Recording
In January, Pink Floyd went to Sound Techniques studio in Chelsea (they had been there prviously, to record two songs for Tonite Let's All Make Love in London). Here, the band recorded "Arnold Layne", and few other songs: "Matilda Mother", "Chapter 24", "Interstellar Overdrive" and "Let's Roll Another One" (which was renamed to "Candy and a Currant Bun", at the lead of Waters). Nick Mason on the choice of "Arnold Layne": "We knew we wanted to be rock'n'roll stars and we wanted to make singles, so it seemed the most suitable song to condense into 3 minutes without losing too much". The band had tried to re-record "Arnold Layne" after signing up with EMI, but the Joe Boyd version from January was released instead.
Boyd mentioned in several interviews over the years that "Arnold Layne" regularly ran for ten to fifteen minutes in concert (with extended instrumental passages), but the band knew that it had to be shortened for use as a single. He has also said it was a complex recording involving some tricky editing, recalling that the middle instrumental section with Richard Wright's organ solo was recorded as an edit piece and spliced into the song for the final mix.
The song was mixed into mono for the single. It has never been given a stereo mix though the four-track master tape still exists in the EMI tape archive.
Read more about this topic: Arnold Layne
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