The Barrett Era: Piper at the Gates of Dawn
Pink Floyd formed in London in 1965, the brainchild of architecture students Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright, joined by the charismatic art student Syd Barrett, who became the band's guitarist, vocalist, and primary songwriter. Barrett named the group after two obscure American bluesmen -- Pink Anderson and Floyd Council -- and quickly established himself as the creative engine.
Barrett's first LSD trip came in 1965, in the garden of his friend Dave Gale, with Storm Thorgerson (who would later design some of the most iconic album covers in rock history) present. The experience profoundly altered his songwriting. His compositions for the band's debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (August 1967), recorded at Abbey Road Studios simultaneously with the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's sessions one floor above, are shot through with childlike wonder, English whimsy, and hallucinatory imagery. "Astronomy Domine" opens with a distorted voice reading planet names over sheets of reverb-drenched guitar; "Interstellar Overdrive" is a ten-minute free-form improvisation that sounds like a spacecraft disintegrating; "Bike" offers a surreal inventory of possessions over a music-box melody.
The Piper at the Gates of Dawn reached number six on the UK Albums Chart. Pink Floyd became fixtures of London's underground scene, headlining residencies at the UFO Club on Tottenham Court Road, where their performances -- augmented by primitive but hypnotic liquid light shows -- drew the capital's bohemian elite.
