SYD BARRETT: CAREENING THROUGH
LIFE...
Trouser Press
February 1978
p. 26-32
by Kris DiLorenzo
The color black is not a solitary real
color. Nor is it the total absence of color. A black hole in space, in fact, is
a concentrated area so densely packed that nothing, not even light, can
penetrate it. Blackness is actually all colors at once, so many colors merging
at such intensity that the riot of their profusion produces, to the
superficially perceptive eye, only nothingness: black. Try it with your crayons
or magic markers: everything at once, too much simultaneous input layered
repeatedly, gives you blackness. You all know who Syd Barrett is even if you
think you don't. Without him there would have been no Pink Floyd. Barrett
dominated the band during their first years, writing most of their material,
singing lead vocals and playing lead guitar. He left the band (or the band left
him) for reasons of mental health, and in 1970 with the aid of his replacement
in the Floyd, David Gilmour, recorded two solo albums: The Madcap Laughs and
Barrett. Syd then performed with Stars, an ensemble in the Cambridge area, but
left them after three gigs and virtually vanished from the public eye. For the
past five years Barrett has generally been written off as an acid casualty, but
more often lamented as a musical visionary whose interior landscape became too
disorienting for him to handle. Some of the stories one hears about Barrett are
disconcertingly true, others only sound like Syd, but most of his acquaintances
express the same conclusion: intuitive and fragile, Barrett was a unique talent
and an erratic mind on the edge of a different type of existence - as well as a
man who indelibly affected those who came into contact with him. Several people
close to Syd at various times in his life offer their perspectives in this
article, and the resulting portrait is Picasso-like: a profile viewed simultaneously
in different dimensions of seeing. Many thanks go to the following for their
help: Glen Buxton (formerly guitarist with Alice Cooper); Duggie Fields
(designer, artist and Barrett's flat-mate for several years); Lindsey Korner
(Barrett's girlfriend during the Pink Floyd days); Bryan Morrison (former Pink
Floyd manager and publisher, still Barrett's publisher); Mick Rock
(photographer for Hipgnosis in London during the 60's); Jerry Shirley (formerly
with Humble Pie and Natural Gas, drummer on Barrett's albums and currently with
A&M's Midnight); Twink (drummer for Pretty Things, Pink Fairies, Tomorrow,
Stars and Rings, who still believes in Syd); and David Gilmour, for devotion
above and beyond the call of rock 'n' roll. There is no question that Syd Barrett
was one of the "umma" (the brotherhood of prophets - see Herbert's
"Dune") and "just mad enough to be holy." Barrett's madness
was not quite a sudden explosion, however, but rather a gradual implosion, the
clues to which he articulated in his music long before his behavior signalled
distress. Syd's songs contained warnings from the beginning: he dealt with
instability and the primal need for comfort via authority's fairytales
("Matilda Mother"), the desire for control of a situation and the
outsider/observer role ("Flaming"). The lyrics of "Jugband
Blues" (on Floyd's Saucerful Of Secrets) also
spelled out some of his conflicts. By the time of The Madcap Laughs and
Barrett, Syd's songs clearly revealed raw spots in his psyche amid the
poetically jumbled voodoo of his writing. Ten years since the release of Pink
Floyd's first album, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn,
it's difficult for those unfamiliar with Pink Floyd's music or the burgeoning
British music scene of the 60's to attribute great importance to Syd Barrett.
All it takes to be convinced of Barrett's significance, however, is a careful
listen to Piper, A Saucerful Of Secrets (the second LP), and the singles he
wrote for the group (on Relics and Masters Of Rock, a Dutch collection). What
Syd created in sound and imagery was brand new: at that time America hadn't
even heard of Hendrixian feedback and distortion
as part of a guitar's capabilities,
and the Beatles were just recording Sergeant Pepper (at the same time and in
the same studios) as Pink Floyd were cutting Piper. Barrett's music was as
experimental as you could get without crossing over entirely into freeform
jazz; there simply were no other bands extending the boundaries of rock beyond
the basic 4/4 sex-and-love themes. Syd certainly listened to American jazz,
blues, jug band music and rock, as did most young British rock 'n' rollers of
the time. He used to cite Bo Diddley as his major influence, yet these inputs
are no more than alluded to in his music, which contains every style of guitar playing
imaginable: funky rhythm churns up speeding riffs that distort into jazzy
improvisation. At times an Eastern influence surfaces, blending vocal chants,
jangling guitar and devotional hum in tunes like "Matilda Mother" and
the lovely "Chapter 24," based on the I Ching. Barrett's guitar work
maintained a psychedelic, dramatic ambience of incongruous contrasts, violent
changes and inspired psychosis. No technician a la Eric Clapton, Barrett simply
knew his own particular instrument well and pushed it to its limits. Compared
by critics to Jeff Beck, Lou Reed (in his early Velvet Underground days) and
Jimi Hendrix, Barrett lacked only the consistency to match their achievements.
