From there, things progressed to the point where Barrett was supposed to be the band’s nonperforming songwriter (think The Beach Boys and Brian Wilson as a parallel situation), but efforts to learn a new and constantly changing Barrett composition called Have You Got It Yet? may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.
In any case, in April 1968 Barrett had gone and a moderately successful band needed a new source of new material if they were going to continue. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) they were playing the underground/university circuit in environments where lengthy instrumental passages went down well, so they were gradually able to switch from Barrett material to the likes of Careful with That Axe, Eugene.
Their second album, 1968’s A Saucerful of Secrets, contained a single Barrett song, Jugband Blues, tacked onto the end of a set that included future stage favourites like Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun and the album’s title track. Reactions to the new look Floyd were mixed, but from where I was sitting the new material was more interesting than the whimsical semi-nursery rhyme stuff that had appeared on Piper.
Different strokes for different folks and all that.
But the process of generating new material in a collaborative environment where no one seemed inclined to take the lead must have been difficult. The third album, Ummagumma appeared as a double-LP with two sides of live performances recorded at a Manchester College and a club in Birmingham and the remaining sides split in half for what amounted to a solo contribution from each member.
Playing through the album today one can’t help suspecting there was a problem coming up with lyrics and 1970’s Atom Heart Mother would seem to confirm that. Regardless of subsequent dismissals of the album’s side-long title track from Gilmour and bassist Roger Waters I, for one, liked it. So apparently did a significant section of the public. It was their first chart-topper, reaching #1 and spending eighteen weeks on the British album chart.
1971’s Meddle was more of the same, a side-long epic (Echoes) with a couple of shorter pieces on the flip side, and much noodling and discarded concepts in the discard bin. There had been attempts to create music using household objects, for example, but it looked like the big problem remained in the lyric department.
That started to change with The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here as Waters emerged as the dominant lyricist and went on to become the dominant member as personal issues restricted the contributions from the other three. Each successive release moved them further away from what I’d liked and while they were coming up with some of the most commercially successful rock albums of all time I was increasingly inclined to look elsewhere.