It’s always difficult to get any musical idea from the rehearsal room to the stage. For all of the artists who claim to sound heavenly whenever they get together to jam, the greatest test is exposing their music to the rest of the world and seeing how they react. Pink Floyd may have been able to get their foot in the door during the 1960s psychedelic movement. But Nick Mason did not think their live act was particularly impressive when they first started.
However, comparing the Pink Floyd of 1967 to the Pink Floyd that most people are familiar with is a disjointed comparison. The band may have started with core members Roger Waters and Nick Mason already on board. But Syd Barrett was the real driving force behind the band. He was constantly trying to push the envelope with his fanciful pieces of psychedelic rock.
Songs like ‘See Emily Play’ appear to be opposed to the band that would one day create the song ‘Money‘. But Barrett’s songwriting was enough to gain the band a significant following in England. They were recording The Piper at the Gates of Dawn in Abbey Road Studios while The Beatles were working on Sgt Pepper. If you thought it sounded strange on record, just wait until you see it live.
Being one of the first major advocates of spectacles at shows, the band made every concert in the London club scene feel like they had plucked it straight from an acid trip. From the various lights going off all over the place to the different improvisational pieces of the set, no one was going to see the same show twice from the band. It was especially once Barrett’s mental state started deteriorating.
Aside from their main setlist, the band had a few experimental moments on stage. They admitted that it was interesting to see what they could do with their instruments when they got on stage. But Mason believed that no one else was having much fun.
Mason recalled in Saucerful of Secrets that the audience had to sit through more experimenting than they usually bargained for. He said, “In the very early days of Pink Floyd, we prepared to go on the basis that we were being great eighty percent of the time rather than twenty percent.” But they played a hell of a lot of rubbish to get a few good ideas out.”
Barrett’s breakdown was triggered by the same type of experimentation, as he became increasingly lost in his head over time. After replacing their frontman with David Gilmour, the band’s later output veered in different directions. They focused on sounds that reflected their emotional state following the loss of their old mate.
However, as they continued to play larger venues, the excitement of their live shows remained. It was from the grandiose sets that went into the tour for The Wall to bringing a huge inflatable pig to fly above the audience during the Animals tour. Every member of Pink Floyd has never shown animation when they went onstage. But those years of rubbish led to them letting the music do the talking more often than not.