His trademark (and Achilles heel) was sudden surprise: trance-like riffs would slide
abruptly into intense, slightly offbeat strumming ("Astronomy
Domine"), choppy urgency gives way to powerful, frightening peaks
("Interstellar Overdrive"), harmless lyrics skitter over a fierce
undertow of evil-sounding feedback and menacing wah-wah ("Lucifer
Sam"). Stylized extremes made Barrett's guitar the focus of Floyd's early
music; his instrumental mannerisms dominated each song even when Syd merely
played chords. Barrett's rhythms were usually unpredictable; one never knew
what process in Syd's brain dictated when to speed up or slow down the pace,
when to sweeten or sour the sound, and when to wrench the tempo totally out of
joint, shifting gears to turn rhythms inside-out. As a result, Barrett's
playing was variously described by critics as "clumsy and anarchic,"
"adventurous and distinctive," "idiosyncratic,"
"revolutionary" or "brilliant and painful." Indisputably
Barrett was an innovator. Whether he was entirely conscious or in control of
his art is impossible to determine; perhaps it's enough to say that he was
indeed effective. His work with Pink Floyd still ranks as some of the most
expressive, sensational playing recorded by a rock guitarist. Even 10 years
later Barrett's solos stand as fixed entities in the overall scope of Pink
Floyd's music; it's a rare long-term Floyd fan who doesn't know every note, each frenzy of feedback and electronic eccentricity. Yet Syd
borrowed no familiar blue licks as the young Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy
Page were wont to do. Barrett's songwriting genius was original and extremist
as well. His singing was highly stylized; obscure chanting vocals, high-tension
verses and explosive choruses alternating with deadpan storytelling and
hypnotic drawls. He utilized fairytale technique, surrealistic juxtaposition of
psychedelic detail and plain fact, childhood experience and adult confusion.
Like the Beatles, Barrett combined dream imagery and irony with simple, direct
tunes, strong, catchy melodic hooks with nonsense rhymes and wandering verses
that sound like nothing so much as what goes on inside people's heads when
their minds are running aimlessly. Although some of Barrett's songs seem to be
straightforward stories, one always discovers a twist: multiple meanings to a
line that belie the childlike wonder of the words ("Gnome"),
innocuous lyrics devastatingly undermined with a questing guitar or unlikely
special effects ("Scarecrow," "Jugband Blues"). Certainly
psychedelia asserted its influence on Barrett's writing; there are descriptions
and perceptions one can attribute only to drugs or hallucinatory schizophrenia,
but others are strictly the products of his unaffected imagination. As a
songwriter Barrett has been compared with Pete Townshend and Ray Davies. Dave
Gilmour echoes that evaluation: "Syd was one of the great rock and roll
tragedies. He was one of the most talented people and could have given a
fantastic amount. He really could write songs and if he had stayed right, could
have beaten Ray Davies at his own game." Syd's influence on Pink Floyd
continued to manifest itself long after he left the band. Carrying on without
him was difficult at first, since the public and music business obviously
thought Syd was all the band had. Initially Gilmour's style conformed to the
Barrett prototype established on the first album, and their music retained
Syd's spirit, but their songwriting gradually changed. In the years following
Syd's departure he remarked that the band wasn't progressing, and in a real
sense this was true. Even Pink Floyd's three most recent albums to a large
extent expand and develop themes and riffs Syd laid down with them in 1967. The
point of view Barrett used in his songs, an alternation (and occasional fusion)
of second and third persons, still predominated Pink Floyd compositions; pieces
of his solos find their way into Gilmour's, tracks from Saucerful rearrange
themselves on Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here. Even 1977's Animals
displays Barrett's dark humor and takes off on his "Rats" premises.
