They say legendry lysergic prophet Timothy Leary used to dose the drinks at parties with LSD, but it might not have been necessary. By the tail end of the 1960s, something was already in the air (and water) marking a radical cultural shift; recreational drugs were just one part of the anti-establishment equation. By 1967, year of the Summer of Love, the counterculture made a valiant bid to supplant the dominant culture, and in retrospect a strong case can be made that the counter-culture won.
At the forefront of this battle, in Britain, were acts like Pink Floyd, fixtures of the nascent underground psychedelic scene. Granted, they were fixtures of the infamous UFO Club and the toast of no less than Paul McCartney (allegedly a recent convert to the powers of psychotropic drugs), but the band never claimed to be spokespersons for the revolution. They weren't leaders but fellow travelers-- at least until their epochal debut, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
Piper was recorded at Abbey Road at the same time the Beatles were there recording Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, but the results couldn't have been more at odds with one another. Where the Beatles exerted complete control over the tools of the studio, Pink Floyd used the studio to lose control. It didn't hurt that the band's primary songwriter and visionary Syd Barrett was on the verge of permanently losing control himself. Less than a year after the release of Piper, in 1967, Barrett was out of the band, one of the most prominent and tragic casualties of the rock era. Of course, while Barrett lived out the remainder of his life as one of the psychedelic age's walking wounded, Pink Floyd went on to much bigger (if not necessarily) better things. Their catalog remains an AOR goldmine, the gift that keeps on giving for the band's principals, who, all said and done, released relatively few records during their heyday, but who have benefited a thousand fold from their efforts.
The 40th anniversary edition of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn-- overseen by producer James Guthrie, who engineered and co-produced The Wall and who first cleaned up Piper for its 1994 reissue-- is now available as either a 2xCD or 3xCD set, but don't get your hopes up for a bounty of rarities or other goodies. The former includes both the stereo version of the album as well as the mono version (which many Floyd fanatics find superior). The 3xCD edition includes an extra disc covering the group's classic 1967 singles "Arnold Layne" and "Apples and Oranges", their respective B-sides "Candy and a Currant Bun" and "Paintbox", an alternate take of "Matilda Mother", two alternate versions of "Interstellar Overdrive", and a stereo version of "Apples and Oranges". Only "Matilda Mother" and one take on "Interstellar Overdrive" are previously unreleased.
A special edition of Piper was inevitable, but so was the failure of any reissue as incomprehensive as this one: This new edition underscores the reality that EMI and/or the surviving members of Pink Floyd-- especially since they shifted from band to de facto corporation-- have been either downright stingy with their unreleased archives or hopelessly coy about what may lie in there, leaving fans to settle for second-hand scraps like those on A Treeful of Secrets, a 17xCD fan-made rarities compilation. From a fan's perspective, Pink Floyd, Inc. has been either indifferent at best (or hostile at worst) to the notion of managing its legacy-- especially its formative years-- and has only reluctantly taken up caretaking duties as part and parcel of cordoning it off.
Few would criticize the merits of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn itself (as reflected in the rating above)-- it's an essential album. While so many other products of the Summer of Love were positive and unifying, Piper was fractured and scary. Songs like "Astronomy Domine" and "Interstellar Overdrive" captured the sustained improvisational freakouts of the band's live shows, but did so in more concise form. Other songs, like "Lucifer Sam," "Bike", and "The Gnome", split the difference between quirky pop songs and explorations of the nightmarish found-sound fringe, setting a twisted template for countless acts to come. By 1980's The Wall, Pink Floyd had become sterile and solipsistic. At this auspicious start, Pink Floyd were thrilling. Anything was possible.
Those aforementioned singles, "Arnold Layne" (produced by early Floyd booster Joe Boyd) and "See Emily Play", probably remain the best distillations of early Pink Floyd, and in particular the pop genius of Syd Barrett. They set the stage not only for the more sustained vision of Piper, but also Barrett's all-too-brief subsequent solo output, before he receded into the background. In fact, it's the presence of Barrett (who wrote all but one song on Piper) that accounts for the album's influence as more than just a psychedelic relic. As a lyricist, his stream-of-conscious nonsense verses are every bit the match of Lewis Carroll. As a vocalist, often singing with keyboardist Rick Wright, his languid delivery lends the album a dreamy quality at odds with its menace. You can catch glimpses of Barrett's subconscious in a 12-page reproduction of one of his notebooks, hanging as bait for ardent fans to shell out for the deluxe 3xCD version (selling for around $40), but at least the tactile document is something you can't get anywhere else.
That's not the case for the rest of this anniversary set. Even taking into account the remastering, the long-available stereo edition of Piper can now be discounted as little more than a novelty. Yet you can only buy the mono version on its own through iTunes. Double-dipping is one thing; compelling fans to double-dip is another, and the unavailability of the mono version as a stand-alone CD purchase is the kind of move that all but goads downloaders to do exactly what their gut tells them to do. Maybe Pink Floyd can't be bothered to troll through the BBC archives for live material, footage or lost tapes, or bake old masters to their sonic satisfaction, but certainly they can hire someone to do it for them. The appetite is there, which makes such a banal celebration of this psychedelic masterwork so disappointing.
