The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

Pink Floyd's first album was originally released on August 5, 1967 under the label Tower Records in the US, and under Columbia Records in the UK. Total playing time: 34:22. The Album was Re-Released on July 7, 1987 under the label EMI Records with three additional tracks, Astronomy Domine, Flaming, and Bike. These tracks are not new compositions. Bike was originally on the 1971 album Relics, and all three appear together on the 1973 album, A Nice Pair. The song See Emily Play was removed from the re-released version. Total playing time: 41:58.

This Pink Floyd album was unique in its style and composition, because Syd Barrett, not Roger Waters, did most of the composing. This is not the case on later albums, where Waters did most of the composing. The Album contained the band's first hit single, See Emily Play, rising to number six on the UK charts. Another notable track on the album is Interstellar Overdrive, a well composed, almost ten minute long instrumental.

Track listing for the 1967 release:

1. See Emily Play (Barrett)
2. Pow R. Toc H. (instrumental) (Barrett/Waters/Wright/Mason)
3. Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk (waters)
4. Lucifer Sam(Barrett)
5. Matilda Mother (Barrett)
6. The Scarecrow (Barrett)
7. The Gnome (Barrett)
8. Chapter 24 (Barrett)
9. Interstellar Overdrive (instrumental) (Barrett/Waters/Wright/Mason)

Track listing for the 1987 release:

1. Astronomy Domine (Barrett)
2. Lucifer Sam (Barrett)
3. Matilda Mother (Barrett)
4. Flaming (Barrett)
5. Pow R. Toc H. (instrumental) (Barrett/Waters/Wright/Mason)
6. Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk (Waters)
7. Interstellar Overdrive (instrumental) (Barrett/Waters/Wright/Mason)
8. The Gnome (Barrett)
9. Chapter 24 (Barrett)
10. The Scarecrow (Barrett)
11. Bike (Barrett)

Chapter 7 in Kenneth Grahame’s children’s classic, The Wind in the Willows, in which Mole and Rat conduct a moonlit search on the river for Otter’s missing son, Portly. In a book of fanciful characters and idyllic countryside ramblings, this episode has a different feel to it—a midsummer night’s magic and mystery, as contrasted with bright, sunshine-filled summer days and cozy, firelit winter evenings.

In midmost of the stream, embraced in the weir’s shimmering arm-spread, a small island lay anchored, fringed close with willow and silver birch and alder. Reserved, shy, but full of significance, it hid whatever it might hold behind a veil, keeping it till the hour should come, and, with the hour, those who were called and chosen.

Slowly, but with no doubt or hesitation whatever, and in something of a solemn expectancy, the two animals passed through the broken, tumultuous water and moored their boat at the flowery margin of the island. In silence they landed, and pushed through the blossom and scented herbage and undergrowth that led up to the level ground, till they stood on a little lawn of a marvelous green, set round with Nature’s own orchard-trees—crab-apple, wild cherry, and sloe.

‘This is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me,’ whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. ‘Here, in this holy place, here if anywhere, surely we will find Him!’¹

They find the baby otter curled asleep at the feet of Pan, the Friend and Helper, whose piped melodies had guided them to the island.

Rowing towards home with little Portly, Pan already fading from their memories, Rat hears the music of the demigod once again, and recites it for Mole:

Lest the awe should dwell And turn your frolic to fret You shall look on my power at the helping hour But then you shall forget ! Lest limbs be reddened and rent I spring the trap that is set As I loose the snare you may glimpse me there For surely you shall forget ! Helper and healer, I cheer Small waifs in the woodland wet Strays I find in it, wounds I bind in it Bidding them all forget ! ²

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Grahame, Kenneth, The Wind in the Willows ¹ page 123. ² page 129.