Baby Lemonade

Could be, but I think not. The truth should out about the Floyd frauds - Gilmour gimmemore & Waters tortures.

This is virtually the only song that's purely about Pink Floyd - and they're Baby Lemonade..

Virtually all of Madcap Laughs is a communication wanting his lost love to come back. When that fell on deaf ears and wasn’t understood or was ignored (less obvious than it should have been cos Gilmour had sabotaged it by stealing Opel), he did that very upbeat Radio session and played Baby Lem for the first time.

With Baby Lem, I think he tried to turn over a new leaf and communicate with Floyd to prompt them to ask him back (his second priority after his woman).

It's unusually & extremely organised and repetitive and looks like he's really tried to build it constructively - rather than it emerging whole all quantum like – like Wolfpack.

He's in the distance where the rain is falling - Cambridge or London & Floyd are off in the regions at a festival (he didn't like playing outside of London as the audience weren't as open-minded). So they've sold out and are just being commercial, part of a circus.

Floyd are the clowns because they are working with a 'this will entertain' veneer that's really just a humiliating joke, and the iron hands are the closed minded, cast & inflexible audience who's demand for easy listening is steering HIS band.

The cage through the post is the cheque Floyd used to send him (which stopped him really being able to complain about their treatment of him and stopped him 'needing' to do other work). The sun going up and down is his life passing him by quickly - without occasion or event to pin it too & slow it down. Everything wasted, all because of nasty Floyd his so-called friends.

As someone with an absolute soul, he couldn't apologise or back down so it's all abstract. Instead of 'sorry' & 'I want to come back' which would put him at their mercy and was a surrender he couldn't offer, he explained his faults, or rather what Floyd had complained about - his inability with time, reality, organisation and his weirdness - but then what's changed? Nothing with him* - I was weird (screaming) when you met me.

It was of course Floyd that had changed - power stealers like Waters & encroachers like Gilmour are at first always ready to follow - in the Wolfpack - they have to cos they don't know on their own. But as soon as the path is found by another, they're very quick to step up as the new leader.

It's incredibly sad that they ignored him because they must have understood, and it's even worse because more than that - they actually manipulated his abstract protests & demonstrations to their advantage. To the media Floyd maintained it was just more evidence he'd gone mad - and that's still the misconception.

The song ended up on Barrett with Wolfpack - also about Floyd but much more aggressive because they'd ignored Baby Lem. The rest of the Barrett album songs are about him mourning lost love (having accepted it’s lost), or being cynical about this crappy society.

*Effervescing Elephant & Bob Dylan Blues were his first songs, written pre Floyd, but they were just like his post Floyd stuff. So Syd's ability didn't deteriorate, the only thing that had changed was other peoples assumptions of him and how they used him. Syd was, and is, NOT mad or ill, just pissed off - and quite rightly so. Flipping architects. Gilmour knicked and hid Bob Dylan Blues too - didn't give it back till just recently (hence the recent release of Syds greatest hits - in order to issue that). I wonder if the tune to Crazy Diamond and other great 'Floyd' achievements were also stolen?

Alright, all of those opinions are just as valid, but I think it's just another anti-capitalist or anti-power song.

"In the sad town, cold iron hands clap, the party of clowns outside" The iron hands are the machines producing with no point at all (production could have a point if needed) and calls them "clowns" ironically.

"rain falls in grey far away, please, please, Baby Lemonade" The smoke (I'm resuming) from the pipes contaminates far away places (Asia, Africa, South-America and other many starving places). "Baby Lemonade" could be the early earth (with no pollution, literally and metaphorically) or calling for something innocent or "not needed of insult" to forget about it (not to avoid it, but to forget and don't suffer from it)

"In the evening sun going down when the earth streams in, in the morning send a cage through the post make your name like a ghost" The rutinary, but stupid life of pointless duties and making "your name like a ghost" might be the common and incredibly stupid phrase of "being someone by having a good´ job" (similar to the "Ive seen al good people" from Yes feeling)

"I'm screaming, I met you this way you're nice to me like ice in the clock they sent through a washing machine come around, make it soon, so alone... please, please, Baby Lemonade" He shouldn't be screaming, but no matter how, he's doing it to stop it all, and he shouldn't have met anyone (or everyone) this way (everyone calling him crazy). The washing machine is the system washing heads about "time is coming, you'll die, be crazy!" (the clock) so ice (even if it might look cold to the system) is good to stop all that stupidity.

I just draw the structure, it could be he thought the Floyd were gonna lose themselves by going into that mass-production, or "Baby Lemonade" could be drugs or an unknown nickname. The important thing is he is asking for optimistic to stop pesimistic. (No need to say Syd was a focking genius) and that, if he thought the Floyd were losing themselves he was right (look at "The Wall" about all Roger's pesimism), but now it all turned out good.