The dramatic mixes Syd applied to the Floyd's early recordings are now
magnified by 16-track studios but employ the same technique: whole walls of
sound rocket from one side of the room to the other, the guitar careens in and
out of different speakers, submerged speech and incidental sounds chatter
beneath instrumentals; their use of sound as an emotional tool is absolutely
Barrettonian. The most obvious impact of Syd Barrett-in-absentia has been on
the concerns of much of Pink Floyd's music since 1969. They began dealing with
the politics of reality in the outside world and became obsessed with the
internal world of madness. The lyrics to "Shine On
You Crazy Diamond" are in perfect context on an album that clearly
expresses the band's outrage at the whoring business of rock and roll and its
toll on a human being like Barrett:
Remember when you were young, you shone like
the sun.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Now there'sa 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 thesteel breeze.
Come on you target for far away laughter, come
on you stranger,
you legend, you martyr and shine!
* * Copyright 1975 Pink Floyd Music Publishers, Inc.
Syd did indeed wear out his welcome with Pink
Floyd. He became nearly impossible to follow musically as he reached for more
abstract constructs, constantly re-phrasing, shifting and re-writing as he
performed, expressing a compulsive need for uniqueness without considering
logic. He worried about being considered "redundant," was anxious
about growing older without accomplishing everything he wanted, and at one
point said in exasperation to his roommate Fields, "Duggie, you're 23 and
you're not famous!" By 23 Syd was already internationally famous and began
the rollercoaster ride to oblivion. Onstage he often found it inconceivable to
play, standing among the amps with his back to the audience, staring at his
guitar as if he'd never seen one before. Occasionally he exhibited flashes of
virtuosity that dazzled audiences and made them hope for more, but Barrett was
incapable of performing for its own sake. He wanted to achieve something
indefinable each time he set out to play, and frequently this Olympian vision
prevented Syd from producing anything at all for fear it not be perfect,
brilliant and innovative. Paralysis generated fear, and many Pink Floyd
concerts found Barrett treating his guitar as if it were a treacherous grenade;
at other times he would simply disappear for the duration and a substitute
would have to be called in. Barrett's musical ideas were metamorphosing, too;
as he became more withdrawn personally, his songs tended to deal only with
internal reality and became more obscure. He was becoming more of a conceptual
artist than a musician, and eventually broke the barrier between form and
content (and genius and insanity) by becoming what he had sung about. Why
didn't anyone see Barrett metaphysically waving his arms in the air? Perhaps because during London's turbulent '60s scene it was
difficult, especially in a love-and-drug stupor, to distinguish incipient
dementia from contrived brinksmanship. Barrett, as a genuine innovator
and avant-gardist, probably had more leeway to act peculiar than most of the
artiste/intellectual crowd he hung out with. Certainly no one around Syd was in
a stable enough state to estimate the strength or weakness of his grasp on
ordinary reality. Most of Barrett's craziness was accepted as "just
Syd" until it became impossible for the Floyd to perform with his spells
of onstage paralysis and offstage freakouts. The incredible struggle Gilmour
and Waters of Pink Floyd endured during the recording of Barrett's solo albums,
the sheer energy and patience it took to motivate Syd and keep him on the
track, was the final straw. When Barrett dissolved Stars, it was apparent that
he could not continue musically until he recovered from his shell-shock. By all
accounts Syd Barrett's career began like thousands of others among the crowd of
young people during the first psychedelic rush of the '60s. He attended art
school, became involved with other art and architectural students (among them
the nucleus of the embryonic Pink Floyd) and finally left school for music.
Syd's home in Cambridge, where his mother ran a boarding house, was the local
social hang-out for the Cambridge students and drop-outs who
later moved to London to form their own artistic enclave; until just a few
years ago Barrett was still oscillating between his flat in London and his
mother's in Cambridge. Like all local "freak" scenes, the Pink Floyd
crowd had a nexus; flats in London's Cromwell Road and Earl's Court became
mecca for Cambridge hippies and budding mods. Mick Rock remembers one of Syd's
flats as "a burnt-out place, the biggest hovel, the biggest shit-heap; a
total acid-shell, the craziest flat in the world. There were so many people, it was like a railway station. Two cats Syd had, one
called Pink and one called Floyd, were still living in the flat after he left.
