Intuitive Music

Syd Barrett, the legendary singer/songwriter from Pink Floyd and icon of British 60’s psychedelia, died last Thursday 6th of July as the result of complications related to diabetes that he suffered for many years. He was 60 years old and was living a peaceful life since his retirement from the music business in 1970.

Born Roger Keith Barrett in Cambridge, January 6th, 1946, Syd Barrett started playing piano duets with his younger sister Rosemary at his family’s musical evenings. As a kid he had a strong interest for arts and at the age of 11 he got a ukulele from his father. He soon got interested into rock and blues and later got his first guitar and formed his first band The Hollerin’ Blues along with Clive Welham and John Gordon. During those days he first met 14-year- old guitarist David Gilmour. In 1961, Barrett acquired his first electric guitar and started frequenting the local Riverside Jazz Club, where he gained the nickname “Sid” after an old local drummer called Sid Barrett. He soon joined local dance combo called Geoff Mott And The Mottoes.

Roger’s teenage years were shadowed by the death of his father Max, caused by cancer. At this stage Syd started writing his first songs, inspired by The Beatles, Edward Lear, English folk ballads and the storytelling tradition of the American Delta bluesmen. In 1963 he started his studies of art at London’s Camberwell Art School, where he met Roger Waters, a student at Regent Street Polytechnic who played bass at several bands such as Sigma 6, The T-Set, The Meggadeaths and The Abdabs. Barrett soon joined Waters’ band, along with fellow architectural student Nick Mason on drums, pianist Rick Wright, blues singer Chris Dennis and jazz guitarist Bob Klose. It was Syd who suggested to rename the band The Pink Floyd after the legendary Georgia bluesmen Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.

In 1965, Syd Barrett got introduced to LSD-25, a pure liquid psycho-active substance that was starting to be experimented in some small circles in the U.S. Barrett’s connection with the drug came via a group of friends from Cambridge including Ian Moore and filmmaker Nigel Gordon, who had an acquaintance with Michael Hollingshead, the man who actually introduced LSD to professor Timothy Leary. Ian Moore set up a psychedelic garden party at friend Dave Gale’s home where they consumed LSD bathed sugar-cubes. After his dose, Syd Barrett spent 12 hours lost in space carrying an orange and a plum which represented the planets Jupiter and Venus. As many other artists from the 60’s, the LSD experience had a big impact in Syd’s music.

In January 1966, Pink Floyd (featuring Syd Barrett, Nick Mason, Roger Waters and Rick Wright) made their debut appearance at the Countdown Club in London’s Palace Gate. In March that same year they started taking part on a series of psychedelic nights called Spontaneous Underground celebrated at the legendary Marquee Club. This was followed by a number of legendary appearances at venues such as the UFO club (London home of the underground psychedelic scene and at the time known as The Blarney Club), and their famous show at International Times magazine “All Night Rave” concert at Roundhouse with Soft Machine in October. It was during this period that the band got famous for it’s long instrumental improvisations and their visual shows featuring psychedelic oil light shows. The year ended with an appearance at London’s Royal Albert Hall on December the 12th.

In January 1967, Pink Floyd entered the Sound Techniques studio in Chelsea with producer Joe Boyd to record the first tracks of their first single “Arnold Layne”.
By April, Barrett moved from Earlham Street, Soho into a flat in Cromwell Road, a place that his friend and roommate Nigel Gordon described as “the most iniquitous den in all of London”, surrounded by proselytizing acid converts and an endless supply of drugs. Pink Floyd’s manager Andrew King remembers: “This constant diet of hallucinogenics resulted initially in accelerated creativity but soon prompted the onset of Syd’s permanent removal from normality. The poor lad didn’t know whether he was awake or dreaming. He never had the chance to re-establish reality.” Peter Manager also had a bizarre recall from the flat: “My wife and I had a lot of cats and we gave one to Syd because he liked them and it seemed to comfort him. He gave the animal LSD. Can you believe it? He used to be a genuine joy to be around but now he made no sense and the spark that had given the world “See Emily Play” was gone.”

