Unreleased Early Pink Floyd Songs from 1965–1967: 'Lucy Leave', 'King Bee', and the Lost Demos

Before Syd Barrett’s psychedelic vision defined Pink Floyd, the band was a rhythm-and-blues cover outfit called The Tea Set. In 1965 they cut a handful of unreleased demos at a small studio in London. The most famous of these are “Lucy Leave” — a Syd-penned original with a frantic, almost surf-rock energy — and “King Bee,” a Slim Harpo blues cover that shows how raw the group sounded before they found their signature space-rock glide. Both tracks sat on a reel-to-reel tape for decades, surfacing officially only in 2016 on the The Early Years 1965–1972 box set.

The session, produced by future Beatles engineer Ken Scott, also yielded “Butterfly” (another Syd original) and “Double O Bo,” a Bo Diddley-influenced instrumental. The band recorded in a single day, using basic two-track equipment, and the tapes were almost lost entirely. Nick Mason later joked that they sounded “terrible” but captured a crucial moment when the band was still feeling out its identity. These tracks are essential for understanding how Pink Floyd went from blues-boom covers to the cosmic jam band that would conquer the UFO Club.

A few other rarities from 1966–1967 exist in bootleg circulation — like the abandoned early version of “Interstellar Overdrive” recorded for a BBC session — but the 1965 demos remain the only official peek into the pre-Syd mythos. They’re not polished, but they’re alive with the scrappy charm of five London art students who hadn’t yet realized they were inventing a new world.