Barrett (album) - Recording

Recording

The first session was on 26 February, three of the first songs—fully recorded—attempted during the session were "Baby Lemonade", "Maisie" and "Gigolo Aunt". However, Gilmour thought they were losing the "Barrett-ness". After "Baby Lemonade" was attempted, 2 takes of "Maisie" were recorded before Barrett went into 15 takes of "Gigolo Aunt". The next day, two-track demos of "Wolfpack", "Waving My Arms in the Air", "Living Alone" and "Bob Dylan Blues", were recorded. The former two made it to the album, while the latter two didn't. On the recording sheet, it lists Gilmour as having taken home a copy of the latter two, Gilmour later returned and took the master tapes too. Gilmour has since said "Those sessions were done so quickly. We were rushing to gigs every day and had to fit recording sessions in between. I probably took it away to have a listen and simply forgot to take it back. It wasn't intended to be a final mix. Syd knocked it off, I took a tape home." Despite some minor work made to "Gigolo Aunt", Barrett wouldn't return to Abbey Road Studios until 1 April, due to Pink Floyd working on their 1970 album, Atom Heart Mother. On various occasions, Barrett would "spy" on the band as they recorded the album. Again, Barrett recorded some work to a song, "Wolfpack" on the 3rd, before the sessions were postponed until 5 June, this time due to Gilmour and Wright going on tour in the US with Pink Floyd.

On the session of 5 June, Barrett managed to record an unknown number of two-track demos for three songs: "Rats", "Winded and Dined", and "Birdie Hop". The "Rats" demo recorded here, became the basis for the album master, and would later be overdubbed by musicians, despite the changing tempos. Two days later, on the 7th, Barrett recorded "Milky Way", "Millionaire", before being rounded off with overdubs for "Rats". Yet another break in recording occurred, until 14 July, where Barrett recorded several takes of "Effervescing Elephant", while numerous overdubs were added to Barrett's "Wined and Dined" demo by Gilmour. Three takes of "Dominoes" ensued, with an unknown number of takes of "Love Song", "Dolly Rocker" and "Let's Spilt" were recorded. "Love Song" and "Dolly Rocker" were both overdubbed, the former being overdubbed from 17 to 21 July, however, overdubs for the latter were wiped. On 21 July, Barrett worked on another Untitled track (later to be titled as "Word Song"), recording only one take, before recording 5 takes of the last new song to be recorded for Barrett: "It Is Obvious". Barrett worked on remakes of two tracks: "Maisie", and "Waving My Arms in the Air" (the latter now seguing into a new track, "I Never Lied to You").

We really had basically three alternatives at that point, working with Syd. One, we could actually work with him in the studio, playing along as he put down his tracks - which was almost impossible, though we succeeded on 'Gigolo Aunt'. The second was laying down some kind of track before and then having him play over it. The third was him putting his basic ideas down with just guitar and vocals and then we'd try and make something out of it. — David Gilmour,

Shirley said of Barrett's playing: "He would never play the same tune twice. Sometimes Syd couldn't play anything that made sense; other times what he'd play was absolute magic." At times Barrett would say: "Perhaps we could make the middle darker and maybe the end a bit middle afternoonish. At the moment it's too windy and icy".