How Pink Floyd's First Era Crash Landed With 'Apples and Oranges'

“Apples and Oranges” was supposed to maintain Pink Floyd’s industrial momentum going. Instead, it was the dying knell for Syd Barrett’s tenure within the band.

Their No. 6 U.Okay. smash debut The Piper on the Gates of Dawn had adopted a pair of stand-alone U.Okay. hit singles, “Arnold Layne” and “See Emily Play.” Suddenly, Pink Floyd’s label was desirous about the group’s profession in industrial phrases. The Christmas buying season was forward, preceded by their preliminary reveals within the U.S.

This put further pressure on the already-faltering Barrett, as did the tune’s prolonged gestation interval.

“Apples and Oranges” took inspiration from on a regular basis life: Barrett wrote the uncommon Pink Floyd love tune after noticing a beautiful shopper whereas strolling throughout Barnes Common. But the band’s try to finish work on the observe turned a four-day slog. Pink Floyd’s closing session reportedly went on for greater than 13 hours.

By the time it was over, they’d created a shambolic curio from the psychedelic period, crammed with loads of musical distractions however generally making little or no sense. In this manner, Barrett’s disintegrating non-public life was turning into more and more echoed in his work.

He gamely tried to speak up the only. “It’s a happy song, and it’s got a touch of Christmas,” Barrett informed the U.Okay. business journal Top Pops and Music Now. “It’s about a girl I saw just walking around town.” But “Apples and Oranges” sank and not using a hint after it arrived within the U.Okay. on Nov. 17, 1967; it was by no means even launched within the U.S.

The downside was in making “another attempt to create a hit,” Nick Mason admitted in Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd. “This was another of Syd’s whimsical compositions – and it would have made a great album track, but it was probably not really suitable for the job. However, under pressure, we tried to turn it into a hit, with [producer] Norman Smith’s help, adding overdubbed choruses and echoes.”

Roger Waters took extra direct intention at Smith. “A group decision, we definitely set out ‘Apples and Oranges’ as a single,” Waters lamented in Saucerful of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey. “We all thought it was a really good song, but the recording didn’t come up as well. ‘Apples and Oranges’ was destroyed by the production. It was a fucking good song.”

Watch Pink Floyd’s ‘Apples and Oranges’ Video

In actuality, there was solely a lot any producer might have carried out with “Apples and Oranges” or with Barrett, for that matter. Playing an out-of-tune guitar, Barrett pushes the tune sooner and sooner earlier than main everybody by means of an completely aimless center eight. Everyone appears to be reaching for the fizzy wit of the Beatles’ contemporaneous Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – particularly after they exclaim, “We thought you might like to know!” – however there is no discernible hook to floor issues.

“It’s possible there was a certain amount of U.S. pressure to release it to tie in with our tour,” Mason mentioned in Inside Out. “This was a case of trusting the advice we were given, and learning that sometimes – if not always – it was best to stick with our own instincts and make our own decisions.”

Melody Maker caught up with a sometimes nonchalant Barrett, not lengthy after the only stiffed. “Couldn’t care less,” he blithely replied. “All we can do is make records which we like. If the kids don’t, then they won’t buy it.”

He’d lobbied as a substitute for Pink Floyd’s subsequent single to be “Jugband Blues,” the product of one other disorganized session by which members of the native Salvation Army band had been informed to “play whatever they want.” It was turning into frightfully clear how shut Barrett was to the sting.

They set off on the ill-judged U.S. tour anyway, with scheduled stops on American Bandstand and the Pat Boone Show the place Pink Floyd was to lip-sync to “Apples and Oranges.” Their look with Dick Clark was odd however not disastrous. Barrett both refused or forgot to mouth a few of the phrases. Boone’s studio viewers, nevertheless, would see a a lot completely different scene unfold.

“We were taping the show, and he would do the run-through and Syd would stand with his Telecaster with silver bits all over it and mime happily,” Waters mentioned in 2011’s Pink Floyd: The Early Years. But when the cameras turned on for an official take, a dazed-looking Barrett would not take part in any respect. “He knew perfectly well what was going on,” Waters argued. “He was just being crazy. They did four or five takes like that. Eventually, I mimed it.”

They acquired by means of the taping, however this sort of deception merely would not work onstage. When Barrett spent a complete live performance on the Fillmore West de-tuning his guitar, the U.S. tour was promptly minimize quick. Pink Floyd’s label then refused to launch the follow-up single, “Vegetable Man,” and David Gilmour joined the band not lengthy after. They hustled out a video for “Apples and Oranges,” filmed with out Barrett. Waters once more lip-synced the phrases amid transient glimpses of Gilmour, who did not play on the only.

Barrett by no means recorded the rest of substance with Pink Floyd. (They ended up placing “Jugband Blues” on Gilmour’s debut album with the band, 1968’s A Saucerful of Secrets.) Instead, Barrett departed with a closing enigmatic muttering because the stereo mixture of “Apples and Oranges” fades out: “I’ll explain it all to you sometime, one day.”