Today (March 6) is the birthday of legendary Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour. Gilmour replaced founding member Syd Barrett on guitar after Barrett left the band due to mental illness exacerbated by excessive psychedelic drug use.
The band went on to become one of the most phenomenally successful groups in history, selling over 250 million albums world wide.
Though Gilmour is mum when it comes to the band’s personal drug usage, the music of Pink Floyd remains heavily drenched in psychedelic overtones.
In celebration of David GIlmour’s birthday, we present to you the 10 most psychedelic Pink Floyd songs.
Let’s start with the first track off of Pink Floyd’s 1967 debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
Written and composed by Syd
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A personal favorite of mine, Remember A Day evokes imagery like a sonic painting, rendered by the likes of someone such as Salvador Dali.
Bike is a Syd Barrett masterpiece which appears on The Piper At the Gates of Dawn (1967).
Ostensibly written for Syd’s then girlfriend “Jenny Spires,” we take a quixotic notion that the song references, if not deliberately, then synchronistically, the first self administered dose of LSD.
In 1943, inventor of LSD Albert Hoffman intentionally ingested 250 micrograms of LSD to determine its effects. He subsequently took a bicycle ride during which he succumbed to the drugs effects causing him to feel anxiety, a sense of going insane, and the belief that his neighbor was a malevolent witch.
The events of this first LSD trip have come to be known as “Bicycle Day.”
Like the black monolith discovered on the moon in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the album Dark Side of the Moon (1973) stands as a monolith to all of psychedelic rock. The record is one big acid trip from start to finish, but we will choose one song, The Great Gig in the Sky, as representative.
This particular version did not appear on the record and features recordings of NASA astronauts communicating during space missions, sans Clarry Tory’s excellent
LSD has many effects on the body moreover the mind for example “An hour later Stanley thought he had gone insane. His head was filled with terrifying visions and his body seemed to tumble through time and space. Then his mind snapped and sent him into a frenzy of rage. According to Linda Hunt, "They told me the next day that I broke down the door and ran down the hall screaming," Stanley
Into the 2nd half of the decade came the arrival of The Rolling Stones and The Who. These continued along the Blues Rock path pioneered by Cream and Zeppelin, and both had great success. It was these acts that led to the nickname, ‘the swinging 60’s’. 1966 saw the beginning of psychedelic music. It was The Beatles who first began to experiment like this. Adding new
When you’re young, there’s little that surpasses the love of a boy and his bike. From the first time experiencing the freedom of pedal-powered independence to exploring the mysteries of your neighborhood, there’s nothing else like it. It’s pure, unadulterated freedom of exploration — a feeling that Jimmy Hallyburton has managed to carry with him since the first time his sneaker hit pedal.
The first amazing that I will discuss is the fact that he can write songs. General audiences do not realize how difficult it is to write songs. You must first come up with a part. After that extenuating process you have to make other parts that match the original part. Dave has such amazing talent that he writes most of the parts to his songs. The first album of his newest band(Foo Fighters) was all written,
For thousands of years, music has been influencing people in extraordinary ways. The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band should not be mistaken as an ordinary album. Without a doubt, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, an incredibly innovative album, stands as the most influential album of all time; it stands as a true masterpiece. People all around, especially artists, were influenced greatly by the innovations the album brought to the world of music. Many people have said that from the moment they heard the first track of the album, it was life changing. Like the first falling domino tile of a domino show, June 1, 1967, would mark the start of the influence of many generations of music to come. The album helped popularize concept albums, in which songs are connected to a theme, which would inspire many musicians to do the same. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was a psychedelic rock album; a manifestation of life in the 1960’s. This genre of rock is home to the work of numerous artists who were influenced by the album’s use of this style of rock. The hours of work put into by the Beatles to create this album surpassed those of any of their albums. Not only that, it altered the way music was recorded by creating their own recording techniques. Surely, these recording techniques and tactics were used by future artists in their work which then led to the creation of legendary music. Sgt. Pepper’s opened the gate to innovation; an album whose impact on
In 1967, The Beatles released and the album that would change the way people looked at them as a band and as music as a whole. ‘ 'Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band ' ' was The Beatles eighth studio album and took them 5 months to complete. At the time of the release, hippie culture was prevailing and this year is widely remembered as the summer of love. Long hair, recreational drug use, and psychedelic rock music come to mind when quizzed on stereotypes of the decade, but was it all flowers and peace – or did the ‘Summer of Love ' have a dark side? The group battled with inquisitions about their usage of the drug LSD, which seemed
In 1967 the Beatles were in Abbey Road Studios putting the finishing touches on their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. At one point Paul McCartney wandered down the corridor and heard what was then a new young band called Pink Floyd working on their hypnotic debut, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. He listened for a moment, then came rushing back. "Hey guys," he reputedly said, "There's a new band in there and they're gonna steal our thunder." With their mix of blues, music hall influences, Lewis Carroll references, and dissonant experimentation, Pink Floyd was one of the key bands of the 1960s psychedelic revolution, a pop culture movement that emerged with American and British rock,
In the sixties, the psychedelic music scene was at its prime and the world was full of hippie musicians that loved to drop acid and create some of the most interesting and innovative music known to man. During this time, drugs were a very popular part of the hippie culture and the prevalence of LSD helped to create the distinct genre of psychedelic music known as psychedelic or acid rock. Many bands and artists such as Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, The Beatles, and The Byrds were heavily influenced by LSD, which led to the creation of some very popular music. This decade was full of adventure, music, sex, and drugs, and it was all made possible due to this powerfully trippy drug.
