Songfacts®:

• This Syd Barrett-penned psychedelic rock song was recorded by Pink Floyd on August 9, 1967. The track was considered both as the follow-up to "See Emily Play" and for inclusion on A Saucerful of Secrets, but was not chosen for either. Although popular as a bootleg in a low quality form for decades, the tune did not have an official release until The Early Years 1965-1972 box set in November 2016.
• The song is basically a description of what Barrett was wearing at the time.
  
  In yellow shoes I get the blues
  Though I walk the streets with my plastic feet
  With my blue velvet trousers, make me feel pink
  There's a kind of stink about blue velvet trousers
  In my paisley shirt I look a jerk
  And my turquoise waistcoat is quite out of sight
  
  The band's then-manager Peter Jenner recalled to Uncut magazine in 2016: "Syd wrote it in my flat. He was there prior to going to the studio. It was like, 'Hey, we've got a session booked, so we've got to have a song,' so he wrote that. It was a description of himself. Maybe you could see it as a call for help."
  
  Co-manger Andrew King added: "Syd had an indelible sense of humour, even in his darkest moments. Everyone really wanted Vegetable Nan to be a commercially feasible track, you can hear everybody under the sun singing in the chorus at the end. But nothing happened. It just disappeared into the archives."
• Pink Floyd played "Vegetable Man" live for a BBC radio broadcast on December 20, 1967.