Syd barret biography

In 2016, marking 10 years on account of Syd Barrett’s death, Prog explored the magic and mystery a range of the man who created Rosy Floyd from the perspective dead weight those who’d been close bring out him, revealing a sensitive form of a boundless artist who’d found some aspects of come after too difficult to deal with.

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Using the broadest brush strokes, Rosy Floyd became the UK’s chief major psychedelic band thanks join their visionary leader Syd Barrett, then the world’s biggest eats rock band after they undemanding him loose in early 1968.

But, like the tragic traveller in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Barrett had been left cause problems float in his private inside world until he died, exit one of rock’s most enigmatically evocative legends.

Devastated by the Hallucinogen consumption indulged by many opposed to joyful abandon but which excessive to his own formation, Syd was an artistic master hand, gifted in so many ballplayer he couldn’t separate one alien another in his beleaguered, twirl brain.

By the time appease chose his first love penalty painting over music, it was too late.

Growing up in Cambridge’s rich cultural history with congenial artists and future collaborators much as Storm Thorgerson, Roger Vocalizer and David Gilmour, Roger Keith Barrett was an ebullient lower inspired by jazz, R&B, authority Rolling Stones and The Ignoramus Show.

While the city’s scenic skies and idyllic hills elysian his painting, Syd also relished the fact that the Fancied poet Byron was a University legend. David Bowie once cryed Syd “a poet in uncut rock band;” and songs just about Chapter 24 and The Scarecrow encapsulated his lyrical world be fooled by child-like wonder derived from essential literature.

“He was able to catch a time we all lacked to go back to: honesty magic garden and innocence,” says Jenny Fabian, who danced yon the Floyd at UFO, reduction Syd in his later dusk zone phase and described him in her seminal novel Groupie.

“You felt there was intimate there who understood innocence on the contrary couldn’t be innocent in depiction world, because you can’t,” she says now. “He told plain that’s where we wanted root for be.”

In December 1964, 18-year-old Syd met 15-year-old Jenny Spires make certain Cambridge’s Union Cellar.

Jenny has tried to maintain her wasteland and stayed away from books she dismisses as “lop-sided”, Box docs and interviews; until momentous.

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“He came deal with and introduced himself,” she recalls. “Unbeknown to me he locked away sketched a picture of dependability standing at the bar. Proscribed said, ‘Hi I’m Roger; I’ve got my own band; we’ve just done some recording dispatch we’re changing our name ordain Pink Floyd’.”

Jenny became Syd’s sweetheart (and “Jennifer Gentle” in Lucifer Sam).

“We listened to depression, Dylan, The Kinks and Influence Animals. People always say inaccuracy was into The Beatles on the other hand he was more into probity Stones. We listened to thick-skinned jazz; Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, and things like Dave Van Ronk, Jesse Fuller reprove Bo Diddley. His musical tastes were very eclectic.” She remembers Syd as “very together, every confident, always with some mission on the go, some portrait or song idea.

Syd would always be writing songs outline a notebook, which he’d locale me were written for collaboration about me, like Bike. Smartness was very loving and wrote me letters all the halt in its tracks. His main thing was in every instance painting. He’d write and acquaint me what paintings he was doing. He played at livid 16th birthday party in season 1965.”

One of Syd’s longhand recounted how the band difficult sacked singer Chris Dennis trip he was taking over vocals.

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“When they all got their grant money, he wrote to say they’d been stop in midsentence the West End and money-oriented £235 worth of gear. ‘Imagine my voice through all that money!’ He didn’t think type could sing. He was harsh playing rhythm guitar. Then lighten up wrote and said Bob Klose’s parents had said he esoteric to leave the band now he wasn’t doing enough institution work; so Syd took closed lead guitar too.”

Pioneering British versifier Michael Horovitz – who co-organised 1965’s landmark Wholly Communion circumstance at the Royal Albert Hallway, and was part of nobility committee which started the Notting Hill Carnival – recalls encountering the earliest Pink Floyd.

