| "Matilda Mother" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Song by Pink Floyd from the album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn | ||||
| Released | 5 August 1967 | |||
| Recorded | February 1967 | |||
| Genre | Psychedelic rock | |||
| Length | 3:08 | |||
| Label | Columbia/EMI (UK) Capitol (US) | |||
| Writer | Syd Barrett | |||
| Producer | Norman Smith | |||
| The Piper at the Gates of Dawn track listing | ||||
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"Matilda Mother" is a song by British psychedelic rock band Pink Floyd, and is featured on their debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967).[1][2] Written by Syd Barrett, the song is sung mostly by Richard Wright with Barrett joining in on choruses and singing the whole last verse.
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The lyrics quote fragments of fairy tales as read from a book to the singer by his mother ("read(ing) the scribbly black", referring to writing in a book as a child sees it), and in the chorus he implores her to "tell me more".[3] Palacios argues that "Matilda Mother" represents a common theme in Barrett's work: his nostalgia for childhood and awareness that it could not be regained.[4]
The song begins with an unusual bass and organ interlude. Roger Waters repeatedly plays the B on the 16th fret of the G-string by varying the lower note from D to F sharp on the D string. Unlike many older beat and pop songs, the guitar rarely plays chords, and most unusually for Western music, Richard Wright provides an organ solo in the F# Phrygian dominant scale with a natural sixth instead of its typical flatted counterpart. The song ends with a simple E mixolydian-based waltz with wordless vocal harmonies of Richard Wright and Syd Barrett.
Barrett originally wrote the song around verses from Hilaire Belloc's Cautionary Tales, in which a series of naughty children, including Matilda, receive their (often gruesome) comeuppance. He was forced to rewrite and re-record the track when Belloc's estate unexpectedly denied permission to use these lyrics.[5]
On the Masters of Rock compilation album, the song was misspelled "Mathilda Mother".
A previously unheard rendition has been released in a 40th anniversary reissue of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn; parts of this version's lyrics are also from Belloc's Cautionary Tales, i.e. Jim and Henry King, whereas the chorus is the same as in the standard version.
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