MadcapLaughs.Narod.Ru

 

Lost In The Woods

by Gian Palacios

 

 

 

Introduction

 

'So beautiful and strange and new!а Since it was to end all too soon, I

almost wish I had never heard it.а Nothing seems worthwhile but just to hear

that sound once more and go on listening to forever.а No!а There it is

again!' he cried, alert once more.а Entranced, he was silent for a long

space, spellbound.'а

 

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

 

аааааааа

ааааааааа And so it must have been, turning the dials of a small radio set in the early days of 1967.а The distant crackle of Radio Caroline, one of the numerous pirate radio stations broadcasting from off the English shore, spilled forth an exotic, mysterious sound.а 'Arnold Layne' by the Pink Floyd. Its author was Roger Keith Barrett, better known as Syd. Who was Syd Barrett? Barrett himself said, 'I don't think I'm easy to talk about. I've got a very irregular head. And I'm not anything that you think I am anyway.'а Syd Barrett was the lead singer, songwriter and guitarist for the Pink Floyd during 1965-1968, which became London's premier Underground band.а In a meteoric rise to fame, Barrett became the figure head of the nascent psychedelic underground by the time he was 21 years old. Along with John Lennon, Roger 'Syd' Barrett created English psychedelic music, and defined its parameters.а The English version of psychedelia, as opposed to the strain found in San Francisco, was a melange of indigenous folk, traces of 1940s pop, vestiges of the blues and Mod boom of the preceding years, informed by the anarchic wail of free jazz, and a strong dose of the peculiarly English fantastical storytelling of Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland', Edward Lear, J.R.R. Tolkein's 'The Hobbit' and 'The Wind in the Willows'.а No one captured the ethos of this better than Syd Barrett.

 

ааа In all its various mutations over the years, many of the tributaries of psychedelia point back to the sylvan banks of the River Cam in Cambridge, where Syd as a teenager first began channeling the alternately discordant and peaceful spirit of Nature into music, playing his songs for his friends on idyllic spring afternoons after classes.а That riverbank at Mill Pond is as much a touchstone for the dream-like evocation of childhood that lies at the core of psychedelia as Strawberry Fields, the spacious wooded grounds of the girl's reform school where John Lennon played as a child with his friends.

ааа One of the unconscious aims of the psychedelic music they pioneered was to map their inner world, of their dreams and childhood, and by extension, their subconscious.а The conduit to this inner world was often marijuana and LSD.а

 

ааа The inner world Barrett sought to map was paradoxically surrealistic and vague or literal and pin-point precise in its descriptions.а The songs were peopled with the archetypes of his subconscious, called forth in various guises, such as Barrett's 'Scarecrow'.а The duality extends to the very quality of the sounds used to evoke this world; mellotrons, plaintive acoustic guitars, piano, disonnant sound effects, string instruments, garbled voices floating in the background.а Mirroring the disorienting effects of LSD, Barrett's songs called forth images of both the infinite reaches of space, with its multiplictity of unknown worlds, or the immediately familiar surroundings of his childhood home at 183 Hills Road in Cambridge.

 

ааа In a very few years, Barrett traversed a vast expanse of territory in a relentless quest for musical and lyrical exploration.а The combined pressures of sudden fame, excess ingestion of mind altering chemicals, and the onset of a nervous breakdown led to Barrett's dismissal from the band in early 1968.

ааа With his replacement, Barrett's teenage friend David Gilmour, Pink Floyd achieved world renown, selling countless millions of albums and playing live in stadia the world over.а After two erratic yet brilliant solo albums, 'The Madcap Laughs' in 1969 and the eponymous 'Barrett' in 1970, Barrett renounced music and retired to his childhood home of Cambridge.а Since 1974, he has lived in seclusion, shedding his nickname 'Syd' along with all the trappings of pop fame.

а

аааа Since the abrupt end of his career, the myths and misinformation surrounding his activities and whereabouts have abounded.а Barrett is sometimes dismissed as an acid casualty; one who indulged too freely in the excesses of his time. Barrett is also often labelled one of music's madmen.а That Syd Barrett lost his way is undeniable, and some would charcterise it as an unfortunate descent into the silent seas of schizophrenia.а Others would say Barrett had a stomachful of the various indignities of fame and wisely turned his back on its mad fanfare for the quietude of home.

 

аааа Roger Waters, the bassist for Pink Floyd and teenage freind of Syd's, said, 'Syd was a visionary, an extraordinary musician, he started Pink Floyd... Syd was the key that unlocked the door to rock'n'roll for me. I stillа consider Sydа aа greatа primaryа inspiration; there was a wonderful human tenderness to all his unique musical flights.'аа In a 1992 interview Waters pointedly stated, 'Syd was a genius.'а In 1973, Waters also acknowledged him as 'One of the three best songwriters in the world.' 'Syd was a beautiful person, a lovely guy.а He had a creative brain, a way of looking at things that was really genuinely revolutionary and different. ' said John Marsh, who engineered Pink Floyd's light show. The Pink Floyd's first manager Peter Jenner said, 'Syd Barrett was the most creative person I've ever known.'

 

ааа Why is it that precisely the minds that reach furthest, that strive to test the perimeter of their world or even edge beyond, are especially susceptible to all manner of corrosive and withering indulgences?а For the short time he was fully in the here and now he left in his wake a trail of true magic.

