On this day · 59 years ago · 1967
59 Years Ago Today: Pink Floyd Made Their Top of the Pops Debut With See Emily Play
Pink Floyd's first-ever television performance looked like a straightforward pop hit arriving on schedule. Watched again, it's also the earliest recorded moment where Syd Barrett's decline starts to show on camera.
By Axel, Classic-rock desk · Edited by Cadence ·
On July 6, 1967, Pink Floyd made their live TV debut on the BBC's Top of the Pops, performing their psychedelic hit See Emily Play. Frontman Syd Barrett played the song's slide-guitar hook with a Zippo lighter, by some accounts a plastic ruler, run along the strings. It was the first of three Top of the Pops appearances that July, and by the third, Barrett's erratic behavior was already showing the first signs of his decline.
A one-off single that turned into a hit almost by accident
Syd Barrett wrote "See Emily Play" in the wake of Pink Floyd's "Games for May" concert on May 12, 1967, a free show at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall where the band debuted the quadraphonic PA system that would become a regular feature of their live sets. Per Wikipedia's account of the song, the track was recorded at Sound Techniques studio in London in May 1967, produced by Norman Smith, who was trying to recapture the sound of the band's first single, "Arnold Layne." It was released as a non-album single in the UK on June 16, 1967, and reached No. 6 on the British charts within weeks, a fast, unplanned hit for a band still finding its footing.
A Zippo lighter instead of a slide
The song's woozy, sliding guitar hook is one of its most recognizable features, and it wasn't played with any conventional slide gear. By most accounts, Barrett ran a Zippo lighter along the strings to get the effect; a few other sources credit a plastic ruler instead. Recording engineer Jeff Jarrett later recalled that the song existed in a much longer form before being edited down for the single, and the finished track leaned heavily on backward tape effects and dense echo and reverb, a production approach that helped define the emerging psychedelic-pop sound Pink Floyd was still inventing in real time.
Three trips to Top of the Pops, and the first cracks show
Per Wikipedia's account, Pink Floyd performed "See Emily Play" on the BBC's "Top of the Pops" three times that July, with appearances taped at BBC Studios in Shepherd's Bush and broadcast on the 6th, 13th, and 27th. The July 6 broadcast was the band's first-ever television performance. By the third appearance, Barrett reportedly objected to doing the show at all, reasoning that "John Lennon doesn't have to do Top of the Pops," and performed without the enthusiasm of the week before. It's a small, easy-to-miss detail watched in isolation, but per that same account it marks the first recorded sign of the erratic behavior that caused problems for the group for the rest of the year.
Separately that same month, David Gilmour, invited to visit the "See Emily Play" sessions, was reportedly shocked that Barrett didn't seem to recognize him. Gilmour later said plainly: "I'll go on record as saying, that was when he changed." Barrett left Pink Floyd in early 1968.
Chasing that psychedelic single-coil tone today
Barrett's own string gauge from these sessions isn't documented anywhere reliable enough to cite as fact, decades before any of today's major manufacturers sold the exact product lines they do now. But for players chasing that bright, slightly gritty late-1960s British single-coil tone on a Telecaster, Esquire, or similar guitar, a standard nickel-wound set remains the sensible modern starting point.
EXL110 XL Nickel Wound (.010–.046)
Why this one: A standard nickel-wound starting point for late-60s British single-coil tone, not a historical claim about Barrett's own undocumented studio gear.
Per the same Wikipedia account, the BBC wiped the master tapes of all three "Top of the Pops" performances. A damaged home video recording of the July 6 and July 27 shows was recovered by the British Film Institute in late 2009 and given a public screening in London in January 2010, the first time any footage of the performance had surfaced since its original broadcast.
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