The 'Mickey's Monkey' Rehearsal Tape: Syd Barrett’s Lost ‘Let’s Get Together’ from 1967

The most fascinating relic from Syd Barrett’s final creative phase with Pink Floyd isn’t a studio outtake or a BBC session — it’s a crackly reel-to-reel recording made in a rented London rehearsal room in early 1967. Bootleggers call it the “Mickey’s Monkey” tape because the band ran through a scrappy cover of Smokey Robinson’s soul hit during the same session. But the real prize is a loose, shambling take on “Let’s Get Together,” the Dino Valenti peace-anthem that Jefferson Airplane and The Youngbloods would soon make famous.

What makes this performance a lost piece of early psychedelic history is how it captures the exact moment Syd’s whimsical, acid-drenched vision was still steering the ship. His cracked, slightly slurred vocal delivery floats above a tangled web of chiming guitars and primitive keyboard swells — a ghostly preview of the pastoral psychedelia that Piper at the Gates of Dawn would barely touch. The band sounds like they’re discovering the song in real time, with no producer, no pressure, just four guys feeling out a new sound in a sweaty room. No official version exists; the tape circulates only among collectors as a muffled, often mislabeled artifact. It’