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70th out of 73 books
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The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (33⅓ #6)
Through a series of interviews with a wide range of people connected to Pink Floyd in their earliest days (including Nick Mason, Peter Jenner, Jenny Fabian, Storm Thorgerson, Duggie Fields and Peter Whitehead), John Cavanagh paints a vivid picture of how this remarkable debut album was created. He brings to life the stories behind each track, as well as Pink Floyd s ground...more
Paperback, 132 pages
Published
October 1st 2003
by Continuum
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My favorite of the 33 1/3 book series. The slant the author takes on this book is not the Syd Barrett acid tragedy, but rather a healthy look at what the psych scene in London was at the time.
Points the author made:
That Barrett was 100% in charge of the band and the music and not quite far gone yet.
Barrett was the only real hard-core acid head while the rest of the band were beer drinking mates.
Pink Floyd wanted to be pop stars while Syd didn't really care much for...more
Points the author made:
That Barrett was 100% in charge of the band and the music and not quite far gone yet.
Barrett was the only real hard-core acid head while the rest of the band were beer drinking mates.
Pink Floyd wanted to be pop stars while Syd didn't really care much for...more
The structure is a little chaotic - Cavanagh skips the formation of the band entirely and jumps straight to the recording of the album, interspersed freely with interesting anecdotes from the Swinging London scene at the time. I learned a lot about the intersection of the counter-culture and the British recording industry. I also gained a better, more even-handed understanding of Syd Barrett's talents. He wasn't an otherworldly genius, or just a crazy person who took lots of drugs. Those were ...more
This album is a lovely whirligig of English psychedelia of the Alice in Wonderland meets Pooh Bear and Tolkien on a croquet lawn in the 5th dimension variety. The English type of acid music was so different from the American. This was often because English people had not actually taken any acid but had just read descriptions of it and what acid music was supposed to be in the tabloid press. For instance, I Can See the Grass Grow by The Move, a great single from early 67 - sample lyric
...more
While not the hugest Pink Floyd fan, I found this book enjoyable in the manner that Cavanagh writes. He includes similar story lines as other writers in the series, but he manages not to go too far into detail, which keeps the book fresh.
I know very little about early Floyd, and this was a very good introduction. Enjoyable.
A little dry, but nice to read about Syd without all the breakdown stories.
Somewhat overstates the importance of The Pink Floyd debut album, but nicely fills in historical information.
This was a good read. Highly recommend it to anyone that loves Syd Barrett.
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