“Paint Box” tells a strange story. The narrator is remembering the previous evening, which he spent in a club drinking a lot of alcohol with his friends. When waking up the following morning, he has the strange impression of remembering this scene before. Stranger still: I open the door to an empty room/Then I forget, sings Wright in a melancholy voice. A peculiar sensation, therefore, to which the music does full justice. This is a three-minute journey to the heart of psychedelia. A song, moreover, that testifies to Rick Wright’s melodic sense and vocal ability.
Production
This first song to be written by Rick Wright already contains the seeds of the future, post-Barrett, Pink Floyd sound: his characteristic gentle voice, the minor ninth chord of which he was so fond, and the immediately identifiable rhythmic breaks. In many ways, it is also possible to make out an atmosphere that would culminate in the excellent “Summer ’68” from the 1970 album Atom Heart Mother. For the time being, “Paint Box” seems a little awkward, at times complicated in its construction, and not always as rigorous as it could be in terms of timing. Nevertheless, it is not without a certain charm, and the future of the reborn Floyd can be discerned between the lines. The recording dates have not been securely established. Without having been able to confirm it, due to patchy documentation, David Parker, who has had access to the Abbey Road archives, believes the sessions to have taken place on October 23, 24, and 26, 1967 (see his very good book Random Precision10). The impression is given that the track was the result of some pretty intensive studio work, the structure being relatively complex. It is Syd Barrett who launches the intro, on both acoustic guitar (Harmony Sovereign H1260?) and overdubbed electric rhythm. Roger Waters accompanies him on his Rickenbacker 4001S with a very present bass lick, and Nick Mason comes in on his Premier kit with characteristic breaks of the kind he would become renowned for. He works his toms, drawing from them a sound that calls to mind timbales. Rick is on acoustic piano and launches into the first verse with a quality of voice he would immortalize alongside that of David Gilmour on “Echoes” (on the 1971 album Meddle), one of Pink Floyd’s masterpieces. At the beginning of each refrain (from 1:08 and 2:32), Rick makes a concession to Syd’s writing style with a sequence of descending semitones. Syd himself delivers some very interesting guitar work, on both electric and acoustic. The song ends with a coda on which Rick can be heard playing a honky-tonk piano, or more likely a piano recorded slowly and then played back at normal speed in order to produce the distinctive sound already used on “See Emily Play,” the group’s previous single. It is interesting to note that on the version included on the compilation Relics, released in 1971, this coda has been reduced in length, bringing the overall duration down from 3:48 to 3:33. A stereo version was mixed on November 14, 1967 (the one used on Relics). Finally, it is interesting to note that the backing vocals are provided not by a member of the group, but by the producer, as sound engineer Ken Scott describes: “For any Hurricane Smith fans, ‘Paint Box’ was probably his entry into singing on record, as he performed a very prominent backing vocal part.”27
IN YOUR HEADPHONES
At 1:35 a bad edit produces a strange waver in the timing.
A short promotional movie for “Paint Box” was shot in Brussels in February 1968.
