Late Night

This is my favourite Syd Barrett song it's just amazing I love this and Lucifer Sam I recently saw the Flaming Lips cover Lucifer Sam and man they did it with style

lost love..... i'm kinda bummed out that there's only one posting for one song for syd barrett-effervesing elephant. Syd Barrett was/is a great lyricist and musician, unfortunately LSD took him from the masses.Late Night is about coming to a realization that your love is gone, and you still long for the one whose no longer there.

Hmm, I had a different interpretation of this song. I think it is about Barrett's domint personality and how he misses someone he used to control.

"If I mention your name turn around on a chain"

I don't think Syd thinks of this is as a bad thing, as a natural thing. A beneficial relationship on both parties, that he is trying to get a girl he once felt that he owned back.

It is a paradox, how he feels like he needs a girl who he wants to need him. Hmm.

This song is so sad, but it's so beautiful. I think he's saying that as soon as he saw this girl for herself, he fell in love with her. But now she's gone, and he's thinking about why he loved her in the first place. And even though she isn't with him now, part of her will always stay with him.

i love the verse that says: ' inside me I feel alone and unreal and the way you kiss will always be a very special thing to me... ' kinda describes barrett's situation as an lsd casualty recluse.

i think it's about moving on.

i also agree with sydbarrettrocks^^^

I think this song is a primary and perfect of song-singing: It's sung with such a great deal of emotion that it almost makes me cry. I just seems so honest - you really believe in Barrett, and that is why he touches people so deeply (even fundamentally)... It's not the same kind of emotion than seen on PIPER. You really feel the things he have undergone, and the fact he changed in those years. But in a sense the topics on Barrett and Madcap are likely to touch some other places in the heart than those sung about on Piper. It has got a sense of humanism that is simply lovely on all three, and together they paint a quite extraordinary picture of a man.

possibly the lines

• "when i woke up today, and you weren't there to play"
• "when we grew very tall, when i saw you so small" are indications that this is about a girl from his childhood, maybe a first love (perhaps even the one to give him his first kiss?), that he remembers with warm feelings and sadness

'when we grew very tall when I saw you so small'

Syd loved Alice in Wonderland. I think he is referencing that here.

Another quote from Alice: 'I'm not crazy, my reality is just different than yours'. I understand why he loved this book.