with the Neumann U48 and doubled by means of the indispensable ADT. The tune is simple and sticks in the mind. Jeff Jarratt: “I remember it because it was a catchy little tune. [Syd] went out and did it a few times in the studio… it was just one of those silly little ditties, you know… you hear it once and… the other thing was that it was so different to everything else.”10 The songwriter accompanies himself with a rhythm guitar part on his Fender Esquire, Rick Wright is on the harmonium (as in “Chapter 24”), but also plays the acoustic piano, and Nick Mason supports his bandmates in a rock mode that is more linear than is customary for him. In the first two refrains as well as the last, Roger Waters (probably) picks up his slide whistle again, creating a cartoon-like effect in an identical spirit to the one he achieved on “Flaming.”
At the end of each refrain, two highly compressed raps on the snare drum (or timps?) can be heard. These are drowned in very present, very long reverb. In actual fact it is the same effect copied and edited in each time, the tail of the reverb being systematically cut off in order to fit in with the tempo of the track (for example at 0:23). In the third verse, Rick adds a new acoustic piano part that has probably been recorded slowly and sped up, as in “See Emily Play.” Roger seems to come in on bass only in the final verse (at 1:30), whose tempo is perceptibly slower and in which Syd is joined by Rick and Roger in the backing vocals.
Finally, the last, so
mber, part of the track begins with what appears to be the Binson Echorec being kicked about by one of the musicians (from 1:52). Peter Bown recalls a session that may well have been for “Bike.” “[…] I’ll always remember when… I think I was in the studio when all of a sudden Roger Waters’s foot came out BANG! I thought: ‘Good God that’s going to fall apart!’”10 This is followed by a multitude of noises that are difficult to identify: probably the spokes of a spinning bicycle wheel against which different objects are held, notes played on the celeste, the strings of an acoustic piano being strummed, tubular bells (or small Asian gongs), a whistle, mechanical toys, and possibly Waters’s Rickenbacker played with a bow high up the neck. This list is far from exhaustive! And finally, at 2:57, the track concludes with a loop of quacking rubber ducks, recalling the loop the Beatles added to the end of the second side of the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. This brings to a close Pink Floyd’s debut album, their penultimate one with Syd Barrett in the lineup…
For Pink Floyd Addicts
“Bike” was excluded from the track listing of Pink Floyd’s first US album. It was, however, included on the compilations Relics (1971), A Nice Pair (1974), and Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd (2001).
COVERS
The Japanese new wave band P-Model recorded “Bike” during the sessions for their album Another Game (1984). The American progressive-rock band Phish also covered the song (drummer Jon Fishman using a vacuum cleaner for the occasion).
1967
Apples
And Oranges /
Paint Box
SINGLE
RELEASE DATE
United Kingdom: November 17, 1967
Label: Columbia Records
RECORD NUMBER: DB 8310
Apples And Oranges
Syd Barrett / 3:08
Musicians
Syd Barrett: vocals, backing vocals, electric rhythm guitar, lead guitar
Roger Waters: bass, backing vocals
Rick Wright: keyboards, backing vocals, vibraphone (?)
Nick Mason: drums, tambourine
Recorded
Abbey Road Studios, London: October 26 and 27, 1967 (Studio Two)
Technical Team
Producer: Norman Smith
Sound Engineer: Ken Scott
Assistant Sound Engineer: Jeff Jarrett (?)
Genesis
Following the promising success of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (which reached number 6 in the British charts), EMI wanted to bring out a single as quickly as possible in order to target the Christmas market and launch the group’s first American tour, which was scheduled for November 1967. Despite their desire to focus on albums, which correspond far better to their creative talent and the sort of music they intended to develop further, Syd Barrett, Roger Waters, Rick Wright, and Nick Mason had to give in to the demands of their record company. Peter Jenner, who acted as an intermediary between EMI and Pink Floyd, duly asked Syd Barrett to write a song for the new single.
