Interstellar Overdrive - Alternative and Live Versions

Alternative and Live Versions

The studio recording on The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is the one that most listeners are familiar with, yet several other versions survive from both the recording studio and the stage. It was first recorded as a demo on 31 October 1966. Other alternative early versions that survive include one used as a backing track for a Canadian Broadcasting Company interview with the band in December 1966, two five-minute excerpts of versions performed at the UFO Club on 20 January and 24 February 1967, and a chaotic, late-Barrett era rendition recorded live in Rotterdam in November 1967. An earlier, 16-minute rendition (recorded for the film Tonite Lets All Make Love in London by Joe Boyd on 11 January 1967) recorded at Sound Techniques studios, may actually be superior in its more kinetic approach to the early sections, though it is perhaps more tedious and drawn-out as a whole. The soundtrack for Tonite Let's All Make Love in London (released in 1968) includes an edited version of the recording and two reprises of it. The full version is available on the album London '66–'67 (Snapper SMACD924X). While attempting to get the band a record deal, Joe Boyd returned (and produced) with the group to Sound Techniques studios, to record a demo tape to be given to various record labels, one of the songs recorded was "Interstellar Overdrive".

The song was a staple of Pink Floyd's live shows throughout the late-1960s; the last ever performance took place on February 1971. The 40th anniversary edition of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn contains two different, five-minute-long versions of the song.

The plethora of bootleg live recordings, with and without Barrett in the band, show that the band often improvised upon and changed the arrangement with each passing performance. One post-Barrett BBC radio broadcast, for example, is arguably superior to the studio version, introducing a wholly new middle section in which the keyboard melody dramatically rises and the guitars are pick-scraped for an almost "demonic" effect. The finale in performances from 1969 and 1970 features David Gilmour playing a metal bar slide across his guitar at the end of the piece, in a slower tempo than Barrett's frenetic slide work.

A version of "Interstellar Overdrive" was cut from the Ummagumma live album. A tape of this performance recorded in Manchester on 2 May 1969 surfaced in June 2009.