He just left them there. Those were the cats they used to give acid to. You
know what heavy dope scenes were like." When Pink Floyd "made
it," Syd Barrett was about 21 years old. "They used to rehearse in
the flat," Duggie Fields says, "and I used to go downstairs and put
on Smokey Robinson as loud as possible. I don't know where they all arrived
from, but I went to architecture school so did Rick [Wright, the Floyd's
keyboard player] and Roger [Waters, bassist]. I don't quite remember how I met
them all. I just remember suddenly being surrounded by the Pink Floyd and
hundreds of groupies instantly." Barrett felt ensuing changes keenly.
Within a few months after his "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily
Play" (the first Floyd singles) made Pink Floyd stars, Lindsey Korner says
"chronic schizophrenia" set in. It wasn't drugs particularly that set
Syd off, she insists; from the time she first met him Korner considered Syd one
of the sweetest, most together people, even though Syd's previous girlfriend
says he was off the wall a little even then. According to Lindsey "it got
a bit crazed" during the fall of '67; by Christmas Syd had started to
"act a little bonkers." "Oh, he went more than slightly
bonkers," Fields affirms. "It must have been very difficult for him.
I think the pressures on Syd before that time must have upset him very much,
the kind of pressure where it takes off very fast, which Pink Floyd did -
certainly in terms of the way people behaved towards them. I used to be
speechless at the number of people who would invade our flat, and how they
would behave towards anyone who was in the group; especially girls. I'd never
seen anything like it. Some of the girls were stunning, and they would
literally throw themselves at Syd. He was the most attractive one; Syd was a
very physically attractive person - I think he had problems with that. "I
saw it even when he was out of the group (by the beginning of 1969). People
kept coming around and he would actually lock himself in his room. Like if he
made the mistake of answering the front door before he'd locked himself in his
room, he found it very difficult to say no. He'd have these girls pounding on
his bedroom door all night, literally, and he'd be locked inside, trapped. He
did rather encourage that behavior to a certain extent, but then he didn't know
what to do with it; he would resent it."
In 1967 Pink Floyd toured America for the first
and last time with Syd Barrett. During their LA stay the band was invited to
visit the Alice Cooper entourage, quartered in a house in Venice during their
stint as the Cheetah club's house band. Cooper and his band had heard the
Floyd's Piper at the Gates and their reaction, guitarist Glen Buxton recalls,
was, "Wow! These guys should be reckoned with!" So Pink Floyd came to
dinner. "Syd Barrett I remember," Buxton says emphatically. "I
don't remember him ever saying two words. It wasn't because he was a snob; he
was a very strange person. He never talked, but we'd be sitting at dinner and
all of a sudden I'd pick up the sugar and pass it to him, and he'd shake his
head like 'Yeah, thanks,' It was like I heard him say 'Pass the sugar' - it's
like telepathy; it really was. It was very weird. You would find yourself right
in the middle of doing something, as you were passing the sugar or whatever,
and you'd think, 'Well, damn! I didn't hear anybody say anything!' That was the
first time in my life I'd ever met anybody that could actually do that freely.
