By the start of 1966, they were playing rhythm and blues and a residency at the Countdown Club, near Kensington High Street that required three ninety minute sets each night brought the realisation that lengthy instrumental passages delivered the goods without having to extend the repertoire. Hardly a startling discovery, but they seem to have made it ahead of some of their contemporaries.
The Yardbirds, for one, had already hit on a similar discovery, terming the lengthy solos rave-ups, but the Pink Floyd Sound seem to have come up with some interesting sonic effects, which caught the eye of London School of Economics lecturer Peter Jenner and his business partner and friend Andrew King. The duo was impressed enough to set up Blackhill Enterprises and shell out around £1,000 for new instruments and equipment. The money came from an inheritance (King’s) and Jenner suggested the Sound go out of the name. Henceforth, Pink Floyd.
In the right place at the right time, the band became key players in the London underground music scene, playing venues including All Saints Hall, the Marquee and Joe Boyd’s legendary UFO Club accompanied by basic but effective light shows as their repertoire gradually changed from R&B material to Barrett-penned originals.
That underground success (back in the day when underground hovered on the edge of an experiment-friendly mainstream) was enough to attract the attention of the music industry and while a deal was being negotiated Boyd funded the session at Sound Techniques that resulted in the band’s first single, Arnold Layne. They signed with EMI three days later.
Arnold Layne peaked at number 20 in the British singles chart, and you’d be inclined to suspect the song might have gone higher if it had been about something other than a cross-dressing clothesline raider. The second single, See Emily Play, did better, peaking in the Top Ten and coming in at #67 on the Top 100 for 1967 (http://www.uk-charts.top-source.info/top-100-1967.shtml). A glance at the listing at that link will reveal competition that was rather hairy (in both senses of the word). It was a strange time.
And strange was becoming the operative word as the band began the sessions that produced their first album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Barrett allegedly began to unravel under the influence of LSD. The album did well, but as Barrett became increasingly unpredictable David Gilmour joined the band as a second guitarist, able to cover when a zombie-like Barrett went missing on stage, in December 1967.