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"Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" is a song by British psychedelic rock band Pink Floyd, and is featured on their second album, A Saucerful of Secrets (1968). It was written by Roger Waters, and features a drum part by Nick Mason. The song was regularly performed between 1967 and 1973, and can be heard on the live record of the 1969 album Ummagumma and seen in the 1972 movie Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii. It also appears on the compilation album Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd, which was released in 2001.
According to an interview with David Gilmour on the 2006 documentary "Which One's Pink?", the song features minor guitar work both from Gilmour and Syd Barrett, making "Set The Controls" the only Pink Floyd song that features all five band members.
The song's recording commenced in August 1967, with overdubs recorded in October of that year and in January 1968. In an article reprinted in the book Pink Floyd - through the eyes of… by Bruno McDonald, Roger Waters admitted to "borrowing" the lyrics from a book of Chinese poetry from the Tang Dynasty period (which was later identified as the book Poems of the late T'ang, translated by A.C. Graham).
Some of the "borrowed" lines were written by Li He, whose poem Don't go out the door contains the line "witness the man who raged at the wall as he wrote his question to heaven", and Li Shangyin, whose poetry contained the lines, "watch little by little the night turn around", "countless the twigs which tremble in dawn," and, "one inch of love is an inch of ashes."
The main riff E E F E D E… is in the phrygian mode.
This song, as well as others by Pink Floyd, influenced author Douglas Adams in the creation of the fictional band "Disaster Area" in his book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Disaster Area is known to be the loudest band in the universe. Similar to Pink Floyd their set is one with many visual effects and ends by crashing a spaceship into the nearest sun.
The song has featured in the set list for Waters' 2006-2007 tour, and previously his In the Flesh tour, featuring stills from the videos of Arnold Layne and Scarecrow, respectively, projected on large screens. In June 2002, audiences enjoyed a surprise when the two nights at London's Wembley Arena saw the appearance, as guest drummer for the performance of the track, of Waters' former Pink Floyd bandmate Nick Mason, the first indication of a reconciliation following the acrimonious split of the mid-1980s.
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