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Before Roger Waters made a career of writing songs about
the tragic decline of founding member Syd Barrett, Barrett
himself wrote material hinting at his fragile mental state.
No one knew it at the time but the massive ingestion of drugs
was destroying Syd Barrett’s mind. “Piper at the Gates of
Dawn” remains Barrett’s one masterpiece as lead Floyd. The
follow up album "Saucerful of Secrets” found David Gilmour,
Waters and Wright filling Barrett’s shoes. Barrett appeared
on the album but the songs were increasingly fragmented while
also being delightfully loopy. Barrett became one of the earliest
casualities in rock music of drug use (specifically LSD which
destroyed much of his ability to function for years). ***
40 years have passed since Pink Floyd released the band’s
debut album. It had a huge impact influencing both psychedelic
and prog rock for years. Artists as diverse as Robyn Hitchcock
to the Church have been influenced by Barrett’s whimsical
word play and unusual broken sounded melodies. To commemorate
the original release EMI have put out this deluxe edition
which features for the first time the stereo mix and the original
mono mix. In 1967 mono was IT. Stereo was believed to be a
passing fad and, as a result, many artists put little or no
time into mixing the stereo versions of their albums vs. hours
painstakingly adding detail to the mono mixes. As a result
we can say that the definitive version of “Piper” has finally
been released on CD. ***
I’m going to skip the critical assessment of the album
itself. Why? Because it has become an icon and it takes more
than a single column on an album to dissect an icon. I will
say that “Piper” remains both one of the band’s best underappreciated
albums (and when I say this I’m referring to “Dark Side of
the Moon” era Floyd fans as not appreciating it) but also
a bloated mess of creative and ambitious ideas that as often
as not coalesce creating a fascinating artifact of the 60’s.
I guess you could say its brilliant but in a fractured sort
of way. Produced by former Beatles engineer Norman Smith (who
also later had a hit single himself as “Hurricane” Smith),
“Piper” has all of the odd Technicolor flashes of brilliance
one would expect from an album that was released just after
the Summer of Love (which I prefer to call the Summer of Indulgence).
***
So we get both the stereo and mono mix on the album on
discs one and two. What about disc three? Are there any revelations
or new outtakes from the sessions? Not really. What we do
get however are a collection of singles that the band recorded
and released around the same time. The one exception to this
rule is the 6th take of “Interstellar Overdrive” which closes
out disc three. At some point all of these have been available
before (with the exception of the stereo mix for “Apples and
Oranges” and take 6 of “Interstellar Overdrive”. Although
the original master tape for the French EP edit exists and
is available for some reason we get a needle drop recording
transferred to CD (meaning that a vintage vinyl release was
recorded then transferred to CD). Many of these tracks are
making their CD debut for the first time or, at the very least,
the first time in a long while (some of these were available
on the extra disc included in the “Shine On” Pink Floyd box
set). While it’s nice to have this edited version (which has
been circulating as a bootleg for years) as well as the mono
and stereo mixes on disc three of key early singles by the
band, it seems a bit excessive to charge this price for this
package given the relative lack of real rarities. ***
What about the sound? Well this remaster was supervised
by long time Floyd mastering engineer James Guthrie and sounds
really good. Is it a huge improvement over the 1994 CD mastered
by Doug Sax? No. It’s slightly louder but not to the point
where the dynamics are ruined. Overall Guthrie does a terrific
job with the latest version of the album. Clearly care was
taken to make sure that this didn’t have the compressed chirpy
sound of an mp3 or iTunes track. Kudos to EMI and the Floyd
for resisting the temptation to compress the heck out of the
remaster and NOT squeeze all of the life out of the dynamic
range they’ve done a really fine job with this release. If
you are happy with the single disc stereo release from 1994
and can do without the rarities and singles on disc three
(some of which are available elsewhere in the Floyd catalog),
this isn’t essential. ***
I should also mention that this is available in a two
disc set that features ONLY the stereo and mono versions of
the album (forcing fans to buy the stereo version yet again
for the mono when it would have been much nicer to do a limited
edition mono release AND the third disc included here). ***
To make up for the price EMI has packaged this in a book
with a terrific booklet. We get some terrific looking vintage
photos, the original lyrics for the album and a booklet of
Barrett’s drawings. You’ll notice a page is blank that was
done intentionally and the page (which includes some obscenities
scrawled by Barrett) is supposed to be posted on the Floyd
website (when I last checked however it was not on the official
website). The packaging is terrific and I believe that the
mono version of “Piper” needed to be released. I just wish
that we also could have gotten a DVD of vintage video performances
(few that there are) of the Barrett era Floyd included and,
perhaps, a biography of Barrett featuring interviews with
his former band mates and friends.
Final Words: Nicely packaged with extremely good sound,
this is the only place to find the mono release unless you
have the money to buy a vintage mono vinyl version of the
album. The package design is quite nice although I should
note that my “booklet” came undone quite easily. While it
looks nice a bit more care should have been put into the quality
of the packaging itself. ***
Do you need this? Not unless you absolutely MUST have
the mono version as well as the paltry collection of rarities
on disc three. However, if you have never purchased this on
CD and are a fan of Barrett’s or Pink Floyd, I’d urge you
to pick this up just keep in mind it sounds significantly
different than the Floyd that gets all the airplay on radio.
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