The expression to compare apples and oranges means to liken things that are so different from one another that any meaningful comparison is impossible. The scenario we have here involves real apples and oranges: the narrator (in actual fact, the driver of a fruit delivery truck) notices an attractive young woman Shopping in sharp shoes, and before long a tender love story begins… “It’s a happy song, and it’s got a touch of Christmas. It’s about a girl whom I saw just walking around town, in Richmond.”23 Going further, it is an evocation of his life there with his girlfriend Lindsay Corner, and of walks in Terrace Gardens and in the vast open space of Barnes Common. According to Julian Palacios, it was after one such stroll on Barnes Common that Syd wrote “Apples and Oranges.”17
Musically, the song is fairly characteristic of the Anglo-American pop scene of the day. According to Roger Waters, “‘Apples and Oranges’ was a very good song. In spite of mistakes and the production. I don’t think it was bad. ‘Apples and Oranges’ was destroyed by the production.”17
Barrett’s last recording with Pink Floyd, “Apples and Oranges” was released (with “Paint Box”) on November 18, 1967 (preceded by the promo disc the day before), exclusively in the United Kingdom. “This is Pink Floyd’s most psychedelic so far,” was the verdict of NME.24
Production
In reality, the birth of “Apples and Oranges” was a painful one for Syd Barrett. Tired and more or less befuddled by drugs, he was having difficulty coming up with new songs for the group. At the time, he was the group’s only member capable of writing hits. He was the one the whole team counted on to keep the Pink Floyd machine on the move. The song took a long time to materialize, as Andrew King reports: “[…] God knows how many people were depending for their grocery bills on the Pink Floyd. Add it all up, and there were probably 50 or 60 people whose livelihood depended on the Floyd getting in the studio, making a good track and getting it out… and it wasn’t happening. […] We were… we were panicking!”10 In spite of the pressure, Syd came up with “Apples and Oranges,” a song that is psychedelic to say the least, and which recalls the atmosphere of “A Quick One, While He’s Away” by the Who or the Beach Boys’ Smiley Smile period. The sessions would extend over two days, October 26 and 27, with, on the second day, more than twelve hours of uninterrupted recording (from 7 p.m.. to 7:45 a.m.), which can be seen as proof of the absolute urgency of releasing a new single!
Barrett launches the track on rhythm guitar accompanied by a second guitar that he plays with wah-wah pedal and a short delay courtesy of his Binson Echorec. The chords are reminiscent of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and the group rushes into a first verse, whose curious musical arrangement makes it difficult to understand what is going on harmonically. With the meowing wah-wah, it would have been useful to increase the volume of the first guitar or add a keyboard part in order to provide melodic support (although there is apparently an acoustic piano in there). The rhythm section is odd, with the drums relatively recessed in the mix and a very good, more ambitious, bass line along the lines of a walking bass. Mason adds a tambourine devoid of any reverb, the effect of which is to give it a very present sound. The refrain, by contrast, is airy and easy to memorize, and gives prominence to the vocal harmonies (Barrett, Waters, and Wright), Wright adding a radiant touch with a well-judged electric piano (or vibraphone?) part. Unfortunately the bridge, which begins at 1:17, is not especially convincing: the group does not seem very sure either of its interpretation or the arrangement, Mason’s ride cymbal is frankly unnecessary, and the vocal harmonies never really take off. Only Wright, most likely on a Hammond M-102 organ, is able to justify his part. In the refrain that follows the bridge (from 1:50), Pink Floyd tries to create a Christmas atmosphere with angelic voices and counterpoint drowning in reverb, and in particular a very high voice (Wright?) that is close to breaking point. After a final verse-refrain sequence, the track concludes with a Larsen effect generated by the Fender Esquire—Barrett having delivered some very good work on the guitar, it should be pointed out. This is what the songwriter said to the Melody Maker of December 9, 1967: “It’s unlike anything we’ve done before. It’s a new sound. Got a lot of guitar in it. It’s a happy song, and it’s got a touch of Christmas.”25 It is regrettable that this very good number was recorded under pressure. A stereo mix made on November 14, 1967, does more justice to it.
A film clip for “Apples and Oranges,” in which Pink Floyd can be seen surrounded by crates of apples, was shot in Brussels on February 18 or 19, 1968. Syd Barrett is absent, and the lead vocal part is taken by Roger Waters, who is all smiles…
Paint Box
Rick Wright / 3:48
Musicians
Syd Barrett: acoustic guitar, rhythm and lead electric guitar, backing vocals (?)
Roger Waters: bass, backing vocals (?)
Rick Wright: vocals, keyboards, backing vocals (?)
Nick Mason: drums
Norman Smith: backing vocals
; Recorded
Abbey Road Studios, London: October 23 (?), 24 (?) and/or 26 (?), 1967 (Studio Two)
Technical Team
Producer: Norman Smith
Sound Engineer: Ken Scott
Assistant Sound Engineer: Jeff Jarrett (?)
Genesis
“Paint Box” was the first song Rick Wright wrote for the group as an individual effort. During an interview in December 1996, the keyboard player reveals that he doesn’t know why he named his song “Paint Box,” but is more precise about the circumstances in which it saw the light of day: “‘Paint Box’ and ‘Remember a Day’ were done soon after Sid [sic] left and we still hadn’t established the way the band was going to work,” he explains. “Sid, I am sad to say, was no longer capable of working so it came down to Roger, Dave and myself writing songs and I think it came later that we started writing songs together.”26 Clearly Rick’s memory is playing tricks on him, however, because “Paint Box” was recorded during one of the sessions devoted to the single “Apples and Oranges,” during which Syd was well and truly present and still recording with the group.