Syd Barrett has died

[kinuta]

I saw him with the original Floyd several times in London, in fact I met my first wife at an original Floyd gig at 'Middle Earth' in Covent Garden. Anyone else remember that place ?

Edited July 12, 2006 by kinuta

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

oh is that really so? what was that like for u 2 see that -- did u have fun?

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

chewy-chew-chew back again: Syd is dead. i knew this day was comming but i didnt know it would be happening right now. its all over. godammit syd is fucking dead man, fucking SYD

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

not only did syd write good music but he wrote even better lyrics which influenced later pf lyrics through the end. the meter and flow of the rhymes. they were simple but with complex twists. syd was a good guy but life really stuck it to him and for that i am sorry. i always thought one day his p.f. friends would visit him but alas it never happened.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

ghost of miles: chewy chew chew here-- i know about the "stars" band but i do not think its been recorded? do yo know that for sure? i know there are photos and and article though....

[kinuta]

oh is that really so? what was that like for u 2 see that -- did u have fun?

It was great of course. The club was small so you could stand right in front of the stage to watch.

The dreaded era of big arena concerts hadn't started so music could still be experienced in more intimate surroundings. They had a great light show.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

did u ever see early yes. were they just as good in your opinion.

sincerely, chewy-chew-chew

[kinuta]

I saw Yes maybe twice. They were a few years after the Piper At The Gates Of Dawn Floyd period.

'The Yes Album' was the one that I best remember, everyone played it to death but that was about 71 or 72 I think. I wasn't really a progressive rock fan but the Pink Floyd were unique in the true sense of the word.

More than anything they captured the mood of 1967 in London. The street/music scene and Pink Floyd were completely intertwined. I was lucky to have lived there at that time and Syd Barrett's passing is epecially poignant for me. If anyone back then had said that his death would be worldwide news in 40 years time I would have thought they were mad.

[Niko]

ghost of miles: chewy chew chew here-- i know about the "stars" band but i do not think its been recorded? do yo know that for sure? i know there are photos and and article though....

in this interview:

http://members.aol.com/pgrsel/barrett/twink.htm

Stars drummer Twink mentions that all Stars gigs were recorded... not the greatest interview possible (my favorite Q/A is

Ivor Trueman: What about Mick Farrens solo album, Mona?

Twink: I play drums on that.)

but it's also a little about Tommorow that predecessor of Yes

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

did they talk about syd on any US news show?

[sidewinder]

Didn't the early Floyd use to do their London light-show concerts at a basement club on Tottenham Court Road? (apparently on LHS going North from the tube). Not sure what the club was called. Must have passed the site hundreds of times - has been built over with shops I believe.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

r u talking about the UFO club

[kinuta]

Didn't the early Floyd use to do their London light-show concerts at a basement club on Tottenham Court Road? (apparently on LHS going North from the tube). Not sure what the club was called. Must have passed the site hundreds of times - has been built over with shops I believe.

It was UFO . Middle Earth opened after UFO closed.

[7/4]

Voice obit

[brownie]

No wonder I lost whatever interest I had in Pink Floyd when Syd Barrett deserted the group.

Fron the London Sunday Times today.

MY LOVABLE ORDINARY BROTHER SYD

The ‘crazy diamond’ founder of Pink Floyd was no acid casualty or recluse. He loved art and DIY, his sister Rosemary tells his biographer Tim Willis in her first interview for 30 years

When the death of 60-year-old Roger “Syd” Barrett was announced on Tuesday, the media raised an astonishing last hurrah for the founder of Pink Floyd, the “crazy diamond” who had shunned the public gaze for decades.

The descriptions of him as a “mad genius”, “recluse” and “acid casualty” were far off the mark, however, according to his sister Rosemary.

When I wrote Barrett’s biography, Madcap, four years ago I had off-the-record guidance from Rosemary — his junior by two years and closest friend. Last week, after his death, we spoke again and this time she went on the record — the first time she has given a press interview for more than 30 years.

She described him as a loving man who “simply couldn’t understand” the continued interest in his distant Pink Floyd years and was too absorbed in his own thoughts to spare time for fans.

While her account is naturally fond, one should remember that she has spent much of her working life as a nurse and therefore sees no stigma in mental illness. As children, she and Barrett shared a bedroom and she recalls him leaping from his sheets to conduct an imaginary orchestra. He always had an extraordinary mind, bordering on the autistic or Aspergic. He had a rare talent to exploit ambiguities in language and also experienced synaesthesia — the ability to “see sounds and hear colours” — which was to be a huge influence on his music in his psychedelic phase.