A
SAUCERFUL
OF
SECRETS
ALBUM
A SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS
RELEASE DATE
United Kingdom: June 28 or 29, 1968 (depending on source)
Label: Columbia Records
RECORD NUMBERS: SX 6258 (mono)—SCX 6258 (stereo)
Let There Be More Light / Remember A Day / Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun / Corporal Clegg / A Saucerful Of Secrets / See-Saw / Jugband Blues / OUTTAKES Early Morning Henry / In the Beechwoods / Instrumental / John Latham / Reaction In G / Richard’s Rave Up / Scream Thy Last Scream / The Boppin’ Sound / Vegetable Man
A Saucerful of Secrets and the Invention of Progressive Rock
No sooner had their debut album hit the stores than Pink Floyd was being pressed by EMI to get a new LP out. On Monday, August 7, 1967, three days after the United Kingdom release of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the four members of the group found themselves back in the studio for the first session on their second album. Further recording sessions as a foursome would take place on August 8, 15, and 16, and then in October and November. It was during this period that the mental health of the group’s principal songwriter began to take a disturbing turn for the worse, having been steadily deteriorating since he moved into 101 Cromwell Road, South Kensington, with Lindsay Corner at the beginning of the year. It was in this “catastrophic flat,”5 described by Julian Palacios as a “nexus for underground (and illicit) activities,” where “painters, musicians, eccentrics, mystics and freaks mixed with film stars, pop icons and Chelsea aristocrats,”17 that Syd, in Nick Mason’s words, began to “unravel.”5
A First, Chaotic Tour
A European and United States tour was planned for the end of 1967, but in the meantime the group was forced to witness Syd’s increasingly erratic behavior on a daily basis without being able to do anything about it. After the cancelation of Pink Floyd’s involvement in the Windsor Jazz Festival (August 11–12, 1967) due to the songwriter’s health, the other members of the group tried to persuade Syd to consult a specialist. They made an appointment for him to see the eminent psychiatrist R. D. Laing, a great denigrator of institutional psychiatry and the author of The Divided Self. Roger Waters took Syd to North London, but the songwriter refused to get out of the car. “And I’m not sure that was necessarily a bad thing,” concedes the bassist. “Laing was a mad old cunt by then… actually ‘cunt’ is a bit strong. But he was drinking a lot.”30 The practitioner nevertheless ventured a pretty disturbing opinion, which must have given Nick Mason and the others food for thought, with his confirmation that “Yes, Syd might be disturbed, or even mad. But maybe it was the rest of us who were causing the problem, by pursuing our desire to succeed, and forcing Syd to go along with our ambitions…”5 Following this setback, the group alerted Barrett’s brother, who saw nothing abnormal in Syd’s behavior. They then contacted Sam Hutt, a “hip” physician well known in rock circles, who counted the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, and the Who among his patients. Syd jetted off with the other members of the group to Formentera, an island to the south of Ibiza, where he would spend two weeks on vacation in Hutt’s company. Unfortunately, at the end of this sunny interlude his mental health showed no sign of improvement, and the ensuing United States tour would only aggravate things.
It was therefore in the company of a guitarist-singer who was completely absorbed in his own inner world, incapable of communicating and, above all, totally unpredictable, that Roger Waters, Rick Wright, and Nick Mason left on tour in early September. Their itinerary took them to Scandinavia (September 9–13), Ireland (September 15–17), and finally, following a number of shows in England (September 19–October 28), the United States (November 4–11, a tour initially scheduled to start on October 23 but postponed due to the late arrival of work permits). “That was an amazing disaster,” explains Roger Waters, “Syd by this time was completely off his head.”3 Indeed Barrett was out of it to such an extent that he left his guitar behind before a concert in Los Angeles and remained mute when interviewed on The Pat Boone Show on November 6. “It was getting harder to work with Syd, because we couldn’t reach him,” explains Nick Mason. “He was getting more absent every time, in both senses of the word. He would forget to appear at the gigs. When we were at a radio broadcast he left the studio without warning. He wasn’t showing up at the rehearsals anymore. In a word, he wasn’t in the band.”3
The Fool on the Hill
How did Syd Barrett end up in this situation, having led Pink Floyd so brilliantly on the road to success and barely nine months after the band had signed with EMI? His fate was sealed after the “Christmas on Earth Continued” concert at Kensin
gton Olympia (Grand and National Halls) in London on December 22, 1967. Roger Waters, Rick Wright, and Nick Mason realized they had reached the point of no return and could no longer bury their heads in the sand. Syd had become totally uncontrollable and was holding back their career. What were the reasons for his mental deterioration? Drugs, certainly, as June Child, then the Floyd’s secretary, dispassionately explains: “Syd took a lot of acid. Lots of people can take some acid and cope with it in their lives, but if you take three or four trips a day, and you do that every day…”5 For his part, David Gilmour believes the condition of his childhood friend was more complicated than it seemed: “I don’t actually hold with that theory myself. I’ve said it before, but I always imagine that that would have happened anyway to him at some other point, and maybe the pressures of being a rock ’n’ roll star and things like acid and stuff I suppose act as catalysts. I think it’s more that he couldn’t handle success on that level than it has to do with drugs really. And to do with his past life, his father dying and all that stuff which happened shortly before he was 15 or 16.”28 It would eventually transpire that Syd was suffering from schizophrenia.