Merry Pranksters were famous for using LSD and they used higher doses of LSD because they felt that they were in touch with the nature spiritually and it also gave them sensations that they never felt before. In reality, LSD is a
Abbey Road is heralded as one of the greatest rock ‘n roll albums ever. It grinds with hard rock and sways with soft guitar. The variety of the tracks provides something for everyone. It was created in 1969 at the famous Abbey Road studios. George Martin and Geoff Emerick, who had produced many other Beatles’ albums, contributed to this work. This album is one of the more famous albums of the Beatles, who are one of the most popular bands ever. Almost every piece of this album, even the cover, is art works in themselves.
Psychedelics, and drugs in general became such an important part of life during the 60’s that it’s influence was inescapable. Nowhere can this fact be seen more clearly than in the music of the time. The most obvious influence drugs had on music can bee seen in the lyrics. Drug references abound, be it Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” of marijuana smoke, or the Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, obviously referring to LSD. Even the names of the bands were drug inspired, as Garofalo points out in reference to the Doors: “The group took it’s name from Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, a book about the liberating aspects of drug use.” Even the music itself was influenced by drugs. Take for example much of the music by the Doors. Their song “the End” is a psychedelic journey in to the world of LSD. The slow beat and “trippy” music in the song was probably created with the use of drugs and hence is better appreciated when heard while on drugs. This is also true of the music of the Grateful Dead, although this can be much more clearly seen in their live performances as opposed to their studio work. Much of their music is geared specifically toward those in the audience who are on drugs. Hearing one of their 30 minute jams is a much different experience on drugs, and that is the experience that they intended the audience to have. While drugs were very much connected to the music of the sixties,
Throughout the 1960’s there were many fads and trends, but one of the most creative ones was the idea of psychedelic art. The word “psychedelic” comes from the Greek words “psyche” and “delos”, which means “mind manifesting” or “soul manifesting.” (network9.biz) And according to the author Ken Johnson,
The album The Dark Side of the Moon, by Pink Floyd was an album that pushed the boundaries on multi-tracking and tape looping, as well as mixing in1973. The engineer, Alan Parsons, use many unusual techniques to help create the sound that we know and love. Which landed the album on the charts for 750 weeks. Dark side of the moon was first lead engineering job Alan had with Pink Floyd and only took a year to record.
Music in the 1960’s took a major turn. Psychedelic drugs began to influence bands and songwriters, resulting in a wide variety of new genres. Some of the popular bands included Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, and the Beatles. In 1969, the small town of Woodstock in upstate New York hosted a three day event known throughout the world as The Woodstock Festival: An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace and Music. Thirty two artists performed in front of an audience of 500,000 people. This event was highly influential and considered by many as one of the greatest moments in music history. Throughout three days, the bands listed above, and more played and young hippies gathered, listening to the music, experiencing sexual and drug influenced days.
From the sounds of Elvis many other important bands of the sixties were inspired, even people a thousand miles away from America. One of these important bands was the Beatles. The Beatles took the rock sound and added more lyrical and musical complexity to the sound. The Beatles were the starters of the “British Invasion” in 1963 when they released “I want to Hold Your Hand” (Kallen, 2012, 31). After their first single they had immense success with other hits such as “She Loves You” and “Woooo!” The Beatles continued to reinvent their music on the various other albums throughout the sixties delving into complex, heavy existential concepts and psychedelic elements, becoming the most relevant influence for modern rock.