The Pink Floyd song Nick Mason described as “almost punk”
Pink Floyd adapted many guises throughout their career, relentlessly pioneering new sounds. However, one accusation which couldn’t be thrown at the band is they were punk, but drummer Nick Mason believes an early track by the band acted as a precursor to the genre and shared many similarities with the movement.
‘Vegetable Man’, the track in question, was recorded by Pink Floyd in 1967 at De Lane Lea Studios in London and never officially saw the light of day for another 50 years. Although bootlegged recordings of the track were passed around among their fanbase, the group never found a home for the song, which originated from the Syd Barrett era of the band.
Eventually, they finally shared an official version with ‘Vegetable Man’ when the previously unreleased track was listed on the box set The Early Years 1965–1972. The rough and ready recording is a two-and-a-half minute tour-de-force that contains elements of punk, despite it yet to exist when Pink Floyd made the song.
Notably, Pink Floyd enjoyed a hostile relationship with the punk scene, which wasn’t helped by Sex Pistols singer Johnny Rotten’s decision to wear an ‘I Hate Pink Floyd’ T-shirt on stage. However, behind closed doors, Rotten was secretly a fan of the band, and his decision to criticise them was nothing more than a publicity stunt.
Looking back on ‘Vegetable Man’ with Rolling Stone, Mason named the track as one of his favourites from Barrett. While analysing the song, he said: “A wonderful song. It sounds relatively simple, but it’s actually a bit more complicated and almost punk. It’s sort of four snare beats to the bar, which is a very sort of punk way of drumming.”
He continued: “So many songs were written by Syd in such a short time period. It was less than two years from our first public show in October of 1967. At that time, we only had two or three original songs. And just about a year later, it was already sort of burning out.”
Decades later, once punk had asserted itself on the map and sent the rest of the music industry into a state of panic, including Pink Floyd, who responded to its rise on Animals, albeit not in a musical sense but a cultural one.
During an interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, Mason explained how punk inspired Animals and revealed how it came from a natural place rather than feeling forced. “I think whatever influence punk brought to Animals or indeed, music at the time, it was subliminal rather than being obvious,” he noted.
Mason added: “It was an influence, but I think for me, I don’t think there was a lot of it that I thought, ‘This is great.’ It was more, well, it’s interesting because it’s returning to the sort of rock ‘n’ roll where teenagers can get together and do this and actually have an audience and do it.”
Listen to the punk-tinged ‘Vegetable Man’ below.
