Extracts from the Book
"Madcap - the half-life
of Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd's lost Genius"
Taken from Dolly Rocker
Copyright (c) Tim Willis 2002
Short Books
No part of the book may be reproduced without the
prior
written permission of
both the copyright owner and the publisher.
The
received wisdom is that you don't disturb him. The last interview he gave was
in 1971, and from then until now, there are only about 20 recorded encounters
of any kind. His family says it upsets
him to discuss the days when he was the spirit of psychedelia,
beautiful Syd Barrett, the leader of Pink Floyd. He doesn't recognise
himself as the shambling visionary who, during an extended nervous breakdown
exacerbated by his drug intake, made two solos LPs, Madcap and Barrett , which are as eternally eloquent as Van Gogh's
cornfields. He doesn't answer to his 60s nickname now. He's called Roger
Barrett, as he was born in 1946.
On a blistering
hot day, pacing the cracked tarmac pavement in this suburban
Two
housewives in the street say he ignores their 'Good mornings' when he goes out
to buy his Daily Mail and changing brands of fags. [...] On his bike or on
foot, Barrett stares straight ahead.
Apart from
his sister, they don't think he has any visitors - not even workmen. But they
don't see why I shouldn't take my chances. It's been a few years since
backpackers camped by his gate. 'He didn't open the door for them, and he
probably won't for you.'
So I walk
up the concrete path of his grey pebble-dashed semi, try the bell and discover
that it's disconnected. At the front of the house, all the curtains are open.
The side passage is closed to prying eyes by a high gate. I knock on the solid
front door and, after a minute or two, look through the downstairs bay window.
Where you might expect a television and a three-piece suite, Barrett has
constructed a bare, white-walled workshop. Pushed against the window is a
dusty, tattered pink sofa. On the scored hardboard tops, toolboxes are neatly
stacked, flexes coiled, pens put away in a white mug.
Then, a sound in the hall. Has he come in from the shady back garden?
[...] Perhaps it needs mowing, like the front lawn - although, judging by the
mound of weeds by the path, he's been tidying the beds today.
I knock
again, and hear three heavy steps. The door flies open and he's standing there.
He's stark
naked except for a small, tight pair of bright-blue Y-fronts; bouncing, like
the books say he always did, on the balls of his feet.
Some of his
biographers claim that the skinny, impish dandy has become a fat old man. But, paunch
apart, Barrett is in a good shape, more muscolar than
you'd imagine, sweating a little, his teeth slightly bared. His balding head is
shaved very close. The only reminders of his corkscrew perm are a few dark
hairs that straggle down his neck. He bars the doorway with one hand on the
jamb, the other on the catch. His resemblance to Aleister
Crowley in his Cefalu period is uncanny; his stare
about as welcoming...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In 1988,
the News of the World quoted the writer Jonathan Meades
who, 20 years before. Meades had visited a
It's a
common motif in the Barrett legend: the genius mistreated, forced to endure
unspeakable mental anguish for the fun of his fairweather
friends. But it's not necessarily true. There are some terrible tales from that
flat in
Similarly,
Barrett's lover and flatmate at the time, Lindsay
Corner, denies the stories that he locked her in her room for three days, feeding
her biscuits under the door, then smashed a guitar
over her head. This time, however, three other residents swear he did: 'I
remember pulling Syd off her,' says
By now
[October 1966], Barrett was already well on the way to stardom. [...] Pink
Floyd supported the Soft Machine's experimental jazz-rock at the IT magazine
launch party, a 2,000-strong happening in the disused Roundhouse theatre,
featuring acid aplenty, Marianne Faithfull dressed as
a nun in a pussy-pelmet, and Paul McCartney disguised as an Arab. There was a
giant jelly and a Pop Art-painted Cadillac, a mini-cinema and a performance
piece by Yoko Ono. 'All apparently very psychedelic,' sniffed The Sunday Times
of the Floyd, thus encouraging hundreds of difficult teenagers to check out
their new residency at the All Saints Hall [in Ladbroke Grove].
Now once-
or twice-weekly, the shows took time to take off. [Barrett's friend] Juliet
Wright remembers an occasion when there were so few punters that Barrett
movingly recited Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' soliloquy onstage. But soon ravers were crossing
Apart from
playing a packed live schedule, the Floyd were in
pursuit of a recording contract, rehearsing and making rough demos. Floyd gig
promoter Joe Boyd, who had production experience, took them into a studio in
late January. Barrett had written 'Arnold Layne' by then, rewritten 'Let's Roll
Another One' for wider consumption as 'Candy and a
Currant Bun', and perfected the relentless riff of 'Interstellar Overdrive'.
