Pink Floyd – The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is the debut album by English rock band Pink Floyd, the only album made under founding member Syd Barrett’s leadership. It was released on 5 August 1967 by EMI Columbia. The studio album borrows its name from the title of chapter seven of Kenneth Grahame’s 1908 novel The Wind in the Willows, which refers to the nature god Pan, who plays his pan pipes at dawn. The album was recorded at EMI Studios in London’s Abbey Road from February to May 1967. The band consisted of Barrett (lead vocals, lead guitar), Nick Mason (drums), Roger Waters (bass, vocals), and Richard Wright (keyboards, vocals). Barrett was the band’s primary songwriter, though two tracks on the album are credited to the band collectively and one track was written by Waters. The album was produced by Norman Smith, who would go on to produce two more albums for Pink Floyd.

In the United States, the album was released as Pink Floyd in October on Tower Records, with an altered track listing that omitted three songs and included the UK non-album single “See Emily Play”. In the UK, no singles were released from the album, but in the US, “Flaming” was offered as a single. Two of its songs, “Astronomy Dominé” and “Interstellar Overdrive”, became long-term mainstays of the band’s live setlist, while other songs were performed live only a handful of times. The album has been hailed as a pivotal psychedelic rock album.

In 1973, the album was packaged with the band’s second album A Saucerful of Secrets (1968) and released as A Nice Pair, to introduce the band’s early work to new fans gained with the success of The Dark Side of the Moon (1973). Special limited editions of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn were issued to mark its thirtieth, fortieth, and fiftieth anniversaries, with the former two releases containing bonus tracks. In 2012, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn was placed at number 347 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”, and number 253 in the 2020 edition.