And this guy did it all the time." If leaving Pink Floyd were hard for
Barrett, so were his last months in the band. Shirley explains: "When he
plays a song, it's very rare that he plays it the same way each time - any
song. And some songs are more off-the-wall than others. When he was with the
Floyd, towards the very end, Syd came in once and started playing this tune,
and played it completely different. Every chord change just kept going
somewhere else and he'd keep yelling (the title), 'Have you got it yet ?' I guess then it was Roger (who kept yelling back,
'No!') who kind of realized, 'Oh, dear.'" Similar episodes became more
frequent until the Floyd reached breaking point. "It was getting
absolutely impossible for the band," Shirley recalls. "They couldn't
record because he'd come in and do one of those 'Have you got it yet' numbers,
and then onstage he would either not play or he'd hit his guitar and just turn
it out of tune, or do nothing. They were pulling their hair out, they decided
to bring in another guitarist to complement, so Syd wouldn't have to play
guitar and maybe he'd just do the singing. Dave came in and they were a
five-piece for about four or five weeks. It got better because Dave was
together in what he did. Then the ultimate decision came down that if they were
going to survive as a band, Syd would have to go. Now I don't know whether Syd
felt it and left, or whether he was asked to. But he left. Dave went through
some real heavy stuff for the first few months. Syd would turn up at London
gigs and stand in front of the stage looking up at Dave; 'That's
*my* band.'" Syd had probably met Dave in the early '60s when Gilmour
played in a Cambridge band. "They used to play things like 'In the
Midnight Hour,'" Rock recalls, "and Syd would go watch Dave play
'cause I think Dave had got his chords down a bit better than Syd in the early
days. Syd was always a bit weird about Dave. That was his band, the
Floyd." Even before Pink Floyd returned to England from their American tour,
Barrett was proving more than merely eccentric. Buxton remembers "the crew
used to say he was impossible on the road. They'd fly a thousand miles, get to
the gig, he'd get up onstage and wouldn't have a guitar. He would do things
like leave all his money in his clothes in the hotel room, or on the plane.
Sometimes, they'd have to fly back and pick up his guitar. I didn't pick up
that he was a drug casualty, although there were lots at the time who would do those exact things because they were drugged
out. But Syd was definitely from Mars or something." Fields and Gayla
Pinion, Syd's girlfriend during the difficult years after Pink Floyd, were most
continuously exposed to Barrett - crazies, and Duggie recalls trying periods of
life with Syd. "When he gave up the group he took up painting again for a
bit, but he never enjoyed it. He didn't really have a sense of direction. "He
used to lie in bed every morning, and I would get this feeling like the wall
between our rooms didn't quite exist, because I'd know that Syd was lying in
bed thinking, 'What do I do today ? Shall I get out of
bed ? If I get out of bed, I can do this, and I can do
that - or I can do *that*, or I could do that.' He had the world at his feet,
all the possibilities, and he just couldn't choose. He had great problems
committing himself to any action. As for committing himself to doing anything
for any length of time - he was the kind of person who'd change in the middle.
He'd set off, lose his motivation, and start questioning what he was doing -
which might just be walking down the street." Fields attempted to alter
Barrett's pattern, but nothing quite worked. "Sometimes he'd be completely
jolly and then just snap - you could never tell what he was like. He could be
fabulous. He was the sort of person who had amazing charm; if he wanted your
attention, he'd get it. He was very bright. After he left the group he was very
much aware of being a failure. I think that was quite difficult, coming to
terms with that." At one point when Gayla moved out of the flat, Syd
rented her room (the smallest) to first three, then five people. Fields
despaired; eventually Syd couldn't deal with them either because they were
always underfoot, wanting his attention, as did many slightly younger people
who idolized him. Fields recalls visitors constantly bringing pills to Barrett:
"Just give Syd mandrakes and he'll be friendly." More visitors came
"with their hounds as well" and Syd, unable to tolerate the situation
any longer, went back to Cambridge. "He just left them," Duggie
recalls, "and then rang me up and said that I had to get rid of them. I
said *he* had to get rid of them, bit I actually
did in
the end. I said, 'Look, Syd wants you out; he's coming back!' They were a bit
frightened of him because he did have a violent side." Barrett's first
solo album, Shirley says, was a result of the Floyd
finally convincing Syd "that he should get off his ass and make an
album." Gilmour and Waters co-produced the LP, but after the experience
Waters gave up ("That's it! I can't cope with that again!") and Rick Wright joined Dave as co-producer for the second
one. The two albums, release later in America as a double package, are curios
even seven years after their appearance. Syd wrote all the material (some of it
years before) except the lyrics to "Golden Hair" (a James Joyce
poem), and every symptom of his personal problems is in it evidence. The tone
is somber and unsettling, with only three frivolous songs. Many tunes end
abruptly or with contrived instrumental fades when Syd runs out of lyrics.
Barrett's singing is a deep-pitched melancholy monotone. There are painful
moments when his voice cracks or careens out of control reaching for notes he
once could sing; he shouts the higher notes, not believing he can make them.
