Syd Barrett:« I was at Cambridge at the time. I started to write the song. I pinched the line about «moonshine washing line» from Rog, our bass guitarist - because he has an enormous washing line in the back of his house. Then I thought, «Arnold must have a hobby», and it went on from there. "Arnold Layne" just happens to dig dressing up in women's clothing. A lot of people do - so let's face up to reality. About the only other lyric anybody could object to, is the bit about, "It takes two to know" and there's nothing "smutty" about that! ».
« Freaking out with the Pink Floyd », Melody Maker, 1st April 1967.
Roger Waters;
«Both my mother and Syd's mother had students as lodgers because there was a girl's college up the road so there was constantly great lines of bras and knickers on our washing lines.' In one curious incident, the bras and knickers that hung on the washing lines in the Barrett's garden proved irresistable to a local underwear fetishist. This character, whom Barrett would later immortalise in song as Arnold Layne, made off with many of poor nursing students' undergarments, presumably to indulge his fantasies. 'Arnold or whoever he was, had bits and pieces off our washing lines. They never caught him. He stopped doing it after a bit, when things got too hot for him»
« Lost in the Woods: Syd Barrett and the Pink Floyd », Julian Palacios, 1998
Norman Smith (Record Producer):
«I wasn't too keen actually on Arnold Layne. Joe Boyd actually did that. I wasn't too keen on that particular version. I was proven wrong, of course, because eventually that was the one that went out, but I thought we could better it. In fact, I told the boys I'd like to have another go anyway and in fact we set up this recording to do just that along with other titles of course; it was an all-night session, if I remember rightly. And that was going to be the first song but when they arrived I could see that they weren't too keen in fact to attempt a remake of "Arnold Layne" so in fact we never did start it, we never did have a go at that. So, the original one went out».
«Your mother didn’t like this», Capital Radio, 17 December 1976.
Joe Boyd (Record Producer):
« The sessions were easy and fun: record one night, mix the next ».
«Pink Floyd - the 30 greater songs», Uncut, October 2008
Nick Mason:
« This is a very unusual song. It is part of the late sixties, where suddenly songs are more than just « I’m gonna get you, babe » wanted to be an R&B band, and somehow completely distracted by writing songs like Arnold Layne, Bike and The Gnome and that very strange English way of life »
« David Gilmour Finds Life After Pink Floyd », Rolling Stone, 27 August 2015