As a performing artist, signed to a label, he was under enormous strain. Not only did he find fame a two-edged sword, he was also deeply resistant to his record company’s commercial demands. He was run ragged. Between January 1966, when the Floyd turned professional, and January 1968, Barrett played 220 gigs around Britain — not to mention broadcasting and performances abroad — as well as writing, recording and co-producing two hit singles, most of the band’s first album and part of the second.

While his enthusiastic ingestion of any drugs available might have triggered some disturbing behaviour, such stress might tip anyone into nervous collapse.

From 1981, when he returned from London to the suburbs of his native Cambridge, resumed the name Roger and set up home in his mother’s modest semi, he made faltering but significant progress.

Rosemary is adamant that he neither suffered from mental illness nor received treatment for it at any time since they resumed regular contact 25 years ago. At first he did spend some time in a private “home for lost souls” — Greenwoods in Essex — but she says there was no formal therapy programme there. (“And besides, he didn’t mix, because he was very content to be basket weaving and making things.”) Later he agreed to some sessions with a psychiatrist at Fulbourn psychiatric hospital, Cambridge, but neither medication nor therapy was considered appropriate.

He might have continued to find social interaction difficult — when I knocked on his door while writing my book he greeted me in his underpants and avoided conversation by saying that he was just looking after the house — but the idea that he “didn’t recognise he was Syd” is nonsense. His troubled years had been so painful that even thinking about his former incarnation upset him, so he made a conscious effort to avoid that trap.

Because he was so interested in his own thoughts, his sister said, he often forgot about the mundane chores essential to comfort. To keep an eye on him, she would visit or phone every day and sometimes accompany him on expeditions into town.

Earlier this year an old friend saw the pair in Robert Sayles, the Cambridge department store, and went up to renew their acquaintance. “Hello, Syd,” he said. “Do you remember me?”

“Yup,” replied Barrett. But Rosemary cut in with “Roger is only interested in buying some ties today”, and led her brother away. Now she admits she might have been over-protective.

Barrett lived in the semi with his mother until her death in 1991 and then remained there alone. “So much of his life was boringly normal,” said Rosemary. “He looked after himself and the house and garden. He went shopping for basics on his bike — always passing the time of day with the local shopkeepers — and he went to DIY stores like B&Q for wood, which he brought home to make things for the house and garden.

“Actually, he was a hopeless handyman, he was always laughing at his attempts, but he enjoyed it. Then there was his cooking. Like everyone who lives on their own, he sometimes found that boring but he became good at curries.

“When Roger was working he liked to listen to jazz tapes. Thelonious Monk, Django Reinhardt, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis were his favourites — he always found something new in them — but apart from the early Rolling Stones, he’d lost interest in pop music a long time ago.

“As for a television or radio, he didn’t feel the need to own one because he didn’t want to waste any energy concentrating on it. It’s not that he couldn’t apply his mind. He read very deeply about the history of art and actually wrote an unpublished book about it, which I’m too sad to read at the moment. But he found his own mind so absorbing that he didn’t want to be distracted.

“He did have leisure interests. He took up photography, and sometimes we went to the seaside together. Quite often he took the train on his own to London to look at the major art collections — and he loved flowers. He made regular trips to the Botanic Gardens and to the dahlias at Anglesey Abbey, near Lode. But of course, his passion was his painting.

“Roger worked in a variety of styles — though he admired no one after the impressionists — and you could say he came up with his own type of conceptual art. He would photograph a particular flower and paint a large canvas from the photograph. Then he would make a photographic record of the picture before destroying the canvas. In a way, that was very typical of his approach to life. Once something was over, it was over. He felt no need to revisit it.

“That’s why he avoided contact with journalists and fans. He simply couldn’t understand the interest in something that had happened so long ago and he wasn’t willing to interrupt his own musings for their sake. After a while he and I stopped discussing the times he was bothered. We both knew what we thought and we simply had nothing more to add. It became easiest to pretend those incidents never happened and just blank them out.

“Roger may have been a bit selfish — or rather self-absorbed — but when people called him a recluse they were really only projecting their own disappointment. He knew what they wanted but he wasn’t willing to give it to them.

“Roger was unique; they didn’t have the vocabulary to describe him and so they pigeonholed him. If only they had seen him with children. His nieces and nephews, the kids in the road — he would have them in stitches. He could talk at length and he played with words in a way that children instinctively appreciated, even if it sometimes threw adults.”