The Gilmour Solution
Back in Europe, and despite the difficulties, Pink Floyd accompanied Jimi Hendrix on his British tour (from November 14 to December 5), a gig fixed up for them by Bryan Morrison. This would be a way for them to sample the delights of the rock star life following their chaotic experience in the United States. The group also succeeded in releasing its third single, “Apples and Oranges”/“Paint Box,” on November 18, before resuming work on the new album. In order to see this through to a successful conclusion, three possible solutions suggested themselves to Waters, Wright, and Mason: keeping Barrett in the group but as a songwriter only (following the example of Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, who at this time was no longer performing live but was writing for the band and working with it in the studio); keeping him on as a musician but supported by a second guitarist; or, far more radically, asking him to leave. For the time being, they opted for the second of these solutions, not least because it avoided a clash that would inevitably be painful for all concerned. Who, then, to turn to? The name of Jeff Beck was touted, but the group’s choice quickly fell on David Gilmour, an old Cambridge friend—of Syd Barrett’s in particular.
Nick Mason was the first to approach him, probably on December 6 at their concert at the Royal College of Art in London. Gilmour had no great interest in the group’s music, but was seduced by Pink Floyd’s professional status and growing fame, and agreed in principle before confirming his acceptance toward Christmas. “And then just after Christmas, right after their Olympia gig [in London],” recalls Gilmour, “I actually got a phone call… where I was staying. I didn’t actually have a phone, or they didn’t know it, but they sent a message through someone else that they knew that knew me, for me to get in touch for taking the job, so to speak. There was no real discussion, or any meetings to think about it or any auditions or anything like that. They just said ‘Did I want to?’ and I said ‘Yes,’ and it was as simple as that.”3 In his book Pink Floyd: Pigs Might Fly, Mark Blake describes a jam being held in EMI’s Studio Two. From now on there would be five musicians in the lineup.
When he joined Pink Floyd at the end of 1967, David Gilmour was still a member of a band that called itself Bullitt and then Flowers (very “Summer of Love”!). In the company of David Altham (keyboards, sax), Rick Wills (bass), and Willie Wilson (drums), all former members of Jokers Wild, he had been on an extended tour of the European continent (Spain, France, and the Netherlands). Although he had had some fruitful encounters, notably with Jimi Hendrix, for whom he served as a tour guide in Paris for one night(!), the gigs were few and far between and were very poorly paid, and he returned to England suffering from malnutrition. He then got a job as a driver for the fashion designers Ossie Clark and Alice Pollock (creators of the “Swinging London” look) while thinking about forming a new band. A thrilling and unexpected adventure alongside Barrett, Waters, Wright, and Mason was thus about to begin for Gilmour. “Dave,” as he was known, took part in a number of concerts with them in January 1968: Aston University in Birmingham on the twelfth, the Winter Gardens Pavilion in Weston-super-Mare on the thirteenth, Lewes Town Hall on the nineteenth, the Pavilion Ballroom in Hastings on the twentieth, and Southampton University on the twenty-sixth.