By March, the band signed a record deal with EMI records and started new recordings at Abbey Road studios for their debut album “The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn”, released in August 1967. It’s during that summer that the members of the band started noticing Syd Barrett’s strange behaviors. On June the 24th the band did their first appearance on TV show Top Of The Pops to promote “See Emily Play”. Syd Barrett was wearing immaculate velvet and satin clothes, but one week later on the band’s second appearance at the TV show, he was still wearing the same clothes, now all crumpled. Six days later the band appeared again at the show and this time he arrived the studio wearing nice psychedelic clothes but in the last minute before going in front of the cameras he changed to dirty old wear. On the 21st of August, the band’s scheduled German tour was forced to put down after Syd Barrett vanished away for several days. In October the band started their first USA tour, but these shows marked the fast rise of Syd Barrett’s mental troubles. On 29th of October Pink Floyd appeared on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand to perform a playback of “See Emily Play”, but Syd didn’t open his mouth through the whole song and the camera hardly returned to him for the rest of the song. Next day they appeared at The Pat Boone Show where they were interviewed but Syd didn’t seem to react at all to the interviewer’s questions. On the 14th of November, after a series of recordings at Abbey Road studios for “Paintbox”, Pink Floyd started a U.K. tour supporting the Jimi Hendrix Experience, along with Amen Corner and The Nice. Very often Syd wouldn’t play or just wouldn’t show up, or would just vanish before the show. Guitarist David O’List from The Nice would play his roll. The final episode was on the 22nd of December when, on the “Christmas On Earth Revisited” show at London’s Olympia, Syd stood staring at the audience during the whole show without playing a single note.

In January 1968, Dave Gilmour replaced Syd Barrett after at the band’s concert in Brighton. Two months later, during a meeting at the band’s Ladbroke Road offices, Syd was asked to stop touring and contributing material. They also tried to take Syd to see noted psychiatrist R.D. Laing, who heard a tape of Syd in conversation and pronounced him “incurable” and the band resisted to get him diagnosed by other psychiatrists fearing he would be placed in a mental institution. The decision of Barret’s departure was announced to the press on April the 6th, two months before the release of Pink Floyd’s second album “A Saucerful Of Secrets”. The recording sessions of the album became a calvary, as manager Andrew King remembers: “Syd could be very cruel, making fun of how strait-laced they all were. It got very unpleasant, like a very acrimonious divorce. They couldn’t have a conversation with each other because everything they said was loaded with hidden meaning. Meanwhile, life at the Cromwell Road flat was making Syd’s behavior even more bizarre. With acid on the menu every day, things got further out of control.”
As a premonition, in the album’s last track “Jugband blues” Syd seemed to have a moment of clarity about his deteriorating mental condition when he wrote the lyrics:

“It’s awfully considerate of you to think of me here
And I’m much obliged to you for making it clear that I’m not here
And I never knew the moon could be so big
And I never knew the moon could be so blue
And I’m grateful that you threw away my old shoes
And brought me here instead dressed in red
And I’m wondering who could be writing this song.

I don’t care if the sun don’t shine
And I don’t care if nothing is mine
And I don’t care if I’m nervous with you
I’ll do my loving in the winter.

And the sea isn’t green
And I love the Queen
And what exactly is a dream
And what exactly is a joke.”

Andrew King said: “Syd knew exactly what was happening to him but was powerless to stop it. He knew he was going wrong inside”.

After Syd Barrett’s departure from Pink Floyd, he would often be seen sitting in the reception area at Abbey Road studios with his guitar, waiting to be invited into the band’s sessions. During Pink Floyd’s UK tour he eventually followed the band around the country in his Mini Cooper and he accused David Gilmour of being an intruder and taking his roll in the band. Barrett said to Melody Maker magazine: “I suppose it was really just a matter of being a little offhand about things.”

