"Candy and a Currant Bun" is the B-side to Pink Floyd's first single, "Arnold Layne".[2]
Its lyrical content is about drugs and casual sex.[3]
Lyric change
When performed live in 1967, the song was known as "Let's Roll Another One"[2][4] and contained the line "I'm high – Don't try to spoil my fun", but the record company forced Syd Barrett to rewrite it, at the suggestion of Roger Waters,[5] without the controversial drug references.[6]
Critical reception
When the collection Relics was released in 1971, critic Dave Marsh wrote in Creem that he had expected "Candy and a Currant Bun" to be on it. (It was not.) His album review was largely composed of a paean to this missing track, writing in part that "It's simply the definitive 1967 British rock'n'roll single. It's also uniquely powerful, like one of those first two or three Who 45s, the kind that send chills runnin' up and down your spine, and make you listen time and time again. Unlike the Pink Floyd's later work, 'Candy And A Currant Bun' never ditches rock'n'roll for space music, but it does manage to give something of the sense of multi-galactic perspective that the best of Pink Floyd's (read Syd Barrett's) music has had."[7]
The Mars Volta's cover of "Candy and a Currant Bun" was released in some U.S. indie stores as free 5" VinylDisc in 2008. It was given away with purchase of the album The Bedlam in Goliath. The VinylDisc was an experimental format that contained a digital side and a vinyl side, one side playing in a CD player, while the other side playing on a turntable. The vinyl side contains the Pink Floyd cover "Candy and a Currant Bun", while the CD side contains the audio track for "Candy and a Currant Bun" as well as the "Wax Simulacra" video as enhanced content. It also comes with a removable foam spindle insert to switch between CD and vinyl.
The track was a bonus track on the UK and Australasian releases of the album.
^Manning, Toby (2006). "The Underground". The Rough Guide to Pink Floyd (1st ed.). London: Rough Guides. p. 32. ISBN1-84353-575-0.
^Mason, Nick; Dodd, Philip (2005-03-17). "Chapter 2: Going Underground". Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (illustrated, revised ed.). Chronicle Books. p. 53. ISBN978-0-8118-4824-4. Retrieved 2009-02-12. 'Candy and a Currant Bun' was originally called 'Let's Roll Another One', including the lyrics 'I'm high, don't try to spoil my fun'. Since this was deemed to be pushing our luck on a tape due to be taken into the still very conservative record industry, an alternative set of lyrics had to be cobbled together. The song is also believed to have been about a girl that Syd was talking to named Lucy Goudie. This is unknown but almost confirmed
