See‐Saw

In See-Saw the atmosphere is built with layers of keyboards that float between the ethereal and the earthly, as if time itself were suspended on a swing oscillating between childhood and melancholy. The song does not follow the conventional rhythm of the era’s tracks: the measures stretch, the silences breathe, and the chords fade like ink in water. It is a piece that smells of a freshly painted studio and of ideas that have yet to fully take shape, where each note seems like a whisper between four walls that will soon no longer be the same.

Recorded in 1968 during the sessions for A Saucerful of Secrets, this song was born at a transitional moment for Pink Floyd. Syd Barrett, the band’s original composer, was no longer in a position to lead: his mental health was crumbling under the weight of substance abuse, and though he contributed three tracks to the album, See-Saw was the work of Richard Wright, who also wrote the lyrics. Producer Norman Smith—with his experience in Beatles recordings—sought to capture the experimental sound the band was chasing, but the album ended up as a document of those gray days between what had been and what was to come. At 4:35 in length, the song is a bridge between the psychedelic The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and the darker rock that would follow, when David Gilmour joined as lead guitarist and the band left behind its most psychedelic phase.