His acoustic guitar playing is mainly arhythmic strumming full of arbitrary and
often clever tempo shifts and reversals, punctuated with extreme dramatic
bursts and tenuous pianissimo. There are no brilliant solo flashes, but several
tunes display his instrumental ability: "Wined and Dined" and
"Effervescing Elephant," with which Barrett was familiar enough not
to have trouble with the chords; "Wolfpack," Syd's temporary favorite
and demonically energized number; "Gigolo Aunt," recorded in one take
on a good day; and "Dominoes," the track on which Syd's spacey,
chaotic playing most resembles his Pink Floyd style. Syd's changes were
foreshadowed musically on "Apples and Oranges," a late '67 Floyd
single. That tune resembles the work on the solo albums: background drone,
rushed verse and slow chorus,
and intense vocal line ascending and descending
uneasily became stock characteristics of Madcap and Barrett. The transformation
in Barrett's self-image and confidence is evident if one compares the brashness
and electricity of the early Floyd albums with the dead-sounding Syd of 1970,
chanting rather than singing, vocal sometimes estranged from his rhythms,
unnerved by his mistakes; literally falling apart several times, incapable of
performing properly at that particular moment, but unwilling to give up
entirely. He music is stark, eerie and often
depressing despite some genuinely funny lyrics and the efforts of Syd's
musicians to add lively touches to the bleakness. Some Barrett traits, however,
didn't change. His simple stories trade off with surrealistic half-sense and
nonsense; nursery rhyme structures are bent with restless time signatures and
startling chord progressions. Choruses switch tempos and lyrics (often unintelligible)
function more as sound. Words become less communicative elements than
instruments of sensation as Barrett meanders through inexplicable mental
territory, sometimes resolving into straight songs and sometimes dissolving
into multi-rhyming babble. Despite some incredible songwriting, complicated
structures and stunning sonic/verbal images, there's no way to avoid feeling
that the two albums are the portrait of a breakdown. Scattered throughout the
nightmare/fantasy lyrics are whispers and screams from a confused Syd, trying
to carry on in the midst of utter disorientation and emotional turmoil. In
"Long Gone" he sings:
And I stood very still by the window cell
and I wondered for those I love still
I cried in my mind where I stand behind...
* * Copyright Lupus Music Inc. (BMI)
"Waving My Arms In The
Air" recalls Syd's early Floyd days when, attired in a long cape, he would
stand onstage with his image projected onto a screen behind him, and do exactly
that. "You shouldn't try to be what you can't be," he sings, and
sounds quite human, but when he shifts into the love song "I Never Lied To You" the voice goes flat and lifeless. In "Late
Night," however, Barrett articulates clearly: "Inside me I feel alone
and unreal." Was Barrett as out of control in reality as he sounds on the albums ? "Well, yes and no," Fields says. "He
really didn't have to have that much control before, but when you have to
provide you own motivation all the time it is difficult, certainly in terms of
writing a song. When it came down to recording there were always problems. He
was not at his most together recording the album. He had to be taken there
sometimes, and he had to be got. It didn't seem to make any difference whether
it was making him happy or unhappy; he'd been through that, the excitement of
it, the first time around." Jerry Shirley agrees that Barrett was bizarre
during the sessions. On the day the backing tracks to "Dominoes" (a
beautiful song with a haunting arrangement) were recorded with great success,
enthusiasm was running high. Dave was with Syd trying to get a lead guitar
track, but Barrett couldn't play anything that made sense. In a brainstorm
Gilmour turned the tape around and had Syd play guitar to the tracks coming at
him backwards. "It played back," Shirley says, "and the
backwards guitar sounded great; the best lead he ever played. The first time
out and he didn't put a note wrong." Shirley refers to "If It's In
You," the track on which Syd can't find the melody and fllounders,
breaking stride throughout the song. "That's a classic example of Syd in
the studio. Between that and talking in very obscure abstracts. It's all going
on in his head, but only little bits of it manage to get out of his mouth. And
then the way he sings he goes into that scream – sometimes he can sing a melody
absolutely fine, and the next time 'round he'll sing a totally different
melody, or just go off key. 'Rats' in particular was really odd. That was just
a very crazed jam, and Syd had this lyric that he just shouted over the top.