EMI - the same label as the Beatles! - signed them up on the basis of these
demos, nominating '
Barrett was
delighted. 'We want to be pop stars,' he said, gladly grinning for cheesy
publicity shots of the band high-kicking on the street. However, by the
beginning of April, he was already railing in the music papers against
record-company executives who were pressing him for more commercial material.
He was even
less cheery by the end of the month. Six weeks before, 'Arnold Layne' had been
released. This jolly tale of Mary Waters' washing-line raider was helped up the
charts by a ban from Radio London, due to its lyrics about transvestism.
[...]
But Barrett
had grown to hate playing note-perfect, three-minute renditions on stage. On 22
April it reached number 20, its highest position. On 29 April, Barrett was
still playing it, at Joe Boyd's UFO club at dawn and on a TV show in
It was an
extremely druggy affair. [Floyd's co-manager Peter] Jenner
was certainly tripping that night, and Barrett is said to have been. John
Lennon, Brian Jones and Jimi Hendrix were in the a 10,000-strong audience. There were 40 bands, dancers
in strobe shows, a helter-skelter and a noticeboard
made of light bulbs which displayed messages like 'Vietnam Is A Sad Trip'. The Floyd came on as the sun's pink fingers
touched the huge eastern window. Barry Miles, the Sixties chronicler, reported:
'Syd's eyes blazed as his notes soared up into the
strengthening light, as the dawn was reflected in his famous mirror-disc
Telecaster [or rather, Esquire].' The truth was less rosy. Barrett was tired,
so terribly tired.
There's a
horrible ring of truth to [Barrett's old college friend] Sue Kingsford's
contention that, in '67, Barrett would regularly visit her [...] in Beaufort
Street, to score from a heavy acid dealer in the basement called 'Captain Bob'.
[...]
It
certainly sounds more likely than the rumours that
Barrett's camp-followers were lacing his tea with LSD. [Kingsford's boyfriend]
Jock says: 'Spiking was a heinous crime. You just wouldn't do it. There was a
ritual to acid-taking those days - a peaceful scene, good sounds.'[...]
[
Ah, but
what does she mean by tripping? [Another of Barrett's
Perhaps
that was Barrett's way. But if he had actually taken a proper dose of acid at
the Technicolor Dream then it was a fairly rare event. He simply didn't have
the time for anything stronger than dope - which he did smoke in copious
quantities. And maybe for a few Mandrax, the hypnotic
tranquillisers which, if one can ride the first wave
of tiredness, induced an opiate-like buzz when swallowed with alcohol. In
legend, 'Mandies make you randy.' They may have
appealed to Barrett because they were fashionable in the late Sixties - or
because they stopped his mind from spinning. [...]
The band
weren't too worried by his behaviour, yet Syd was
Syd. And if, by the end of May, people who hadn't seen Barrett for a while
thought he had changed, his month had started well. On 12 May 1967 the band
played the 'Games for May' concert at one of the capital's classiest venues,
the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Barrett wrote an early version of 'See Emily Play'
for the event, which was essentially a normal concert bookended
by some pretentious bits. The Floyd introduced a rudimentary quad sound-system,
played taped noises from nature and had a liquid-red light-show. Mason was
amplified sawing a log. Waters threw potatoes at a gong. The roadies pumped out
thousands of soap bubbles and one of them, dressed as an admiral, threw
daffodils into the stalls. The mess earnt
the Floyd a ban from the hall and a favourable review
from The Financial Times. [...]
On 2 June,
the Floyd played Joe Boyd's UFO after a two-month absence. Though the other
band members were friendly, Boyd said Barrett 'just looked at me. I looked
right in his eye and there was no twinkle, no glint... you know, nobody home.'
Perhaps Barrett was embarrassedd about the way Boyd
had been dropped for Norman Smith, when the band had just used the same studio
as Boyd? David Gilmour thinks not. Visiting
Touring the
provinces that month [July], like the rest of the band, Barrett resented the
beery mob baying for 'Arnold' and 'Emily'. The Floyd even wrote a white-noise
number called 'Reaction in G' to express their feelings. But Barrett's inner
reaction was harder to fathom. With his echo-machines on full tilt, he might
detune his Fender until its strings were flapping, and hit one note all night.