He was quite a sharp dresser, too. “He didn’t follow fashion — he just bought what he liked for himself — but he liked to look presentable. His clothes were always clean and pressed. In fact, if he had an obsession, it was with that.”

Barrett suffered from stomach ulcers for 30 years — which he managed by drinking milk — and also developed diabetes. “But he simply refused to admit it to himself. For days at a time he wouldn’t take his pills — which, being a nurse, could have worried me. But to be honest, it can’t have been very severe because he never showed any ill effects.”

What he did show, she said, was love: “I gave it to him and he gave it to me. He was incredibly supportive when our mother died. And in the past week I’ve been surprised to learn how popular he was with the local tradesmen. He was simply a very lovable person.

“He showed his personality in lots of different ways — which some outsiders found confusing — but underneath he was solid as a rock. It may have been a responsibility to look out for him, but it was never a burden.”

Edited July 16, 2006 by brownie

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

very interesting article

[Tony Pusey]

Yup Kinuta, I remember it well, ( Well not really well if you know what I mean!)

And Chewy , Yes were the pits even way back when. there was a time when I could not avoid Yours is no disgrace, no matter how hard I tried, every pubescent hippie chickidee seemed to play the Yes album, drove me up the soddin wall!

[ghost of miles]

Just finished reading the entry for Piper at the Gates of Dawn in the marvelous 33 1/3 series and had to watch this video yet again: Astronomy Domine live '67

I'd like to write a story that could match the impact of that performance.

[Niko]

Just finished reading the entry for Piper at the Gates of Dawn in the marvelous 33 1/3 series and had to watch this video yet again: Astronomy Domine live '67

I'd like to write a story that could match the impact of that performance.

the video clip for the cure's boys don't cry is (at least very similar but probably) a more direct tribute to this performance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsoej08T6v8

[ghost of miles]

Volume is incredibly low on this, but it has footage of the Floyd at UFO circa early '67 (comes from a BBC documentary):

Pink Floyd: "Interstellar Overdrive" at UFO

[Claude]

Syd Barrett's house for sale:

http://212.50.188.107/cgi-win/vebra.cgi?de...1/STMAR/40803/1

[Chalupa]

Happy Birthday Syd!

[J Larsen]

Syd Barrett's house for sale:

http://212.50.188.107/cgi-win/vebra.cgi?de...1/STMAR/40803/1

I know where Syd Barret lived...

Edit: that's a semi-obscure 80s song reference.

Edited January 6, 2007 by J Larsen

[Matthew]

Interesting article on Syd Barrett by Keith Jordon:

If an article published by the British tabloid newspaper The Mail on Sunday - and the gentleman who wrote the story - are to be believed, then it would seem Roger Keith (Syd) Barrett was not quite the quiet recluse (who lived at number 6 St Margaret’s Square in Cambridge for the final 25 years of his life) that everyone thought he was. Former next door neighbour David Sore from number 7 (it’s a cul de sac so 7 is next door) apparently shared some of his memories of living next door to Syd Barrett from childhood until recently in the Mail on Sunday.

Syd Barrett’s frequent use of mass quantities of drugs - probably combined with a natural propensity to develop the symptoms of schizophrenia - caused him to be unreliable in a professional band as Pink Floyd had become by 1967. When Pink Floyd finally got their visas sorted out so that they could work and perform in the USA in November 1967, Syd was not able to perform at all on occasion; particularly the American Bandstand show. Additionally, on the Jimi Hendrix Experience tour later that month, - on which Pink Floyd were one of the support acts - Barrett was being typically Barrett about things and, on one occasion, Davy O’List from The Nice had to stand in and play Syd’s parts.

Iconic photo of The five man Floyd with Barrett centre back.

In January 1968, Syd Barrett’s erratic behaviour was preventing Pink Floyd from being a professional and reliable band. David Gilmour was, by now, joining Pink Floyd on stage to play as the 5 man Floyd. The egos of the band were thirsty for success and so it was decided one day, on the way to a gig in Southampton, that Syd Barrett would not be picked up. David Gilmour would thus become the permanent lead guitarist for Pink Floyd from the 26th January 1968 at the Southampton University gig they drove to in their van. This late comer to Pink Floyd is currently its lead guitarist and front man.

