10 Best Experimental Rock Songs Of All Time
5. Pink Floyd - Interstellar Overdrive
This lengthy, involved instrumental was recorded before Pink Floyd truly embraced the bigness and ambition possible for a band of their means, but it’s a whole lot more intriguing than a lot of the stuff they’d come out with when they had explicit aims of tracking lofty ideas and concept records.
This can be attributed to a large degree to the stewardship of Syd Barrett. The late Floyd co-founder was in the driving seat for their debut record Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, and steers his group through nine minutes of heavy rock turned avant-jazz and back to rocking for an extended coda.
It all follows on from that riff, simple to the point of being lunkheaded but so memorable and bruising. It’s a freewheeling piece of music but intricately put together, showing both sides of Pink Floyd - the willingness to follow any idea anywhere, and the discipline to figure out precisely what they had before going to press, and ensuring the final product was just right.
A live favourite in the early days of the band, the song and the style were retired following Barrett’s removal from the group, but never has a band so studied and meticulous sounded so free.