Continuing our sequence of songs around the theme of mental health, the opener from the last solo album by the founder of Pink Floyd, Barrett, released in 1970. After yesterday's song by The Move, which included references to lemonade ("Phantom horses quickly fade /Turning into lemonade"), it had to be this. Syd Barrett's mental health decline and difficulties with drug use are well documented, though his place in music history is often underrated. Pink Floyd's Roger Waters acknowledges him as the true genius behind the band, without whom they would have been another white blues outfit. Barrett recorded this album with the help of David Gilmour, but it retains the hallmarks of early Floyd. The introduction is Barrett warming up on guitar, the oddball stumbling drums played by Humble Pie's Jerry Shirley, alongside Gilmour on bass and Richard Wright on organ, all make for a surreal, psychedelic vision of what? Acid hallucinations, a bed-bound patient? Depression? You decide, but the result is unlike anything else.
In the sad town
Cold iron hands
Clap the party of clowns outside
Rain falls in grey far away
Please, please, Baby Lemonade
In the evening sun going down
When the earth streams in, in the morning
Send a cage through the post
Make your name like a ghost
Please, please, Baby Lemonade
I'm screaming, I met you this way
You're nice to me like ice
In the clock they sent through a washing machine
Come around, make it soon, so alone...
Please, please, Baby Lemonade
In the sad town
Cold iron hands
Clap the party of clowns outside
Rain falls in gray far away
Please, please, Baby Lemonade
In the evening sun going down
When the earth streams in, in the morning
Send a cage through the post
Make your name like a ghost
Please, please, Baby Lemonade.
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