‘Vegetable Man’: The Syd Barrett Song the Band Buried for Decades

“Vegetable Man” was recorded during the same June 1967 sessions that produced “See Emily Play,” but the band quickly realized the lyrics were too revealing. Syd Barrett had written lines like “I’ve been looking all over the place for a place for me” and a chorus that bluntly declared “I am the vegetable man” — a self-description that mirrored his deteriorating mental state. The song’s nursery-rhyme melody and off-kilter delivery made it catchy, but the content was a raw, unguarded look at someone slipping into psychosis.

Pink Floyd shelved it after the sessions, and it remained in the vaults for nearly 50 years. The band considered it too painful to release while Barrett was still alive — and even after his death, they were hesitant to commercialize such a personal breakdown. When it finally surfaced on the 2016 box set The Early Years 1965–1972, fans could hear exactly why the group had kept it hidden: it’s a three-minute window into a brilliant mind losing its grip, and it still feels uncomfortably intimate.