In the spring of 1969, Syd Barrett announced he was back into the music business to produce a series of tracks for Malcolm Jones’ Harvest label. The sessions featured the contributions from Soft Machine and Jerry Shirley of Humble Pie, and Dave Gilmour. By this time, Barrett was consuming large doses of Mandrax, a tranquilizer which was possibly prescribed to bring him down from LSD, which on the other hand could provoke regular blackouts and severe disorientation. Abbey Road studios’ engineer Pete Bown remembers the sessions: “”Dave Gilmour knew that Syd was beyond help and I think it really hurt him to see that. He said, ‘Whatever happens in here must not get out to anyone.’ So I made sure they were closed sessions. Because if anyone had seen Syd, that would have been it. He used to wander around, couldn’t stay still in the studio; his legs were jittery and nervous all the time. I had to follow him around the studio with a microphone in my hand - wearing a pair of carpet slippers so I didn’t make any noise - just to get a take. He was wandering all over the place musically too. His pitch was out and his timing completely shot. They took down everything on tape in those days, so it’s all there somewhere, with David trying to keep him calm and relaxed. It was like a teacher trying to help a forlorn child. Very, very sad for everyone. Once, Syd stopped in the middle of a take and said he wanted to go to the toilet. There was one on the ground-floor where the classical musicians used to go. I had to smuggle him down there when the studio was empty and I literally had to take him in, undo his trousers and point his p**is at the pan. At the end, David and I went through all the tapes looking for what could be the basis of a song, and we did find quite a lot of usable stuff, which was surprising because at the time I thought we had nothing at all.”

In December 1969 Syd Barrett’s first single “Octopus” was released and was followed by “The Madcap Laughs” album in January 1970, which had good reviews and was for one week in the Top 40. On the 6th of June, Barret played his first solo gig in the “Extraveganza ‘70″ party held at London’s Olympia. He was assisted by Dave Gilmour and Jerry Shirley. In November that same year he released his second solo album “Barrett”, coinciding with the publishing of an interview at Rolling Stone magazine were he was pictured at his mother’s back garden in Cambridge him with a trim haircut and declaring himself “totally together”. But reality was far from his expectations and during a gig at the Corn Exchange in Cambridge, he left the stage after badly cutting his hand with the guitar. This was the last time Syd Barrett ever played live.

After the Cambridge episode, Syd Barrett disappeared from the music business like a ghost. Ironically, five years later, on the 5th of June 1975, he appeared out of the blue at Abbey Road studios where the band was working on the final mix of their ultimate album “Wish You Were Hereâ€?. While the band was precisely listening to the new songs “Wish You Were Hereâ€? and “Shine On You Crazy Diamondâ€?, a personal tribute from the band to Barret, they noticed that he was in the control room listening in silence and unannounced. The band didn’t recognize him as he was bald and he had gained considerable weight. He was wandering about the studio muttering nonsense and later he even attended the reception of David Gilmour’s wedding which happened to be that very day at Abbey Road’s cafeteria, where he was mistaken for a Krishna freak. David Gilmour remembers: “None of us had seen him for years and during that time, he’d put on weight and gone a bit bald. It was a huge shock to see Syd, particularly as we’d been sitting there listening to a playback of a song written about him.” Roger Waters said about their tribute to Barrett: “I don’t know why I started writing those lyrics about Syd. I think because that phrase of Dave’s was an extremely mournful kind of sound. When Syd turned up at the studio and we realized it was him, I was in fucking tears.”

“Shine On You Crazy Diamond” and “Wish You Were Here” are two of the most popular songs from the 70’s and most acclaimed Pink Floyd songs, as well as some of the most beautiful and touching songs wrote about madness in the history of pop music.

For many years, Syd Barrett became an superstar icon in pop music that for many represented the world of underground talent and psychedelic creativity. Something that probably Barrett himself never really chose to be. In 1971 he said to Rolling Stone magazine: “All I ever wanted to do as a kid was play guitar properly and jump around, but too many people got in the way”. Syd Barrett confined himself to a private life with his mother in Canbridge, living a quiet life apart from the music business and earning a modest life from his early recordings. During all those years, he was in an emotionally precarious state and remembering his musical past used to trigger bouts of depression which sometimes would stretching to weeks. This caused the decision of his colleagues from Pink Floyd to avoid having direct contact with him anymore. In October 1988, a collection of Syd Barrett’s out-takes and rare material was released under the title of “Opel”. That same month an unfortunate journalist from “The News Of The World” tracked him down to his home and he appeared on the papers described as “a lunatic who barks like a dog”. He was spotted in different occasions in the media as a bold, fat, old looking and evasive guy who tried to go unnoticed. In April 1992, Atlantic Records offered Syd’s family the sum of £ 75,000 for any new recordings and the family turned it down to protect Barrett’s stability. On year later EMI released the box set “Crazy Diamond - The Complete Syd Barrett”.

