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Three to One
See Emily Play / Give Me Love - 7"
Arc - 1967
Michael Panontin
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The Pink Floyd's 'See Emily Play' is one of the greatest pop songs ever written, psychedelic or otherwise. Syd Barrett's dreamy nugget, ostensibly about a free-spirited fifteen-year-old but with fantastical references to Pre-Raphaelite art and Romantic poetry, reached an almost unimaginable #6 slot across the pond in the UK for the week of July 28, 1967.
Syd's downward trajectory is by now well known to all. The Pink Floyd frontman first went AWOL on September 14th, 1967 before a gig at the Liverpool Empire, with the band having to call up the Nice's David O'List as a last-minute replacement. By 1968, it was becoming increasingly apparent that Barrett was starting to detach from reality, often appearing confused, at times strumming just one chord on stage or staring blankly into the camera on TV appearances. As a result of his inevitable departure from the band in 1968, what should have been a classic is now but a footnote in the Pink Floyd oeuvre. 'See Emily Play' was last performed live on November 25th, 1967 at a show in Blackpool, England.
Here in Canuckistan, 'See Emily Play' was issued some three months later in September 1967. And strangely, though the song failed to chart (and only "bubbled under" at #134 in the US) an obscure version by a totally unknown Canadian band was quite possibly the first Pink Floyd cover ever set to vinyl anywhere in the world.
The Three to One had only recently moved to Toronto from Vancouver. RPM first made mention of the band in the September 2nd, 1967 issue, referring to them as a group "composed of three guys and the best looking female barefoot drummer". The Three to One would certainly have been a bit of a novelty at the time with a woman, Claudette Skrypnyk, behind the drum kit. But she had, as RPM would later write, "a heaping big package of talent along with her," specifically lead guitarist Brian Russell, bassist Derek Norris and lead singer John Renton, who also played twelve-string guitar, harmonica and organ. What is perhaps even more interesting is RPM makes no mention of Pink Floyd anywhere. To wit: "Their single 'See Emily Play' has kind of an East Indian sound to it, which shouldn't be too hard for them, being as leader John Renton was born in India. It's on Arc (1186)."
The Three to One's rendition is serviceable, if nothing else, and it veers little from the original, with that same lysergic organ swirl and those disorienting reverb effects. But, as one YouTube poster so charitably put it, "it is a difficult song to cover, [and] a reminder that without the genius of [producer] Norman Smith, the original single could have sounded like this."
How the good folks at Arc Sound came across a copy of 'See Emily Play' is anyone's guess. Nancy Bacal, a freelance Canadian journalist living in London, managed to interview the Floyd in December 1966, and it was actually broadcast by the CBC on a program called The Action Set. But this was before the band had even entered a recording studio. The song was included on the US pressing of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, but that was not even issued until October 21st. The Canadian pressing (part of the Capitol 6000 series) may indeed have come out sooner, but as was the case with other releases at the time, it featured a track listing closer to that of the British LP, leaving off 'See Emily Play' entirely. Even weirder is that Arc included the Three to One recording on their 1968 comp CTV's After Four, but erroneously labelled it as Bob Francis' 'I've Been a Bad, Bad Boy'.
The Three to One re-emerged the following year as the Raja, recording a single ('Realize') on the Goodgroove imprint before disappearing from view. Copies of the Three to One's 'See Emily Play'usually go for under two bills these days, but tracking one down is going to be a tough go. Lazier diggers may want to look for Garage Greats' bootleg version, an exact replica issued back in 2008 as part of their extensive sixties garage series.
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