Pink Floyd's debut was its only recording based on the vision of founding singer/guitarist Syd Barrett, an art student whose world revolved around music, mysticism and liberal doses of hallucinogens. The band's moniker was taken from the first names of Georgia bluesmen Pink Anderson and Floyd Council (an album of theirs was a favorite of Barrett's), and the album's title came from a chapter of Kenneth Grahame's children's classic "The Wind In The Willows" (also a staple of Barrett's library).

Recorded at Abbey Road at the same time The Beatles were cutting SGT. PEPPER, PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN was an avant-garde pastiche of neo-jazz improvisation and snappy pop snippets--a blurring of musical borders that went far beyond what the Fab Four were doing a couple of rooms away. (Producer Norman Smith had been The Beatles' chief engineer for much of the early '60s.) Instrumental space-jams like "Pow R. Toc H." and "Interstellar Overdrive" smashed the conventionality of the pop mainstream by lengthening and opening up traditional song structures, as bits of Rick Wright's reverb-soaked Farfisa organ and Barrett's scratchy guitar floated in and out of the mix. Barrett's appreciation of space is also revealed in the various experimental soundscapes Floyd used--phased guitars, pinging notes, and Middle Eastern tonalities expanded the sonic palette the group worked with. The other side of Barrett's musical expression was an ability to write shorter "pop" songs that were similar to traditional fare only in length. Despite the ominous imagery, his acid-fueled observations dove into simple topics and themes--a Siamese cat on "Lucifer Sam," child-like stories and observations on "The Gnome" and "Bike."

PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN was an auspicious debut, and a major influence on British pop music--its disciples include spacemen David Bowie and Marc Bolan and trippy popsters XTC, Robyn Hitchcock and Julian Cope. But it was a one-shot deal for Pink Floyd in terms of musical direction. Because of his increasingly erratic behavior, Barrett was asked to leave the band soon after the album's release.