See Emily Play
| "See Emily Play" | ||||||||
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| Single by Pink Floyd | ||||||||
| from the album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn U.S. edition | ||||||||
| B-side | "Scarecrow" | |||||||
| Released | 16 June 1967 | |||||||
| Format | 7" | |||||||
| Recorded | 21 May 1967 at Sound Techniques, London, England | |||||||
| Genre | Psychedelic rock,psychedelic pop | |||||||
| Length | 2:53 | |||||||
| Label |
Columbia (EMI) (UK) Tower (US) |
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| Writer(s) | Syd Barrett | |||||||
| Producer(s) | Norman Smith | |||||||
| Pink Floyd singles chronology | ||||||||
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"See Emily Play" is a song by English rock band Pink Floyd, released as their second single in June 1967. Written by original frontman Syd Barrett and recorded on 23 May 1967, it featured "The Scarecrow" as its B-side. Though it was initially released as a non-album single, the song appeared on the American edition of their debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967).
"See Emily Play" is included in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll list and reached No. 6 in the United Kingdom singles chart. As of 2015, the song has never been mixed to stereo, so the US album version was rechannelled and all subsequent reissues have been in mono.
"See Emily Play" is also known as "Games for May", after a free concert in which Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd performed.
The song was reportedly about a girl named Emily, who Barrett claimed to have seen while sleeping in the woods after taking a psychedelic drug. According to A Saucerful of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey, by Nicholas Schaffner, Emily is the Honourable Emily Young, daughter of Wayland Young, 2nd Baron Kennet, and the sister of author Louisa Young, and nicknamed "the psychedelic schoolgirl" at the UFO Club. An article in Mojo magazine called "See the Real Emily" supposedly shows a picture of Barrett's Emily. It has been suggested by some that the slide guitar effect was produced by Barrett using a Zippo lighter, but elsewhere that he used a plastic ruler.
The train depicted on the single's sleeve was drawn by Barrett.
The details as to the recording remain shrouded in mystery due to the lack of paperwork in the EMI archive. Engineer Jeff Jarrett recalls that "See Emily Play" was recorded in a much longer form which was then edited down for the single release. It was recorded at Sound Techniques studios on 21 May 1967. There was much trickery involved in the recording with backward tapes, much use of echo and reverb, and the first piano bridge between the first chorus and second verse was recorded at a slow pace then sped up for the final master. The four-track master tape was wiped or misplaced. It no longer exists and has never been mixed into true stereo; it was reprocessed for fake stereo on the 1971 Relics compilation.
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Wikipedia