It's quite nuts. But some of his songs are very beautiful." To ease the process
for Syd, before they went into the
studio to cut, Gilmour would sit with him
and wither make up demo tapes of the songs or, if possible, learn the song with
him. Then he'd explain it to the other musicians and play along with Syd,
although he made Syd do the leads instead of taking them himself. If it weren't
for Gilmour, Shirley feels there would have been little semblance of
togetherness; working with Syd was mainly playing it by ear. "You never
knew from one day to the next exactly how it would go." Could Barrett have
been pulling some numbers on purpose? Shirley answers with a baffled squeak,
"I honestly couldn't say. Sometimes he does it just to put everybody on,
sometimes he does it because he's genuinely paranoid about what's happening
around him. He's like the weather, he changes. For every 10 things he says that
are off-the-wall and odd, he'll say one thing that's completely coherent and
right on the ball. He'll seem out of touch with what's gone on just before,
then he'll suddenly turn around and say, 'Jerry, remember the day we went to
get a burger down at the Earl's Court Road ?' - complete recall of something that happened a long time ago.
Just coming and going, all the time." Barrett's one public appearance
during the LP sessions was a brief set during a 3-day festival at the Olympia
in London. Syd eventually even managed to play his guitar instead of holding it
as if it were about to explode. Barrett's initial decision to play, however,
kept unmaking itself. "He was going to do it, he wasn't going to do it, it
was on and off, so finally we said, 'Look, Syd, come on, man - you can do it!'
We got up, I played drums, Dave played bass and he managed to get through a few
songs. It got good, and then after about the fourth song Syd said, "Oh great;
thanks very much' and walked off! We tried, you know." For Barrett the
solo albums didn't change things much. He left London for Cambridge when he
decided to become a doctor. "Yes, a doctor," Duggie affirms,
"and he and Gayla were going to get married and live in Oxford. He had a
bit of the suburban dream. That was a very bizarre sort of thing underlying
him. He had lots of concepts that he found very attractive like that; he didn't
really like all the one-night stands; he wanted the marriage and that bit, in
the back of his head." Syd and Gayla became engaged and left the flat to
Fields, who never saw Barrett after that. Drummer Twink, then with the
psychedelic band Tomorrow, met Barrett in '67 when
Pink Floyd played a European festival. The band brought gifts with them;
Twink's, from Syd, was a hash pipe. Though they remained friendly afterwards,
it wasn't until 1972 that they got together musically. "I didn't know him
closely for that long," but I was in the same space and I could understand
exactly where he was at. I thought he was very together, you know. As a friend
it was a very warm relationship; no bad vibes at all. We didn't have any crazy
scenes." Stars was originally brought together by
bass player Jack Monk's wife Ginny, who took Barrett down to a Cambridge pub to
jam with Twink and some others. A few days later a more permanent arrangement
coalesced, and Stars began rehearsing for their first gig, an open air May Day
celebration in Market Square. Their material, mostly Syd's, included some for
the Pink Floyd days; Barrett recorded practice sessions and one coffeebar gig,
and seemed genuinely interested in working again when a promoter friend of
Twink's booked Stars into the Corn Exchange. At that gig everything that could
possibly go wrong did: the PA sabotaged Syd's vocals, Monk's amp acted up and
somehow Barrett cut his finger open. Added to Syd's memory blanks and hesitant
playing, the result was bad press and immediate depression for Syd. "We
just weren't ready for it," Twink concedes. "It was a disastrous gig,
the reviews were really bad, and Syd was really hung up about it; so the band
folded. He came 'round to my house and said he didn't want to play anymore. He
didn't explain; he just left. I was really amazed working with him, at his
actual ability as a guitar player." After Stars, Syd Barrett made no more
public appearances. Anecdotes from the years following are rife; one
acquaintance reported Syd carrying his dirty clothes into the London boutique
Granny Takes a Trip because he thought it was a dry-cleaners. Duggie Fields ran
into Barrett in London's Speakeasy club. "I wasn't sure he recognized me.
