Also please note that this blog post has been taken down twice by the service provider under threat of copyright infringement. So if the links don't work, that is why.
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In this age, when any well-known artist's every last demo and throw-away has been dredged up for completist fans to pore over, it remains astonishing to me that there was never an official release of Syd Barrett's last recordings as the leader of Pink Floyd.
It worked - on that first album at least - because the band believed in Syd and encouraged producer Norman Smith to deliver on Syd's Edward Lear-on-acid vision. Meanwhile, The Beatles were in the studio next door recording their own psychedelic masterpiece, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
After the success of See Emily Play in 1967, the Floyd's management put pressure on Syd, as the principal songwriter, to come up with more hit singles. But Syd's perspective had been warped by his acid intake, and his idea of what would make a good single was a little challenging.
Spiced with generous helpings of LSD, he wrote Vegetable Man. Was her referring to himself? Or was he just taking the piss and rebelling against the expected norms of pop music?
In yellow shoes I get the blues
Though I walk the streets with my plastic feet
With my blue velvet trousers, make me feel pink
There's a kind of stink about blue velvet trousers
In my paisley shirt I look a jerk
And my turquoise waistcoat is quite out of sight
But oh oh my haircut looks so bad
Vegetable man where are you?
So I've changed my dear, and I find my knees,
And I covered them up with the latest cut,
And my pants and socks all point in a box,
They don't make long of my nylon socks,
The watch, black watch
My watch with a black face
And a big pin, a little hole,
And all the lot is what I got,
It's what I wear, it's what you see,
It must be me, it's what I am,
Vegetable man
Syd's increasingly erratic LSD-fuelled behaviour became intolerable for the rest of group and ultimately led to his exclusion. Joe Boyd, who produced their first single, Arnold Layne, told how Syd passed him on the way into the UFO club one night, with eyes like impenetrable pools of blackness, a sign of just how far gone he was.
You can see the difference in his appearance in the second part of this See Emily Play clip (3 minutes in) where they are playing Apples and Oranges on the Dick Clark Show in the US. So the story goes, he refused to move his mouth when they were taping one TV show on the US tour.
The writing was on the wall for the end of Syd's tenure, when EMI declined to release Vegetable Man or Scream Thy Last Scream as a single. It must have been clear to the band they could not carry on as they were.
They claim they didn't actually fire Syd and that bringing in Dave Gilmour wasn't an attempt to force him out. But after yet another night when he was
unable or unwilling to perform, they just decided not to pick him up on the way to the next gig, and that was the end of it.
And they moved on. It's understandable that the other members of Pink Floyd did not want to see these songs released. They are a document of one very talented man's descent into madness - as Gilmour said "never to return".
On the other hand, if it's acceptable to dredge up those last desperate recordings of Nick Drake, to reveal the dark despair of a song like Black-Eyed Dog, then I think it's equally valid for the world to hear Syd's last recordings with the Floyd, tracks that reveal not just his mental state, but the culmination of a musical journey.
For me anyway, there was an artistic statement being made here by Syd, however perverse. The band must have been in on it too, because both these tracks are essentially finished items. Acetates were made ready for the single's release. They also recorded a version of Vegetable Man for a BBC session in December 1967.
Reviewing Pink Floyd at the V&A: Their Mortal Remains
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In this age, when any well-known artist's every last demo and throw-away has been dredged up for completist fans to pore over, it remains astonishing to me that there was never an official release of Syd Barrett's last recordings as the leader of Pink Floyd.
After all this time, why not let those fans who might be interested have a listen?
Vegetable Man and Scream Thy Last Scream were both readied for release in 1967, but were rejected
by the record company for being too strange and uncommercial.
As anyone who has heard them will probably agree, they are indeed raw and somewhat unhinged, but so is 'I Am The Walrus' and that didn't do too badly. Syd's final songs for the Floyd are, regardless of their commercial appeal, an important part of the band's history, illustrating Syd’s state of mind as his excessive LSD intake tipped him over the edge.
