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following a performance at a Catholic youth club the owner refused to pay, a stance which the magistrate agreed with, claiming that the band's performance "wasn't music". This was not the only occasion on which they encountered such opinions, but they were better received at the UFO Club in London. Barrett's performances were reportedly exuberant, "… leaping around and the madness, and the kind of improvisation he was doing … he was inspired. He would constantly manage to get past his limitations and into areas that were very, very interesting. Which none of the others could do." The often drug-addled audience was receptive to the music they played, but the band remained drug-free —"We were out of it, not on acid, but out of the loop, stuck in the dressing room at UFO." According to Mason, the psychedelic movement had "taken place around us—not within us". Nevertheless The Pink Floyd Sound were present at the head of a wave of interest in psychedelic music, and began to attract the attention of the music industry. While in negotiations with record companies, Joe Boyd and booking agent Bryan Morrison arranged for and funded the recording of several songs at Sound Techniques in West Hampstead, including "Arnold Layne", and a version of "Interstellar Overdrive", and also for the production in Sussex of a short music film for "Arnold Layne". Despite early interest from Polydor, the band signed with EMI, with a £5,000 advance. Boyd was not included in the deal.
"Arnold Layne" became Pink Floyd's (the definite article seems to have been dropped at some point in 1967) first single, released on 11 March 1967. Its references to cross-dressing saw it banned by several radio stations, but some creative manipulation at the shops which supplied sales figures to the music industry meant that it peaked in the UK charts at number 20. All four members of the band had by then abandoned their studies or jobs, and they upgraded their ageing Bedford van to a Ford Transit, using it to travel to over 200 gigs in 1967 (a tenfold increase on the previous year). They were joined by road manager Peter Wynne Willson, with whom Barrett had previously shared a flat. Willson updated the band's lighting rig, with some innovative ideas including the use of polarisers, mirrors, and stretched condoms.