Pink Floyd Lyrics, Themes & Meanings: Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast

Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast 12:57
(written by Gilmour, Mason, Waters, Wright)

(a) Rise and Shine 3:34
Lyrics:
Oh, uh, me flakes... then, uh, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, tomatoes, toast, coffee; marmalade, I like marmalade. Yes, porridge is nice. Any cereal, like all cereal. Oh God. (echoed)

(b) Sunny Side Up 4:10
Lyrics:
Breakfast in Los Angeles... microbiotic stuff. (echoed)
Mmm.
No reply. (echoed)

(c) Morning Glory 5:46
Lyrics:
I don't mind a barrow, quite like barrowing this stuff in... Ooh, I've got a terrible back. When I work, it hurts me. Know what I mean, John? Well it's sort of, uh... when I'm drivin' on, the radio's asleep... gets ready for the gig... I don't know... umm, I've got all the electrical stuff, I can't follow that... umm, I can go, Riviera. (echoed) Me flakes... scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, toast, coffee. Marmalade, I like marmalade... I don't know... Oh yes, porridge is nice. Any cereal, like all cereal. Oh god, what a day. Oh, what? (echoed) Ooh, my head's a blank.

Spoken words: Alan Stiles

Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast was an experiment in incorporating actuality sounds into music, which didn't work. The song was named after roadie Alan Stiles, probably the most likely candidate for cooking breakfast when the band was on the road. He also does the voice introducing the various parts. In Rise and Shine, Alan gets up and begins cooking breakfast, providing a running commentary that leads into a jaunty, piano-based number that really goes nowhere. Sunny Side Up starts off with the pleasant sounds of Alan eating breakfast and joking about macrobiotic food, which rapidly gives way to an acoustic number in which Dave duets with himself. Near the end, the sounds of Alan cooking breakfast fade in again, introducing Morning Glory, a more upbeat and listenable piece using all the instruments (incidentally, morning-glory seeds are a powerful psychedelic). The song ends with Alan washing the dishes, after which he leaves the tap dripping, which on the original LP ran into the runout groove, so that people without automatic changers would have an annoying impetus to change the record.

Rick Wright: "...Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast we tried on our English tour and it didn't work at all, so we had to give it up. None of us liked doing it anyway and we didn't like it on the album — it's rather pretentious, it doesn't do anything. Quite honestly, it's a bad number. A similar idea in that idiom we did at Roundhouse another time I thought was much better. Practically on the spot we decided to improvise a number where we fried eggs on stage and Roger threw potatoes about and it was spontaneous and it was really good. Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast was a weak number."

Nick Mason: "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast is quite interesting, insofar as we've agreed that the piece didn't work, but in some ways the sound effects are the strongest parts."

Roger Waters: "We did that in a fantastic rush, didn't we?"

Nick Mason: "Right, it was a fantastic idea, but because of the rush it didn't work properly."

Dave Gilmour: "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast never achieved what it was meant to. It was meant to be how it should've been. It was a bit of a throw together. In fact the most throw together thing we've ever done."

However, the band continued to experiment with 'musique concrete,' eventually succeeding brilliantly on such albums as Dark Side of the Moon and the unreleased Household Objects, until sound effects and spoken words became an inherent part of the Pink Floyd sound.