He might stand with his arms by his side, the guitar hanging from his neck,
staring straight ahead, while the others performed as a three-piece. He might
decline to sing, forcing them to cover for him.[...]
Perhaps
Barrett, obliged to be there in body if not in spirit, was making a statement.
Perhaps he was pushing his experimental notions of 'music-of-the-moment' to new
boundaries. Whatever else, he was now seriously mentally ill. And almost
certainly he suspected it himself. [...]
[A couple
of concert debacles] forced Jenner and Andrew King to
act. Though Piper was released on 4 August, Blackhill
cancelled the next three weeks' gigs and arranged a holiday for Barrett and
Corner on the Balearic
Barrett's state
of mind can be guessed at from his offering for 7 August: 'Scream Thy Last
Scream, Old Woman in a Casket' is an ear-splitting mess whose title-line is its
most redeeming feature. EMI rightly turnet it down, and told Jenner
and King that they expected something better once Barrett had returned from his
break.
[2 November
1967,
At the
beginning of the week his hair had been badly permed
at Vidal Sassoon, and he was distraught at the effect. The greased-up 'punk'
style with which he'd been experimenting would be better. Waters remembers that
in the dressing-room at the Cheetah Club in Santa Monica, Barrett suddenly
called for a tin of Brylcreem and tipped the whole
lot on his head. Producing a bottle of Mandrax, he
crushed them into the mess before taking the stage. David Gilmour says he
'still can't believe that Syd would waste good Mandies'.
But a lighting man called John Marsh, who was also there, confirms the story.
As the gunk melted, it slipped down his face until Barrett resembled 'a gutted
candle'. Girls in the front row, seeing his lips and nostrils bubbling with Brylcreem, screamed. He looked like he was decomposing
on-stage.
Faced with
this farce, some of the band and crew abandoned themselves to drink, drugs,
groupies and the sights. When they arrived in Los Angeles, Barrett had
forgotten his guitar, which caused much cost and fuss. 'It's great to be in Las
Vegas,' he said to a record company man in Hollywood. He fell into a
swimming-pool and left his wet clothes behind.
The Floyd
survived the tour by the skin of their teeth. On TV's Pat Boone Show, where
they did 'Apples and Oranges', Barrett was happy to mime in rehearsals - but
live he ignored the call to 'Action' four or five times, leaving Waters to fill
in. Asked what he liked in the after-show chat, Barrett replied... after a
dreadful pause... 'America!', which made the audience
whoop. On American Bandstand and the Perry Como Show, he did not move his lips,
to speak or mime.
Finishing
their commitments on the West Coast, the band [...] began thinking of how to
replace or augment him. The next day, they were in Holland, handing Barrett
notes in the hope that he would talk to them. The day after, they were
bus-bound on a British package tour with Hendrix, the Move, Amen
Corner, the Nice and others, playing two 17-minute sets a night for three
weeks, with three days off in middle.
Though he
had worked harder, the schedule was too much for Barrett. When he went
on-stage, he was unable to function. Sometimes he failed to show up and the Nice's Dave O'List stood in for
him. Once, Jenner had to stop him escaping by train.
[...]
Barrett
could - and did - play occasional blinders through out the autumn of '67, but
these instances were as unpredictable as spring showers, and the band's hopes
that he might 'return' dimmed. The Floyd stumbled through to Christmas, while
the three well ones hatched a plan (or subconsciously dusted it off?): they
would ask David Gilmour to join the group to cover lead guitar and vocals while
their sick colleague could do what he wanted, so long as he stood onstage.
Barrett
couldn't care less, and Gilmour - back from France - broke, bandless
and driving a van at the Quorum boutique, for whom Lindsay Corner also modelled - was known to be not only a terrific guitarist
but also a wonderful mimic of musical parts. Nick Mason had already sounded him
out when they ran into each other at a gig in Soho.
On 3 January 1968, Gilmour was offered and accepted a try-out. The band had a
week booked in a north London rehearsal hall before going back on the road.
[...]
Four gigs
followed in the next fortnight, with Barrett contributing little. He looks
happy enough in a cine-clip from the time, joining in with the lads for a tap-dance in a dressing-room. 'But in reality,' says
Gilmour, 'he was rather pathetic.' On the day of the fifth gig - at Southampton
on 26 January - the others were driving south from a business meeting in
central London, towards Richmond. As they crossed th junction of Holland Park Avenue and Ladbroke
Grove, one of them - no one remembers who - asked, 'Shall we pick up Syd?'