The songs could only have been written by Barrett. Like his earlier material on The Piper At The Gates of Dawn, they reflect a peculiar attitude to the craft of songwriting. Even without the drugs, his songs were oddly formed, combining nursery rhyme lyrics, the 'psychedelic' sounds of the time and added bars where the lyrics didn't scan properly.
As anyone who has heard them will probably agree, they are indeed raw and somewhat unhinged, but so is 'I Am The Walrus' and that didn't do too badly. Syd's final songs for the Floyd are, regardless of their commercial appeal, an important part of the band's history, illustrating Syd’s state of mind as his excessive LSD intake tipped him over the edge.
The songs could only have been written by Barrett. Like his earlier material on The Piper At The Gates of Dawn, they reflect a peculiar attitude to the craft of songwriting. Even without the drugs, his songs were oddly formed, combining nursery rhyme lyrics, the 'psychedelic' sounds of the time and added bars where the lyrics didn't scan properly.
It worked - on that first album at least - because the band believed in Syd and encouraged producer Norman Smith to deliver on Syd's Edward Lear-on-acid vision. Meanwhile, The Beatles were in the studio next door recording their own psychedelic masterpiece, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
After the success of See Emily Play in 1967, the Floyd's management put pressure on Syd, as the principal songwriter, to come up with more hit singles. But Syd's perspective had been warped by his acid intake, and his idea of what would make a good single was a little challenging.
Spiced with generous helpings of LSD, he wrote Vegetable Man. Was her referring to himself? Or was he just taking the piss and rebelling against the expected norms of pop music?
In yellow shoes I get the blues
Though I walk the streets with my plastic feet
With my blue velvet trousers, make me feel pink
There's a kind of stink about blue velvet trousers
In my paisley shirt I look a jerk
And my turquoise waistcoat is quite out of sight
But oh oh my haircut looks so bad
Vegetable man where are you?
So I've changed my dear, and I find my knees,
And I covered them up with the latest cut,
And my pants and socks all point in a box,
They don't make long of my nylon socks,
The watch, black watch
My watch with a black face
And a big pin, a little hole,
And all the lot is what I got,
It's what I wear, it's what you see,
It must be me, it's what I am,
Vegetable man
You can see the difference in his appearance in the second part of this See Emily Play clip (3 minutes in) where they are playing Apples and Oranges on the Dick Clark Show in the US. So the story goes, he refused to move his mouth when they were taping one TV show on the US tour.
The writing was on the wall for the end of Syd's tenure, when EMI declined to release Vegetable Man or Scream Thy Last Scream as a single. It must have been clear to the band they could not carry on as they were.
 |
| Syd and the Floyd with Hendrix and The Move |
And they moved on. It's understandable that the other members of Pink Floyd did not want to see these songs released. They are a document of one very talented man's descent into madness - as Gilmour said "never to return".
On the other hand, if it's acceptable to dredge up those last desperate recordings of Nick Drake, to reveal the dark despair of a song like Black-Eyed Dog, then I think it's equally valid for the world to hear Syd's last recordings with the Floyd, tracks that reveal not just his mental state, but the culmination of a musical journey.
For me anyway, there was an artistic statement being made here by Syd, however perverse. The band must have been in on it too, because both these tracks are essentially finished items. Acetates were made ready for the single's release. They also recorded a version of Vegetable Man for a BBC session in December 1967.
 |
| Syd post-Floyd, couldn't sustain his musical talent |
There's no mistaking the psychotic whimsy at work here - it's the work of someone on the edge of madness; completely uncommercial and obviously for those close to Syd, too raw to be released, ever.
That's the strangest thing, though, for me. After all this time, when compilation after compilation was released, at great expense for the completists, the release of these tracks was never considered.
Really, no history of Pink Floyd could ever be complete until Vegetable Man and Scream Thy Last Scream take their rightful place in the collected works.
Psychedelic Light Show at UFO, 1967 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwly9QdzOSY&feature=emb_logo
Also On This Blog:
Pink Floyd On Tour - 1974 and 1977
