Interstellar Overdrive

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"Interstellar Overdrive"

Song by Pink Floyd
from the album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
Released	August 5, 1967
Recorded	February-June 1967
Genre	Psychedelic rock
Length	9:41
Label	Columbia/EMI (UK) Capitol (US)
Producer(s)	Norman Smith
The Piper at the Gates of Dawn track listing
Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk (6)	"Interstellar Overdrive" (7)	The Gnome (8)

"Interstellar Overdrive" is a psychedelic music composition by Pink Floyd, which appears on their 1967 debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn at almost ten minutes in length. An earlier, longer recording can be heard on the soundtrack to the film Tonite Let's All Make Love in London, which was released in the same year. Other versions of the track appear on various bootleg recordings.

Like the Paul Butterfield Blues Band's slightly earlier song "East-West," "Interstellar Overdrive" was one of the very first psychedelic instrumental improvisations recorded by a rock band. It was seen as Pink Floyd's first foray into space rock (along with "Astronomy Domine"), although band members would later disparage this term. Despite its encapsulation of their concert repertoire under the leadership of guitarist and composer Syd Barrett, the long, improvisational, freeform structure of the piece is not particularly reflective of the group's recorded output. As drummer Nick Mason states in his book Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd, live versions of the song featured many "sections" that did not appear on the album, and would often last more than 20 minutes. During the band's days playing in residence at London underground clubs such as the UFO (Underground Freak Out), the song usually opened their show. It occupied other positions, including the encore, until it was retired from the band's setlist in 1970.

1 Composition
2 Alternate Versions
3 Trivia
4 Personnel
5 Sample

[edit] Composition

The opening hook of the piece is a distorted, descending guitar riff played in unison by the band. This riff eventually turns into improvisation, including modal noodlings, percussive flourishes on the Farfisa organ, and quiet interludes. The song gradually becomes almost structureless and tempo-less, punctuated only by strange guitar noises. Eventually, however, the entire band restates the main theme, which is repeated with decreasing tempo and more deliberate intensity until it finally concludes.

This riff, incidentally, originated when early Pink Floyd manager Peter Jenner was trying to hum a song he couldn't remember the name of (most commonly identified as Love's cover of "My Little Red Book"). Barrett followed Jenner's humming with his guitar and used it as the basis for the principal melody of "Interstellar Overdrive".

[edit] Alternate 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. The earlier, 16-minute rendition (recorded for Tonite Let's All Make Love in London in January 1967) 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. This version is available on the album London 1966/1967 (Snapper SMACD924X).

There is also a plethora of bootleg live recordings, with and without Barrett in the band, which show that they often improvised upon and changed the arrangement with each passing performance. One 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.

An especially powerful version of "Interstellar Overdrive" was rumoured to have been cut from the Ummagumma live album. Tapes of this performance may still exist. "Interstellar Overdrive" has been covered by many artists, including Particle, Hawkwind, Camper Van Beethoven, The Melvins, Pearl Jam and The Mars Volta.

[edit] Trivia

Recorded on March 16, 1967, with overdubs in June of that year, the Piper version also appears on the official compilation albums, Relics and A Nice Pair.
Roger Waters once told Barrett that the song's riff reminded him of the theme tune from Steptoe and Son.
John Frusciante mentioned in a recent interview given to radio station The End in Seattle, that the Red Hot Chili Peppers led off their performance with Interstellar Overdrive on the night Syd Barrett died.
The Mars Volta have recently been incorporating a cover of the song in their live shows.[1]
The Amiga demo "Aerial" by the demo group M4nkind has a cover version of Interstellar Overdrive as the soundtrack.
Professional wrestling stable Generation Next used the cover version by The Melvins as their theme song.