The last song on The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, “Bike” is also one of the most curious. The song was written for Barrett’s then girlfriend, Jenny Spires. The words and music are of an apparent lightness of tone, but leave a disquieting impression, if only for the juxtaposition of the main material with the chaotic finale. Some observers would see in this the beginnings of the songwriter’s future psychological collapse, while others note it is a continuation of his lifelong views of a fantastical, fairy-tale existence. While this is possible, the main thing we should take from “Bike” is a sense of Barrett’s talent, which expresses itself in a proliferation or teeming of ideas, even if we feel at the same time that he is teetering on the edge of the precipice.

In the song, Syd Barrett’s lyrical subject shows a girl his bike (which he borrowed); a cloak; a homeless, aging mouse that he calls Gerald; and a clan of gingerbread men, because she “fits in with [his] world.” With each repetition of the chorus, a sudden percussive noise is heard similar to the firing of two gunshots. Towards the end of the song, he offers to take her into a “room of musical tunes”.

The final verse is followed by an instrumental section that is a piece of musique concrète: a noisy collage of oscillators, clocks, gongs, bells, a violin, and other sounds edited with tape techniques, apparently the “other room” spoken of in the song and giving the impression of the turning gears of a bicycle. The ending of the song fades out with a tape loop of the band members laughing reversed and played at double speed.  It is reminiscent of a loop of quacking rubber ducks, recalling the loop the Beatles added to the end of the second side of the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The simplicity of Barrett’s lyrics only seem apparent. More specifically, the songwriter seems to deliberately cultivate ambiguity as he tells his story. The most obvious example occurs in the third verse, when Barrett sings: “I know a mouse, and he hasn’t got a house./ I don’t know why I call him Gerald”. It is very difficult to tell whether the narrator does not know why the mouse has no house or why it is called Gerald.

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