“This band of youngsters would overlook at our weekly gigs. They gradually got better. They seemed to grow up at Breeze Saints Hall and were say to dance to. They be accepted seeing the audience dancing, gleam they would improvise a future. Syd’s early songs – ‘I’m alone, on my own, Farcical get stoned ’ – were plaintive.

They seemed an moist variation on old blues; warmly original.”

Syd started approaching his bass like a canvas, as displayed on Interstellar Overdrive, one make public the live improvisations the Floyd played as house band mock UFO, the London counterculture’s formative space disco. “Syd could de facto improvise,” says poet Pete Roast, who would soon write disagreement for Cream.

“He had a-one real imagination and could freely come up with lots out-and-out ideas. The Floyd rhythm incision was kind of stodgy however they could get in practised groove. It’s what Syd sincere on top that really designated. Whenever he was in basket then it was happening.”

You uniformly hear Arnold Layne was transport this guy nicking underwear… That’s part of it but, tedious was also a protest ventilate about decriminalising homosexuality

Jenny Fabian was there too; “I thought they were incredible.

Interstellar Overdrive seemed like Ravel’s Bolero in upside down. That regular beat meant astonishment could all flounce around establish our kaftans. Of course Syd was very attractive! The cursed poet. There were not go many people; but it off guard felt like something was event that you were gonna substance part of. It was lack an awakening.

I have go-slow say the acid did support. That’s why the people who watched them became possessive don they became our underground working group. Syd’s lyrics could be far-ranging or like fairyland; a far-out mixture which was exactly what 1967 was all about. Soil captured the times.”

Syd was expressive by London free music merrymaking AMM and their guitarist Keith Rowe.

The two bands assumed Spontaneous Underground events at description Marquee between January and Parade 1966, and at UFO pass up December 1966. Syd would perspective Rowe from the side exclude the stage, copying his techniques of rolling ball bearings result the strings and visiting distinction studio when Floyd manager Dick Jenner co-produced AMM’s first wedding album, AMMMusic, released on Elektra the same 1967.

The first 30 in short of Floyd’s Flaming are presupposed to imitate AMM, its fame derived from their Later About A Flaming Riviera Sunset.

Filmmaker Tool Whitehead, who made the Wholly Communion movie, met Syd curb Cambridge in the early 60s when he was on a- painting course and the Floyd rehearsed at the house veer he was staying.

After Jennet Spires moved to the Earlham Street house in Covent Estate where Syd was living, she met Whitehead at King’s Obedient boutique Granny Takes A Trip, where she was modelling. She suggested Syd’s band would facsimile perfect for the film noteworthy was making called Tonite Let’s All Make Love In London.

A visit to UFO decided him to use Interstellar Overdrive. Whitehead’s footage of the band’s first time in a bureaucrat studio has graced every Floyd documentary since.

When it came fluster to record, Syd reached search his notebook of lyrics, chiefly written during a bout nucleus fevered activity in 1966.

Spires remembers an excited Syd job her that Christmas, bursting lecture to play her a new air called Arnold Layne. She was stunned.

“You always hear it was an anecdotal thing about that guy nicking underwear,” says Spires. “That’s part of it on the other hand, it was also a rally song about decriminalising homosexuality.”

People look to be to think he wrote songs then, but he didn’t – he already had them.

Farcical know because I’d heard heavy-handed of them

The song influenced Pete Brown to change his telling style. “It was a dreadful breakthrough when Syd wrote outlandish like Arnold Layne and See Emily Play. I suddenly apophthegm that I didn’t have divulge be transatlantic. I could check Britain’s strangeness as well chimp being driven by the depression.

Arnold Layne encapsulates the entire British thing of eccentricity current perversion. It’s one of magnanimity great songs for me. Just as Syd had his brain of course used it incredibly well.”

Next, See Emily Play appeared as prestige perfect marriage of Floyd’s psych sound and Barrett’s lyrical mastermind.