'Fuck it,' said the others. 'Let's not bother.' Barrett, who probably didn't
notice that night, would never work again with the band that he had crafted in
his image. And they never quite put him out of their minds.
Not that
their minds were made up. Though the Floyd would go on to huge fame and
fortune, at the time they believed they probably had a few months left of
milking psychedelia before ignominious disbandment.
Barrett, as Waters says, was the 'goose that had laid the golden egg'. Now
their frontman had become such a liability on tour,
they would rather appear without their main attraction than risk his
involvement.[...]
However,
Barrett still had the band's schedule. Waters remembers him turning up with his
guitar at 'an
Though the
money from Piper came rolling in, Barrett's work went completely to pot. Jenner took him into the
Barrett was
all over the place - forgetting to bring his guitar to sessions, breaking
equipment to EMI's displeasure - and sometimes he couldn't even hold his
plectrum. [...] He was in a state, and had little new material. Jenner had the experience neither as a person not as a
producer to coax anything out of him. By August, he and King were having less
and less to do with Barrett - which could equally be said of the other lodgers
in
According
to flatmate
In the
spring of '68, Roger Waters had talked to the hip psychiatrist RD Laing[...].
He had even driven Barrett to an appointment: 'Syd wouldn't get out. What can
you do?' In the intervening months, however, Barrett became less hostile to the
idea of treatment. So Gale placed a call to Laing and
By the
autumn of 68, he was homeless. Periodically he returned to
By now [the
mid 70s], the Syd Barrett Appreciation Society (founded in 1972) had folded,
due to 'lack of Syd'. But he wasn't quite invisible. In 1977, [ex-girlfriend]
Gala Pinion was in a supermarket on the
Gala made
her excuses and left, never to see him again. However, even as an invisible presence,
he loomed large. The previous year, punk rock had appeared and the King's Road
had become heartland. Without success, the Sex Pistols, their manager Malcolm McLaren and their art director Jamie Reid tried to contact
Barrett, to ask him to produce their first album. The Damned hoped he would
produce their second, realised it was impossible and
settled for the Floyd's Nick Mason ('Who didn't have a clue', according to the
band's bassist Captain Sensible).
Barrett
continued to do as little and spend as much as ever. Bankrupt, he left
An
operation on his ulcer meant that Barrett lost much of his excess weight. Win
thought he should keep himself occupied, so Roger Waters's
mother Mary found him a gardening job with some wealthy friends. At first he
prospered but, during a thunderstorm, he threw down his tools and left. He made
no new friends, and avoided old ones [None of the Floyd has talked him since
1975 [...] Gilmour has made sure that all Barrett's royalties reach him, and
has sent a unilateral Christmas card for the last few years]
He only
called himself 'Roger' now. In 1982, his finances restored, he booked into the
Chelsea Cloisters for a few weeks, but found he disliked
The
circumstances of his final return to
Barrett has
never been sectioned. He has never had to take drugs for his mental health,
except after one or two uncontrollable fits of anger, when he was admitted to Fulbourne and administered Largactyl.
However, he has received other treatments. In the early Eighties, he spent two
years in a charitable institution, Greenwoods, in
Some people
think Barrett suffers from Asperger's Syndrome. It
certainly seems he can't be bothered to think about anything that doesn't
directly affect him. He kept rabbits and cats for a while but forgot to feed
them, so they had to be sent to more caring homes. Thereafter, the only
intimate contacts he maintained were with Win and Roe. Otherwise, he seems to
have lost the habit - and become wary - of human interaction, limiting himself
to encounters with shop assistants and his sympathetic GP, whose surgery has
become a second home. He was - and is still - in and out of hospital for his
ulcers. [...]
Paul Breen
revealed that his brother-in-law was 'painting again', and meeting his mother
in town for shopping trips. It was a 'very, very ordinary lifestyle,' said
Breen, but not reclusive: 'I think the word "recluse" is probably
emotive. It would be truer to say that he enjoys his own company now, rather
than that of others.' [...]
