SYD BARRETT R.I.P.

Syd Barrett is dead. Cambridge, England’s Greta Garbo of psychedelia has left the planet. Indeed detractors and fans alike might muse that Roger Keith Barrett left the planet a long time ago.

Long the subject of books, documentaries and articles (but thankfully no movies, yet…though one could imagine a wild eyed Billy Zane playing a good Syd!), Barrett’s rise, decline and subsequent reticent existence has been well (and ill) documented. His musical genius and whimsy have been aptly lauded. There only remains praise and compassion for the man who “let the music take him away”. Syd Barrett will be remembered as a Swingin’ 60’s acid casualty. Syd was the tormented Pied Piper of British 60’s psych who appeared, burnt out and crashed like a Technicolor supernova that vanished under a multitude of circumstances. More than likely an unhealthy intake of hallucinogenic drugs, a fragile personality and the inability to cope with the pressures sudden stardom brought about Syd’s retirement.

The first three Pink Floyd 45s, their debut LP “Piper At The Gates Of Dawn” and a selection of second LP (“A Saucerful Of Secrets”) tracks bear testimony to the ground breaking sound that helped define the whimsical genre of British 60’s psychedelia. Influenced by literary sources ranging from J.R. Tolkien, Hillaire Belloc, Aldous Huxley and Kenneth Grahame (whose “Wind In The Willows” provided a chapter who’s title the band chose for their debut LP) Barrett’s Pink Floyd era psychedelia evoked a distinctly pastoral English setting of all things green, pleasant and quaint. The Pink Floyd (and later their peers and imitators) initially drew on dreamy, fairytale, toy town psych that was neither threatening nor betraying a hint of madness. Syd’s departure in 1968 (with shades of the Brian Jones “did he fall or was he pushed” scenario) might’ve spelled the end but the band’s manager Peter Jenner saw fit to coax Syd into a studio. Indeed the band’s management team could not imagine a Pink Floyd without Syd at the fore and soon left them to flounder in an obscurity of university dates until eventual super stardom. With the help of his replacement in the Floyd (and childhood friend) David Gilmour as well as other ex-bandmates on varying sessions he issued two subsequent solo LP’s. “The Madcap Laughs” and “Barrett” . Both are bare bones affairs, that provide nary a glimpse of the man who’d burst onto the scene three years earlier with “Arnold Layne”. Partially acoustic and sparse they provide at times, some embarrassing, cringe worthy selections that even the most diehard Barrett acolytes consider unlistenable due to their incompetence and sometimes painfully lethargic delivery and most importantly the sad window into Syd’s mental deterioration. That is not to say either are entirely unworthy, but fans of 1967 era Pink Floyd will barely recognize what they're hearing at a first listen. Further attempts at a third LP were aborted and Syd left London for Cambridge where he gave his last ever interview in 1974. Safely ensconced in a quaint Cambridge neighborhood a close network of family and neighbors kept him away from the limelight he sought to avoid as he lived a quiet existence. His private seclusion would be occasionally ruptured by hack journos and rag sheet vermin who saw fit to photograph him from the shadows portraying a bald, overweight Syd (or Roger as he preferred to be known as upon his retreat from London) as “insane” or “mad” in tabloid articles and photographs of him walking and cycling to the market.

Despite all this Roger Keith Barrett was allowed a quiet, obscure, private death. Despite an ongoing battle against diabetes he was well looked after by his family and old friend/bandmate David Gilmour, who despite not having seen Barrett in 32 years, saw that his royalties kept up and that a legal team would pounce with impunity on any infraction on Syd’s music, likeness and privacy. At one point Gilmour bought the rights to and thereby squashed the commercial DVD release of “Syd’s First Trip”, 1965 8mm footage of Syd and some art school friends taking “magic” mushrooms. Gilmour and other members of The Pink Floyd till this day refuse to allow EMI to issue two oft bootlegged Syd Floyd era cuts “Scream Thy Last Scream” and “Vegetable Man” proffering the view that both tracks offer a too close to the bone illustration of Syd’s fragile state.

Like a character from a song from the genre he made famous in the 1960’s Syd Barrett got to live a quiet suburban seclusion where he had a home and painted, tended a garden and according to family members listened to classical music. Recently Barrett’s sister Rosemary indicated that he watched a BBC documentary on himself and is said to have remarked to her that he liked it, a sign that perhaps meant that it was all behind him, as prior any mention of his former self would cause severe distress. And like a character from the genre one would hope he slipped away on a sunny day with flowers and plants in bloom and the wind whispering through willow trees.

I didn’t cry when John Lennon died, and until writing this and hearing the brass band/kazoo bit on a BBC version of “Jugband Blues” while hunched over my PC I hadn’t cried for Syd either.

****This tribute originally appeared on uppers.org July 13, 2006******