“Pleasantly surprised”: the album Richard Wright thought got better with age
For the remaining members of Pink Floyd and the fans who were alive to remember it, their formation in 1965 and the early recordings that followed seem like a lifetime ago. To be able to recall things exactly as they were from 60 years ago is a remarkable thing, but it isn’t necessarily something that the likes of Roger Waters and Nick Mason, the two remaining founders of the band, might wish to reflect upon too much.
The early years of Pink Floyd were dramatically different to how things ended up, and while the intense psychedelia that vocalist and songwriter Syd Barrett pushed for the group to pursue is still held in high regard by fans of the group, albums like The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and A Saucerful of Secrets feel miles away from where the group eventually landed on Animals and The Wall.
The constant push to improve and further their sound in different regards may well be why their earliest material was often forgotten about, and the fact that they lost a key member in Barrett meant that revisiting his material in a live capacity was much harder without his presence. However, you’d think that this trajectory from where they started to where they managed to reach by the mid-1970s is something that the band would be able to look back on with a sense of pride.
Still, some artists really dislike revisiting their old work, and the minute they’re finished with one project, it becomes time to focus on the future. This is another reason a band’s older material can often get buried beneath their newer releases, whether it deserves to or not. However, sometimes this ignorance can lead to bands neglecting some gems, and in the case of Pink Floyd, it means abandoning all thoughts of some of their finest work.
“I don’t think I’d played the album since its release.”
richard wright
There’s never a bad time for revisiting The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and its exploratory style is something that makes it ripe for repeated listens and discovering new elements every time. While Roger Waters was proud to admit that he hadn’t revisited the album in many years during a 2007 interview with Mojo that celebrated the record’s 40th anniversary, he said, “You’ll never get me to take this stuff seriously,” before adding that “we were just young guys getting together, wanting to be rich and get laid,” in a tone dismissive of the album’s merits.
However, keyboard player Richard Wright was far more complimentary about his recent listen to Piper in the anniversary interview. “I don’t think I’d played the album since its release,” he claimed, “And I was pleasantly surprised. Much better than how I remembered it.”
While Waters may have been dismissive about it in his typical fashion, Wright also noted that the process of making the record was one of “absolute excitement”.
While it’s difficult getting all members of Pink Floyd to see things in the same way, especially considering Waters’ taste for a moan, it ought to be agreed upon that The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, while still the sound of a band finding their feet, is just as valid of an entry into the band’s catalogue as any of their later albums.