As more
years went by, other news leaked out. Barrett was collecting coins. He was
learning to cook, and could stuff a mean pepper. On the death of Win in 1991,
he destroyed all his old diaries and art books - and also chopped down the
front garden's fence and tree, and burnt them (though more in a spirit of
renewal than grief). He had been a great support to Roe in her mourning, but
hadn't attended the funeral because he 'wouldn't know what to do'. He still
wrote down his thoughts all the time. He still painted - big works, six foot by
four - but destroyed any that he didn't consider perfect, and stacked the rest
against the wall. As with 'Emily', he lost interest in things once they were
finished. And sometimes he was unable to finish them, because obsessive fans
had climbed over his back fence, and stolen the brushes from the table outside,
where he worked. [...]
A few titbits, to finish. In 1998, Barrett was diagnosed as a
B-type diabetic - a genetic condition - and was prescribed a regime of
medication and diet to which he is sporadically faithful. His eyesight will
inevitably become 'tunnelled' as a result - sooner,
rather than later, unless he regularly takes his tablets. However, he is far
from 'blind', as reported on the more excitable websites.
In the winner
of 2001, a hard-core group of fans (who call themselves 'Echoes' and use '/E\'
as their symbol) paid for a dedicatory bench to be placed in Cambridge, in a
location which they have asked to be kept 'secret'. One of their number, an Antipodean called Dion
Johnson, knocked on Barrett's door to show him a map of where to find it, and
was delighted that his taciturn hero not only asked for a copy of the map, but
gave him a 'R K Barrett' autograph. [...]
For
Christmas [2001], Barrett gave his sister a painting of the hollyhocks and shed
in his back garden. For his birthday in January 2002, she brought him a new
stereo, because he likes to listen to the Stones, Booker-T and the classical
composers. However, he evinced no interest in the recent Echoes: The Best of
Pink Floyd (on which nearly a fifth of the tracks are written by him, despite
the fact that he only recorded with the band for less than a 30th of its
lifespan). To coincide with the album's release, the BBC screened an Omnibus
documentary about him, which he watched round at Roe's house. He is reported to
have liked hearing 'Emily' and, particularly, seeing his old landlord Mike
Leonard - who he called his 'teacher'. Otherwise, he thought the film 'a bit
noisy'.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'Mister
Barrett?'
'Yes.'
His voice
is deeper than on any recordings, more cockneyfied than on the TV interviews he
gave in 67. Behind him, the hall is clean but bare, the floorboards mostly
covered in linoleum. I mention someone dear to him, from his childhood. She'd
be coming to Cambridge in a couple of weeks, and wondered if Barrett might like
a visit?
'No.'
He stands
and stares, less embarrassed than me by the vision of
him in his underpants.
'So is
everything all right?'
'Yeah.'
'You're
still painting?'
'No, I'm
not doing anything,' he says (which is true - he's talking to me). 'I'm just
looking after this place for the moment.'
'For the moment? Are you thinking of moving on?'
'Well, I'm
not going to stay here for ever.' He pauses a split
second, delivers an unexpected 'Bye-bye', and slams the door.
I'm left
like others before me, trying to work out just what he meant. 'I'm not going to
stay here for ever.' Does he just mean, 'One day, I might move house.' Or is it
a nod to the fate that awaits us all? A coded message that he may re-emerge
into the world - perhaps show new work or perform? And is opening the door in
your underpants an unwitting demonstration of self-confidence, or an
eccentricity, or worse? I retrace my steps, cross the main road to my car where
I write a note that I hope is tactful: 'Dear Mr
Barrett, I'm sorry to have disturbed your sunbathing. I didn't have time to
mention that I'm writing a book on you...' I plead my case, give my telephone
number, and return down the cracked pavement.
As I reach
the gate, I see him weeding in the front corner of the garden, on his knees.
'Hi,' I
say. 'I've written you a note.'
'Huh,' he
says, not looking up, throwing roots behind him.
'May I
leave it?' He straightens and stares into my eyes, but doesn't answer. He's
wearing khaki shorts now, and gardening gloves, which aren't really suited to
receiving the note - and I would be tempting fate to rest it on the side of the
wheelbarrow which he has bought with him.
'Shall I
put it through the letterbox?'
'It's
nothing to do with me,' he says. So I do.
'Nice day,'
I say, on leaving. 'Goodbye.'
He doesn't
reply, and I never hear from him.
It's nothing to do with me. Meaning 'Do what you like'? Or, 'The man you want to interview has nothing to do with me, Roger Barrett'? Or both?.