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Pink Floyd · S1 E4
The Tea Set
Sigma 6, The Meggadeaths, The Screaming Abdabs, The Tea Set. A student band at Regent Street Poly cycles through names and lineups, playing R&B covers at parties and dances
Autumn 1963, a basement at Regent Street Polytechnic. Six students with borrowed equipment and no name anyone can remember play a Searchers cover at a student dance while the audience talks over them.
Pink Floyd, See Emily Play. Written by Syd Barrett in 1967, light years from the R&B covers the band played as Sigma 6. Playful, psychedelic, and completely original.
Sigma 6
The band begins as Sigma 6 in late 1963, a loose group assembled from the architecture and music students at Regent Street Polytechnic. Roger Waters plays rhythm guitar, Nick Mason plays drums, Rick Wright plays keyboards, and three other students fill out the lineup. They play covers of chart hits at student parties and private dances, and by every available account, they are not very good.
“The main thing I remember is that we were very, very loud. Volume was our main asset, used to disguise the fact that we couldn't really play.”
— Nick Mason
TAP TO REVEAL: How many names did the band go through before they found the right one?
See Emily Play, Pink Floyd (1967)
Pink Floyd's second single and their biggest UK chart hit of the 1960s, reaching number six. Syd Barrett wrote it in the spring of 1967, capturing the giddy strangeness of London's psychedelic underground. Listen for the descending piano riff, the tape-manipulated guitar that sounds like it is dissolving, and Barrett's vocal delivery that floats between playful and otherworldly.
The Revolving Door
Through 1963 and 1964, the lineup keeps shifting. Clive Metcalfe leaves and Waters moves from rhythm guitar to bass to fill the gap. Bob Klose, a disciplined jazz guitarist from the Polytechnic, joins and brings real musical structure to a group running on enthusiasm and volume. By late 1964, the core of Waters, Mason, Wright, and Klose is taking shape.
The Student Band: The File
Matilda Mother, Pink Floyd
From The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967), Pink Floyd's debut album. Syd Barrett wrote it about the fairy tales his mother read to him as a child, and it sounds exactly like that: a bedtime story set to music. Rick Wright's organ creates a warm, hazy glow around Barrett's voice.
What instrument did Roger Waters originally play in Sigma 6 before switching to bass?
The lineup is nearly set, but there is a jazz guitarist in the room who plays cleaner, faster, and more technically than anyone else in the band. His name is Bob Klose, and for a brief moment he will hold Pink Floyd's musical future in his hands.
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