I was with some people he'd known for years; we talked for about five minutes,
but did he really know who we were ? That was when he
was starting to get heavy, and he didn't look like the same kind of person at
all." In 1975 a strange reunion took place at EMI Studios, attributable,
Jerry Shirley feels, to Syd's uncanny sixth sense of timing. "The last
time I saw him was possibly the last time the guys in the Floyd saw him, too.
They were putting the finishing touches on Wish You Were Here. Earlier that day
Dave Gilmour had gotten married and they had to work that night, so EMI had
this roundtable dinner in the canteen for them. Across the table from me was
this overweight Hare Krishna-looking chap. I thought maybe it was just someone
who somebody knows. I looked at Dave and he smiled; then I realized it was Syd.
The guy had to weigh close to 200 pounds and had no hair on his head. It was a
bit of a shock, but after a minute I plucked up enough courage to say hello. I
introduced my wife and I dunno; I think he just laughed. I asked him what he
was doing lately. 'Oh, you know, not much: eating, sleeping. I get up, eat, go for a walk, sleep.'" That night the band finished
the album and were playing back the final mix of "Shine On
You Crazy Diamond." "When the song ended Roger Waters turned to Syd
and said, 'Well, Syd what do you think of that ?' He
said, 'Sounds a bit old.' I believe Syd just got up and split not too long
after that. After two years of nobody seeing him, of all the
days for him to appear out of nowhere!" Jerry Shirley is less then
optimistic about the possibility of Barrett recording again. "The last
person to make that sort of effort was Dave, and they barely got him to do it;
it was like pulling teeth. Since then I don't think there's anybody close
enough to him to get him to do it. He would have to return to the planet long
enough for someone to believe that he's got it in him to actually get through
the sessions. And that would just be the first step. The guys really did
persevere through those sessions, god! Especially Dave, particularly in light
of the way Syd was to him before. But I don't know if anybody - if he showed
that he really wanted to try for it, then maybe one of them would make the
effort." Have any of Barrett's friends made a serious effort to sit down
and talk with him about his future ? "Oh
yeah," Shirley says. "No chance. You'd get some sort of sense out of
him, and then he'd just laugh at you. Lots of people tried lots of different
things." Bryan Morrison cleared up a few of the mysteries surrounding
Barrett. He explained Syd's departure from Pink Floyd: "He didn't leave of
his own free will, really. I mean, he kept threatening to leave. I think in the
end it was by mutual agreement, because he was having some personal problems.
He wasn't able to get it together anymore, and by agreement he left the
band." Did a similar thing happen with Stars, or did Barrett have any
reason for leaving that band? Morrison hesitates a bit before answering.
"Have you ever met Syd? Well, one of the main things - he had psychiatric
problems, and was actually in a sanitorium." This was about eight years
Morrison estimates, in Cambridge: Syd's parents had him committed. There are
other Barrett recordings outside the solo LPs and some "incoherent"
tapes, Morrison says. Right now Syd is living on his royalties in a London
hotel. "He doesn't have any involvement with anything or anybody. He is a
recluse - with about 25 guitars around him. I see him very rarely. I mean, I
know where he is, but he doesn't want to be bothered; he just sits there on his
own, watching television all day and getting fat. That's what he does."
Can nobody talk Syd into becoming musically active again? "No. It's
impossible." To Morrison's knowledge Syd hasn't been outside of England
since the Pink Floyd tour in 1967, and he gave his last interview in 1971. Barrett
is firmly anchored in his shell. Then is Barrett's extended schizophrenic
episode (see "The Politics of Experience," R.D. Laing) permanent
insanity of just prolonged post-Floyd depression ? Chemical
ingestion coupled with chronic existential anxiety? Morbidly sensitized insecurity
and a crumbling value structure? Or diabolically effective
defense and legend material? Let's put it this way. Anyone who's ever
been in chronic pain and confusion can sympathize with Barrett. Anyone ever
caught in the equally real dread of the principal's office or never returning
from a drug experience has experienced Barrett's primal fears. Anyone who's
ever teetered on the edge of chaos and felt the black panic of falling into the
void can comprehend the Madcap. Someone who's almost grokked the universe and
then lost the definition on the tip of their tongue knows what it's like to be a
crazy diamond. Twink says Barrett's no acid freak. Shine on, Syd