“A Saucerful of Secrets,” though only their second album, presents the literal sound of a Pink Floyd in transition, clinging to their past even as they plunge into the unknown. The album is often overlooked by casual fans. It’s not a masterpiece like “The Dark Side of the Moon” or “Wish You Were Here.” And it lacks a signature radio classic. But it is a crucial LP in the band’s sonic evolution.
The album marks the end of the Syd Barrett era. Although his whimsical brand of psychedelic pop was the band’s original guiding force (he composed most of their 1967 debut, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn”), Barrett’s erratic behavior and hard drug use nearly derailed the band. to Pink Floyd completely. The remaining trio (bassist Roger Waters, keyboardist Richard Wright and drummer Nick Mason) recruited guitarist and singer David Gilmour, a former college friend of Barrett’s, as a replacement.
As a result, “A Saucerful of Secrets” is also the birth of the Gilmour era, and the music reflects this artistic disparity. Several tracks (the twangy, Wright-penned “Remember the Day,” Barrett’s kaleidoscopic swansong “Jugband Blues”) fit Piper’s British psychedelia; meanwhile, extended, textured epics (“Let There Be More Light,” the droning “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”) nod toward the more progressive style explored on Pink Floyd’s classic Seventies albums. (Fun Pink Floyd fact: “Set the Controls” is the only track to feature Barrett and Gilmour both playing electric guitar.)
“They wanted me to play the parts [de Barrett] “I was asked to sing his songs. Nobody else wanted to sing them, and I was chosen. That was my job, as far as live shows were concerned, anyway. Syd and I played together only five gigs in Pink Floyd. Or maybe four. Maybe the Southampton was supposed to be the fifth; I don’t remember. While all this was going on, we were also trying to make the new album, ‘A Saucerful of Secrets’. But live, we didn’t play the tracks from that, but pretty much all of Syd’s material. Because there was nothing else to do. It was either that or going back to the Bo Diddley covers,” Gilmour told Guitar World in 1993.
In that same interview, Gilmour reflects on the 12-minute title track, a disorienting mix of sound effects, choral vocals and a haunting Mellotron, as the album’s true centerpiece. “I don’t think the band really knew where they wanted to go after Syd left,” he said. «’A Saucerful of Secrets’ was a very important track; It gave us our direction forward. If you take ‘A Saucerful of Secrets’, ‘Atom Heart Mother’ [de Atom Heart Mother de 1970] and ‘Echoes’ [Meddle de 1971] – all logically lead to the dark side of the moon.
While “A Saucerful of Secrets” isn’t as enigmatic as the band’s later masterpieces, 56 years later it remains a fascinating snapshot of a band forging a new identity.
