The Story In The Song – Pink Floyd – Arnold Layne

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1967 Not many legendary rock bands can say their career started with a song about a pervert who steals women’s clothes off washing lines outside their houses, but this was the debut hit for Pink Floyd. Sid Barratt based Arnold on an unidentified and never caught undergarments thief who was taking women’s wear from near his home, close to where Roger Waters also lived. In the song, Layne takes the clothes home and wears them from a transvestite need, until he is caught and imprisoned with dire warnings not to do it again. There is a sense of sympathy for him in the song which was often banned for its subject matter. A great debut by a band who just got better even without their first lead performer-writer, Barratt, lost to drugs within a few years. Youtube - The band’s original surreal spooky promotional film for the song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmZ8gFgucwI Arthur Chappell