The End of the Barrett Era
At the beginning of 1968, Syd Barrett was becoming increasingly uncontrollable and, it seems, less and less interested in Pink Floyd’s music. To all intents and purposes he was no longer a member of the group and would record with them no more. Having initially been enthusiastic about the plan, he came to view Gilmour as an intruder: “He was probably completely confused, and angry that his influence was being steadily eroded,” writes Nick Mason in his autobiography. “On stage, he put the minimum of effort into his performance, seemingly just going through the motions. This lack of contribution was probably his refusal to take part in the whole charade. As he withdrew further and further, this merely convinced us that we were making the right decision.”5
Finally, after four or five concerts, the group effectively agreed to get rid of him. When they were getting ready to leave for their January 26 concert in Southampton, the decision was taken to go without Syd, as David Gilmour would reveal to Alan di Perna in 1993: “Someone probably said, ‘Shall we go and pick up Syd?’ And Roger probably said [in conspirational tones], ‘Oh no, let’s not!’ And off we went down to Southampton.” 29
Peter Jenner and Andrew King then decided to look after Syd’s career, leaving Pink Floyd’s in the hands of Steve O’Rourke (via Bryan Morrison). They had tried to find a solution together, but when Syd suggested adding “[…] two girl saxophone players to the line-up”5 they called it a day…
In April, their association with Blackhill, the company set up by their two managers, came to an end, and Syd’s departure and David’s arrival were officially announced (Gilmour had signed a contract with EMI on March 18, 1968). Jeff Jarratt, the assistant sound engineer, was taken completely unawares: “[…] when I did hear about it… it was a total shock. And when I heard the Floyd would be doing their next recording with a different member of the band… I just couldn’t believe it!”10
Syd’s mental health did not improve, and although he went on to record two studio albums in 1970 (The Madcap Laughs and Barrett), he would gradually retire from public life, withdrawing to the suburbs of Cambridge, where he devoted himself to painting. Syd Barrett died on July 7, 2006, leaving in his wake many regrets and a small but extraordinary musical legacy…
In addition to citing his bandmate’s depressive and delirious episodes, Roger Waters has told in numerous interviews that Syd’s sense of humor was strongly influenced, like many British people of their generation, by The Goon Show. A good example is the Pat Boone fiasco, when Syd welcomed the presenter’s questions before each take, but remained stonily silent while the camera was turning. Another is when he was presenting a brand-new song to the group at the beginning of 1968. Everyone had gathered around him to learn the chords and structure of the number, which was called “Have You Got It Yet?” But each time he pronounced these words, he changed the song. His bandmates, unable to follow, had no clue what was going on. “I actually thought there was something rather brilliant about it,” recalls Roger Waters, “some clever kind of comedy. But eventually I said, ‘Oh, I’ve got it now,’ and put my guitar down and walked away.”30 And David Gilmour would confirm: “Some parts of his brain were perfectly intact—his sense of humour being one of them.”25
An Architectural Style of Music
A Saucerful of Secrets is therefore the last Pink Floyd album with Syd Barrett in the lineup, albeit singing lead vocal only on his own composition, “Jugband Blues.” As unpredictable and erratic as he had become, his removal from the group would give rise to some concerns on the part of the others. This is because it was Syd who had been responsib
le for the musical decision-making and most of the songwriting up to that point. Norman Smith also had doubts about the ability of the Floyd’s remaining members to replace him as a songwriter, nonetheless this second album is clearly when the baton changed hands. Roger Waters is credited with three of the seven numbers (“Let There Be More Light,” “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun,” and “Corporal Clegg”) and with Wright, Mason, and Gilmour would co-write the track from which the album takes its name (“A Saucerful of Secrets”), while Rick Wright composed “Remember a Day” and “See-Saw.” The musical difference is striking. “I’ve always thought their music sounded deeply architectural,” writes Barry Miles. “The change from the Syd Barrett period into the music of three architecture students was really quite dramatic… their architectural vision of music flowered into great cathedral constructions [eventually] taking up whole albums.”11 Barrett’s heroic fantasy atmosphere (the songwriter having presided over the recording of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn), has virtually disappeared on this album (other than in the lyrics of “Jugband Blues” perhaps), giving way to longer musical frescoes that are more structured (in particular compared to the group’s live appearances at the UFO Club) and more ambitious too, a musical style the critics would erroneously, but for the sake of convenience, hasten to label “space rock.” With Barrett, Pink Floyd had pushed back the frontiers of pop; with Gilmour, they would, so to speak, invent progressive rock.
Pink Floyd All the Songs Page 11