During the last ten years of his life, Barrett suffered from diabetes, which caused serious health complications. In 1991, soon after the death of his mother Winifred, he was hospitalized at the Adenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge after loosing most of his sight and lapsing into a diabetic coma. After his recovery he returned to having a comfortable life watched over by relatives and neighbors. Barrett spent time painting and he also wrote a book about the history of art without the intention of having it published. In 1966, Barrett’s nephew, Ian Barrett, conceded an interview to Atomic Spider Productions where he talked about the importance of keeping Barret apart from his musical past in order to avoid his suffering: “The one thing I’d really like to say to people wanting to visit Roger and see how he is - is please DON’T..!!!!! I know many fans are genuinely very caring and are interested in his well-being; but he really doesn’t enjoy having people knock on his door virtually every day wanting to wish him well. PLEASE leave him in peace to get on with his life happily. I can reassure anyone concerned that he really is happy and content and he’d be more so if he didn’t have to awkwardly meet fans hanging outside the house and nervously knocking on his door.”

Syd Barret’s sad life became a legend in the 70’s and inspired Pink Floyd’s work for the rest of their career and made them wonder about the limits between sanity and insanity in numerous songs. One way or the other, Syd Barrett turned into a scape-goat pop icon that represented the fascination of men for the archetype of madness. Syd Barrett is an idol that symbolizes the end of the boundaries in creativity and experimentation, regarding of the limits of mental sanity. As many other icons from the modern culture Syd Barrett -the personage- ended up representing something that nobody would really want to be if they were in Roger Keith Barrett’s shoes.

I don’t see anything cool about Syd Barrett’s mental problems, he was a man who suffered from being sick and who’s privacy was not always respected after quitting the musical business. I used to know a guy who was drummer in a band that got very successful in the 80’s, they had a legion of teenage fans. The star system got this band into the typical drug abuse and they were just a bunch of naive teenagers controlled by managers, producers and other money-makers. In a couple of years, after having tried more types of drugs than fruits in his whole life without any advice, he lost it. He could be seen wandering around the streets with an absent look in his eyes, occasionally asking you for a joint like a little kid looking for a candy. The people call him “the mad man” because nobody knows who this guy is anymore. But if he had been as famous as Barrett was, he would probably be an icon today. In a way he was probably more lucky than Syd.

Syd Barrett has been hailed as one of the true fathers of British psychedelia who influenced generations of musicians and revolutionized the guitar sound in pop music with his delay and sly technics, and drove the original Victorian surrealism from Lewis Carroll, and the oneiric world of the nursery rhymes into the psychedelic culture. David Bowie said: ”His impact on my thinking was enormous. A major regret is that I never got to know him. A diamond indeed.” Pink Floyd’s keyboardist Rick Wright said about him: “I love listening to it just for Syd’s songs,” says Rick Wright reflectively. “It’s sad because it reminds me of what might have been. Syd could have easily been on of the finest songwriters around today.”

If you appreciate Syd Barrett’s music I invite you to pick your old Pink Floyd albums and listen to these songs today, which I can’t help but posting the lyrics so you can tribute his beautiful spirit. Or just grab any of his early Pink Floyd or solo recordings on trade.

SHINE ON YOU CRAZY DIAMOND

Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Now theres a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
You were caught on the crossfire of childhood and stardom, blown on the
Steel breeze.
Come on you target for faraway laughter, come on you stranger, you legend,
You martyr, and shine!

You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Threatened by shadows at night, and exposed in the light.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Well you wore out your welcome with random precision, rode on the
Steel breeze.
Come on you raver, you seer of visions, come on you painter, you piper,
You prisoner, and shine!
(Roger Waters, 1975)

WISH YOU WERE HERE

So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found? The same old fears.
Wish you were here.
(Roger Waters, 1975)