Lyrics and Music
According to an interview with David Gilmour on the 2006 documentary Which One's Pink?, the song features minor guitar work both from Gilmour and Syd Barrett, making "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" the only Pink Floyd song that features all five band members, though many listeners couldn't really discern the guitar tracks as Richard Wright's keyboards and organs were overlapping the guitars.
The song's recording commenced in August 1967, with overdubs recorded in October of that year and in January 1968. In an article reprinted in the book Pink Floyd – through the eyes of ... by Bruno McDonald, Roger Waters admitted to "borrowing" the lyrics from a book of Chinese poetry from the Tang Dynasty period (which was later identified as the book Poems of the late T'ang, translated by A.C. Graham).
Among the borrowed lines from Chinese poetry were those written by Li He, whose poem "Don't Go Out of the Door" contains the line "Witness the man who raved at the wall as he wrote his questions to Heaven", and Li Shangyin, whose poetry contained the lines, "watch little by little the night turns around", "countless the twigs which tremble in dawn" and "one inch of love is one inch of ashes."
Read more about this topic: Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun
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