Love the Floyd!

This is an awesome song. I really love the intro. I've got no real idea what its about, love lost I guess. Really trippy sounding song.

This song links Syd with Flannery O'Connor, who was into the mail order swan scene.

send a cage through the post make your name like a ghost

alright, I'm ready to interpret.... here we go (that's one of his songs)

First of all, anyone who ever doubted syd as an amazing guitar player can eat this song and choke on it. As far as the meaning.... this song is just like most of his other solo songs. It's a song about writing songs lol. Baby lemonade is the sweet feeling of having made good artwork. He lives in the sad town. The cold iron hands clap for him. The party of clowns are at his show. His life is rain falling in grey far away. He writes at night. Here's a great line....

Send a cage through the post, make your name like a ghost.

He's already imprisoned in his own mind, but once he gets that creative drive taking over him, it's like another thing to cage him out from the rest of the world.

He met you by screaming. People who write know that you write your best stuff when you're really bothered by something. The clock they sent through the washing machine. I think he's just saying you lose track of time, but it's not like you had a sense of time to begin with lol. He says come around, so alone. He is missing the great feelign artists get doing their work. There ya have it. More to come soon. IM me people. I love to chat about this stuff. :)

I think he's just expressing his feeling of alienation he felt during his days of fame. I think he still does, he still gets bothered by many people.

I think that baby lemonade is actually just the sun.

Rain falls in gray far away Please, please Baby Lemonade (the sun).

I think he's just saying that he wishes the sun would come and make a bright day out of a cold gray one. There is some other points in the song about early Floyd. The part about the clock is a reference to an old floyd tune.

i thought the same about the sun, alloguia but i don't think that that's it. i think Black&GreenAchilles was right. i couldn't get this song at the beggining, but you've probably got it. it could be that's just me, but for most songs i think that you'll get their entire meaning by having a similar experience, or by knowing a lot about the background.. or in some cases getting high. i don't qualify for any of those things. i wish i did. it could be that im jhsut dumb, but i have a hard time to understand the genuine messages syd transmits through his songs :(.

This thread seems to have multiple opinions on what this song is about. In that continued theme, here's what I think:

I think this song is about the modernization of the world. Not necessarily "modernization," maybe more like globalized, commercialized and "sanitized" in a metaphorical sense.

The clowns are a symbol of the way it used to be, and as the world became more mainstream (the iron) the clowns were stuck in the old way. They are still liked, however the people now clap for them with iron hands, meaning that THEY are entertaining the clowns as a symbol of the primitive.

Send a cage through the post, make your name like a ghost. People these days really are anonymous (their names are ghosts) as people are slowly becoming numbers.

I'm screaming, I met you this way. In a continued world of monotony, he is screaming for it to stop, and someone "heard" that and stared the common feeling.

I'm probably wrong, but what do I know.

When I listen to the song, before even trying to catch what the meaning might be, what stand out is the desperate emotion poured into the words "please". It's the kind of emotion one have if begging for a love one to return, or to be released from a prison. Most of these post-Flyd Barret songs are delivered in monotone. This song is as well...except for the please. Roger Waters poured similar emotion into parts of the Wall, which is a big reason for its success. The emotion there lifted Waters' mediocre vocalist talent into something moving.

So I would begin by trying to understand the words that followed the "please". And here it's the title words, baby lemonade. So what is a baby lemonade?

It could be something that just sounds evocative. Barret seems to have always been attracted to words that convey an image or feeling, even if there is no intentional meaning put into them.

However, it's curious that lemonade is pink. It makes me wonder if in their early days, when the band was new, a baby, if Barrett ever referred to it this way. A pink baby. I've never heard any reference to this. But then maybe the other band members would be embarrassed by such a desperate plea for them to take him back, one which they ignored.

I think we have to be forgiving to the band. From all accounts, even family members, Barrett was far enough gone that no one could work with him. And these guys understandably wanted to make a career of this.

It's always tempting to read into lyrics what we know about the circumstances. But this would have been feeding powerful emotions with Barrett. "Make your name like a ghost." The band did exactly that to him, so hard not to see that in the line.

"I'm screaming, I met you this way you're nice to me like ice in the clock they sent through a washing machine come around, make it soon, so alone please, please, Baby Lemonade"

Man, the pain seems so deep. Again, we have to guard against reading into things, but one wonders...a major problem the band was having with him was getting to show on time for gigs. Did they give him a watch as a gift that went through the washing machine? He met them screaming, you're nice to me like ice...It's like he's saying, "I'm flawed, but my flaws are not new, I've always been this way." He probably was not fully recognizing how far his mind had gone, and how can someone in that state of mind realize it? To him, he thought the problem was merely being late for gigs. But he's alone and wants them to come see him, but these guys were going on with their lives. It's a little cruel, but he was holding them back.