ааа The rise and fall of the Underground movement in London during the late sixties is mirrored by the season's cycle in English, a long thaw after the harsh winter of the 1950s brought forth an exquisite spring, and one those all too rare majestic summers, followed by a long Indian summer, descending inevitably into a doubly bleak and unforgiving winter.а Barrett was one of the English Underground's most brilliant blossom, which made his sudden withering doubly dramatic.а His withdrawal from the excessive demands of his day to day reality should come as no surprise after reading this book.а This book seeks to illustrate why someone with exceptional talent and personal charisma was destroyed by forces greater than him, both from within and without.а Wittingly or not, he helped in is own downfall, but Syd is dismissed all too easily by those who don't want to take the time to understand why. His nephew, Ian, said, 'I don't think people are prepared to understand the true extent of Roger's breakdown or the pressures he was put under.'аа Syd, like Icarus in Greek mythology, flew too close to the sun, striving for an ephemeral musical ideal, and fell from the sky, the terrifying sight of his scorched wings burned into our minds.а This is not a story of a late 1960's burnt out rock star, but rather about Icarus in flight, and in fall.

 

ааа Contained herein is also an exploration of the myriad musical and literary influences that Barrett utilised in creating his unique music.а In the popular music of the latter half of the 20th Century, where adherence to formula and rampant trainspotting have been the norm, Barrett was that rarest of all blooms, a true original.а And like Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Barrett had the gift of making the complex appear simple.а This book is also an examination of the circumstances that led to Barrett's mental breakdown, of why Syd Barrett vanished into an internal exile so profound he never returned.а By analysing Barrett's life with objectivity and compassion, this book seeks to present a portrait of an exceptional person and an an unsung innovator who remains largely misunderstood, his accomplishments obscured by the aura of madness connected to his name.

 

ааа What makes Barrett such a compelling songwriter lies in his accurate portrayal of childhood, alternately turbulent and exhilarating, fearful and promising. Syd's childhood songs were tinged with a hint of foreboding, as childhood truly is; the idealised vision of childhood comes with hindsight.а Syd's songs are also unqiue in thatа they document his own incipient breakdown. Barrett chronicled his descent into mental illness with songs such as 'Jugband Blues', showing that he was quite aware of what was happening to him. Peter Jenner, described 'Jugband Blues' as 'the ultimate self-diagnosis on a state of schizophrenia.ixа A really sad song, the portrait of a nervous breakdown.'а Co-manager Andrew King said, 'Syd knew exactly what was happening to him, but was powerless to stop it.а He knew he was going wrong inside.'

 

ааа Syd Barrett's music is intriguing also because of a duality between songs of almost unearthly, transcendental beautiful melodicism alternating with a turbulent cacophony of noise.а Both strains, seemingly opposite, sprang from the same mind.а From his earliest experiments in music to his final attempt, this would be the defining motion in Barrett's creative genius. A song like the Pink Floyd's 'Interstellar Overdrive' is a case in point; what on initial listen sounds like a mess of ideas and a barrage of noise can prove surprisingly full of surprises and twists, unheard subtleties and nuances...and revealing order under its illusory chaos.а With his crude Binson echo unit and Fender Esquire Telecaster, Barrett exploded the limits of guitar playing, influencing everyone from Hendrix to Tony Iommi to Robert Smith and beyond.

 

аааа Syd's music, especially his solo works, can come as a bit of a shock to those more accustomed to Pink Floyd's later work, with their perfect transitions, skillful musicianship and superbа production.а But a knowledge of Barrett's music does much to shed light on the intricacies of later post-Barrett Floyd music, which is tinged with his spirit of grasping for the ungraspable.а Syd Barrett's songs can be abrasive, out of tune, skewed in timing, or dogged by fluffed notes and erratic singing.а That they also comprise one of the most compelling oeuvres in popular music of the last 40 years, is made more poignant by the fact that there is precious little of it extant. His slim book of songs, carried in a small black folder, was open for a short time only. Barrett's work, is immediately striking for its exceptional melodicism and curious harmonic structures.а His elaborate wordplay rife with double meaning, his exquisite sense of humour, superb sense of irony and unerring eye for capturing the essence of an image with a few words.а Barrett's entire oeuvre is rich with an interpolation of seemingly irreconicalbe opposites, experimenting with contrasts in extreme volume and gentle acoustic guitar strumming, setting sinister words to poppy melodies, painting silence with the brush of noise.а

а

аааа Barrett's near mystical connection with nature was drawn from his youth in Cambridge and avid reading of books like Kenneth Grahame's 'The Wind in the Willows'.а His work is illuminated by lyrics and sound collages evoking the woods, fenlands and rivers of his childhood, with its menagerie of croaking frogs, scarecrows standing in fields, mythic gnomes, field mice, silently ambling cows and cantering horses.а In the words of one unknown writer, Barrett had the gift of making the ordinary magical.а And Barrett himself alluded to a mystical experience he'd claimed to have had, whereby the full complexity of Nature was opened and laid bare for him.

 

ааа If Dame Edith Sitwell were alive today, she would surely profile Barrett as one of the great English eccentrics.а His peculiar songs about scarecrows, gnomes, cats, bikes, chapter 24 of the I-Ching and 'interstellar overdrive' endure while so much of the cod-psychedelic songs of that era are forgotten.

ааа What can explain his continuing appeal?а His 23 year old nephew, Ian, professes amazement that so many people should express such keen interest in someone who hasn't recorded a note since 1974.а But there is something in those songs that never ceases to amaze.а This is his story.