Wolfpack

As I had thought some weeks back this is my thread on this song.
These below are my thoughts about the song, from my work "A neatly typed information pack" (a page full of links with all the information I've found about the song, but it was too long to be posted here: there is also a .doc file version, which is also a bit more neatly typed).
Please don't forget the video I made about my thoughts on the song (to be seen before EMI or someone else will cancel it from YouTube).


This is one of my favourite Syd's songs. The other ones could be No Good Trying, If It's In You, Late Night or Milky Way, for the explicit melodies with the lyrics attuned too, that I find also in many other Syd's songs, like the popular Octopus, Terrapin and Dark Globe, the less-known Scream Thy Last Scream or the outro in Vegetable Man too, but with a spell that is different from, for instance, that somehow unitary spell in all songs from The Piper album (see note 1).
But Wolfpack has a strange emotional potential into it, perhaps an odd rage similar to that when I await for the Syd's words of vent "rats, rats, lay down flat!" in the song "Rats", a song that in fact usually has been linked together with "Wolfpack", but the louder sound of "Wolfpack" (since from the shouting word "Howling" as starting) is far more epic, more subliminal to me. I wonder how it would sound with a louder emphatic drumming, like in the more modern rock style.
Another reason why I like Wolfpack so much is personal. Likely Syd figures a "pack in formation" just as a group of wolves (the pack) following a group of persons (the fighters): it's evident in his words "Waving us back in formation" and "The pack on their backs, the fighters". The fighters would go, "Bowling they bat as a group, And the leader is seen, so early..." (although here it's not clear if the subject is "the fighters" or "the wolves", but it's a poem), but their leader would be overcome by the wolves after some "tear" of "growing" dejection, and like torn to pieces, skinned, "Gripped with blanched bones", dying, he moan with "Magnesium, proverbs and sobs...". Since he speaks in first person ("I lay as if in surround...", "The milder I gaze"), the leader might be himself in the real life and then the fighters would easily represent the Pink Floyd, attacked by a not well defined "pack".
If it is so, that pack (of wolves in formation) should likely represent a group or a multitude of merciless persons (gathered together), but I like to figure (and this is my very personal interpretation) that "pack" as a "pack (of) information", since the words "in" and "formation" in the song sounded very good to me if they was the single word "information".
After all when Syd sings "in formatioooooon" he highlight these words more than any other words in the song. And after all what are those "Far reaching waves" which "On sight, shone right"? Do you see them simply as a mass of wolves in a story or some mass of bad people in a true life? Instead, see how would sound the song if it had struck up with "Howling the band in formation appears". I think all the song would be clearer, letting to think immediately to the Pink Floyd in concert, but it would be actually too explicit for a Syd's song (see note 2).
If the song is just a criticism of an howling society "fairly" transposed in wolves as written in the Barrett lyric analysis book by Bratus, just full of games of words, "onomatopoeically" as he says, then very little remains if not to conjecture something like that the Syd's painted insects would be a "transposition" too, of a race candidate to succeed the human race (replying to a question suggested by Luca Ferrari; after all it's based on an old theory which perhaps was known to Syd). I don't think so. I know it was Syd's intention to give more possible meanings to his songs and not either a single one. However, I don't think that pack represents just Pink Floyd or someone in particular, but what could be more terrifying than a pack of hungry wolves to represent an approaching danger of death?
So, I've thought, can that waves represent a mass of "waves" of sounds and lights, perhaps from lightshows with their mirrors, scenic fog and loud percussive intros on the "back" of motionless musicians (thinking to "Diamonds and clubs, light misted fog, the dead", reminding me also that Syd's shining guitar and the "deadly" sound of "Set The Controls"), and from the microphones in front of a singer for hours, as in a "mild" way, in form of "all that" electrical reproductions of audio, video (thinking to "Mild the reflecting electricity eyes...", hearing in my ears "all that" instead of "mild"), songs, poems, works (thinking to "All the animals laying trail, Beyond the bough winds", see note 3), interviews, discussions, comparisons, contests, struggles, pack of lies (noting "pack" as another highlighted sung word), which become too huge, uncontrollable, as a heap of information which can swamp and then kill the art, like the digital world is nowadays for the music too?
Probably it was not Syd's intention to let's imagine something about "information", but I like that thought, because it sounds nice to me, and I know he would be glad of any neatly typed thoughts. Even more unlikely Roger Waters considered this song when he wrote "Who needs information?".
Anyway this above is my "information pack" on this song.

(1) That Piper's spell was for me also in the B-sides of Syd's "explosive sounding" first singles on Arnold and Emily, i.e. in "Candy and a Currant Bun" too, but also in the post-Piper "Apples and Oranges", so I see in that "unitary spell" not exactly a coherent tale, but something more general, perhaps more cheerful and less inner than Syd's solo works.
(2) I like to guess a bit more explicit the demo jealously taken away by Dave. To who say Barrett was writing nonsense: don't make me laugh, any songwriter is able to write sounding explicit lyrics about a story, his life, his mood, the world, and so on, but when one try to describe something less explicit… even I have been able to write here some adjective with the same lot of sense of what Kris DiLorenzo wrote about Syd's songs in his 1978 article, i.e. "simple, direct tunes, strong, catchy melodic hooks with nonsense rhymes and wandering verses", but me, him, and everyone here doesn't need to write the important lyrics for his favourite song as an innovator, a genius like Syd needed in that time.
(3) That winds in the Frazer's bough might include the Piper's inspiring wind, representing how the works are leaved as footprints, including the ones beyond his works. There may be other literary references in the song (a Pushkin's battle?): what I've wrote about the lyrics seems long, but it's much less exhaustive than what was did for Octopus lyrics in 2005. The possible posts below in this forum will be well appreciated.

Sure.

I have always been of the impression that it was 'information' rather than 'in formation'... interesting essay, only needs to be presented in a bit more readable way f you ask me...

Thank you for your precious observations. If you mean readable for the form I hope for some expert in html editing to post it even better than my .doc version. If you mean (likely) readable for the substance, well, I guess you already know I hope for a revision, with other observations and, perhaps, the help of some expert in Barrett/English literature, as was did, for instance, for Octopus in 2008 (i.e. an analysis verse by verse in my "Lyrics analysis" section), being me not such an expert.