The fact that Syd was the creative force behind Pink Floyd in the 1960’s, led the bands management to drop the Pink Floyd in favour of managing the talent of Syd. Syd went on to record two solo albums called The Madcap Laughs and Barrett although not to considerable commercial success. Much later, an album of studio out-takes and dropped tracks was released called Opel. Due to his increasingly fragile mind, bad behaviour and worsening mental condition, Barrett eventually retired from the music business. Apparently with a little bitterness and resentment!

To assume that Syd Barrett had completely left the earth due to his mental health problems would be a flawed assumption; especially in light of the recent accounts of his life post-Floyd. There was one occasion during the Wish You Were Here recording sessions in the 1970s that Syd Barrett turned up at Abbey Road Recording Studios in London. The Pink Floyd members saw a large, round, extremely fat man appear in the studio with a completely shaved head. Even his eyebrows were missing. It suddenly dawned on the members of Pink Floyd that the man was none other than Syd Barrett. They were working on the tribute song to Syd Barrett ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ at the time.

Eventually Barrett had returned home to Cambridge to 6 St Margaret’s Square to live with his mother Winifred Barrett after a stint of living in various places such as Chelsea Cloisters where he often gave away expensive items to people. Barrett’s mental condition had not improved and, according to a story in the mail on Sunday on 3rd December 2006, Barrett’s erratic and abusive behaviour forced Winifred Barrett to move out of 6 St Margaret’s square leaving her daughter - Barrett’s sister - Rosemary to look after Syd. She visited often and they became very close.

For a long time, biographers of Roger Keith Barrett have been unable to shed much light on the life of Barrett when he moved back to Cambridge in 1981. But, in an article written by Barrett’s former next door neighbour David Sore published on 3rd December 2006, a wealth of anecdotes have appeared that, combined with the recent auction items of Barrett’s final possessions, shed a great deal of light on the mysterious life of Roger Keith Barrett.

Some of the events and happenings as written by the neighbour in the Mail on Sunday article are listed below. Apparently Roger’s behaviour went like this:

• Screaming and animal-like howling;

• Shouting ‘F****** Roger Waters! I’m going to f****** kill him’;

• Destroying furniture;

• Destroyed the beautiful front garden of the property;

• Having huge bonfires to burn the trees and his paintings;

• Lived on fry-ups often setting pan on fire then abandoning it;

• Syd smoked and drank a lot of alcohol;

• Neighbour only saw Barrett smile once when neighbour was washing his car. Neighbour speculated that Barrett possibly thought he was watering it like a plant as the hosepipe let out its water;

• After 1986, the peak of the legal wrangling with Pink Floyd and Roger Waters co-incidentally, Barrett started to calm down and had less ‘attacks’ as his neighbour called them, eventually even sending hand-made Christmas cards to neighbours.

Some of the redeeming factors the former neighbour David Sore pointed out were that, when Roger Barrett was not having one of his attacks - indeed, they died down after the late 1980s - Roger was a pretty quiet neighbour. It was rare that any noise was heard except for the occasional piece of Jazz or Classical music. But never Syd’s own work.

One song by Syd Barrett called ‘Here I Go’ possibly expresses the anger Barrett felt about being ejected from the Pink Floyd in January 1968.

This is a story about a girl that I knew

She didn't like my songs and that made me feel blue

She said a big band is far better than you...

She don't Rock 'n' Roll, she don't like it

She don't do the stroll, well she don't do it right

Well everything's wrong and my patience is gone

When I woke one morning and remembered this song

Kinda catchy

I hope that she will talk to me now and even allow me

To hold her hand and forget that old band....

So, there you go. Now we know what Mr Barrett got up to when he wasn’t engaged in his ‘interesting’ and ‘alternative’ DIY projects. Perhaps one could speculate from the evidence that Barrett was bitterly annoyed about being thrown out of his own band that he made famous.

Perhaps his bizarre behaviour was not inspired by anything in particular; perhaps the destruction of his property was inspired by a desire to “renew” things that had been broken. Indeed, many of the photos from the auction of Roger Barrett’s final possessions show some interesting creations. Perhaps these were the results of the poor skill Barrett applied to trying to fix his possessions that he had destroyed.

Above all, it is clear that Roger Barrett did not have any interest in material things at all. One must stop and think who are the crazy people? People like Barrett or people who over-value possessions. What an interesting perspective and way of life Barrett had. May he rest in peace.

[7/4]

I WILL have those solo records by the end of the month!!! Mark my words!

I've been putting this off too.

I have them now.