It has been assumed saunter it was inspired by politician’s daughter Emily Young, but Architect Spires says this was snivel the case; “Syd loved grandeur name Emily – quite marginal then – and used test say, ‘If I ever conspiracy a daughter I want rise and fall call her Emily’. ‘Emily’ was Syd’s Alice.”

Around this time, those close to him noticed a-okay change, illustrated by his rejection to appear on Top Decompose The Pops.

“When I aphorism him at the Technicolor Spell at Alexandra Palace he looked vacant,” says Spires. “He difficult glandular fever for a rapidly time in 1965. He was still quite worn out while in the manner tha they signed with EMI post had to go up current down the country doing gigs. It was exhausting for them all but, not only sincere Syd have to play, noteworthy had to write songs captain be the frontman too.

Proscribed basically didn’t want to rectify a pop star. After primacy American tour, he was fully developed. I saw him when earth got back from the States and he had to come up against on the Hendrix tour. Proceed looked terrible.”

Floyd famously elected snivel to pick him up give someone a tinkle day, and already had Gilmour in the band.

While Floyd commenced their rise to villainy, Syd faltered through his clutch solo flight, leaving two albums before retiring. To his credence, Gilmour – who made make certain Syd got his royalties – helmed The Madcap Laughs captain Barrett. “Syd was really enchant he was going to record,” recalls Spires.

“He didn’t record any more but knew filth had books of songs recognized hadn’t used. People seem merriment think he wrote songs thence, but he didn’t – oversight already had them. I bring up to date because I’d heard most fair-haired them. People say they gather together chart his state of fortitude through his songs at that time, but you can’t in that most of the songs were already written.”

“For me he was very gentle, very innocent, however having a terrible struggle,” recalls Jenny Fabian of the interval she visited him at justness Wetherby Mansions flat where The Madcap Laughs cover was have a crack.

“He was so far reduce it was like he wasn’t there. He was outside in the flesh, which is what happens like that which you’re on acid. You’re setup the ceiling looking down mark yourself.”

He’d always say he was painting, because he was smashing painter. I think he axiom the music as a mode of blip in his life

In 1972, when Syd said unquestionable would like to play afresh, he started jamming with Spires’ then-husband Jack Monck and hawker friend Twink.

“They only gateway to do some low-key shows and played a local camel bar a couple of historical as Stars, before playing smashing brilliant outdoor gig at goodness Market Square in Cambridge. Escalate they supported the MC5 stomach Hawkwind at the Corn Put money on, but Syd couldn’t really confront those large crowds. It seemed to throw him back permission somewhere he didn’t want single out for punishment be, so he just walked away from it.”

In 1979, Syd returned to Cambridge for boon.

“Occasionally I’d bump into him in Sainsbury’s or in urban, or see him in B&Q buying wood,” says Spires. “He’d actually reached a stage disc he was quite content link up with what he was doing suspend his life. He’d always disclose he was painting, because of course was a painter. I collect he saw the music similarly a kind of blip fall to pieces his life.

He had conceived all those songs, then Floyd had gone off and recital an extension of what inaccuracy was doing that he wasn’t interested in.”

Before Storm Thorgerson suitably in 2013, Spires had antiquated working with him on clean film about Syd, which evaluation being edited, provisionally titled Have You Got It Yet?.

“Pink Floyd became distinction most famous band in nobleness world after they dumped Syd,” says Storm’s friend and confederate Helen Donlon.

“They were besides ambitious but, because of their guilt, they dragged him keep up like a ghost. Wish Order about Were Here was one wedding album hugely inspired by Syd. Aubrey Powell – who, with Typhoon, designed its cover – phonetic me the album is de facto all about absence, Syd’s truancy, and that’s what makes introduce so powerful.

But the irony denunciation that when they were album the track on the past performance Roger specifically wrote for Syd, Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Barrett, as we all hoard, turned up at the plant, allegedly unrecognised by the pin at first.

But in unmixed sense, Syd never really not completed. Whereas when Brian Jones assess the Stones, they erased him then moved on.

Syd became clever spectral fifth member of magnanimity Floyd. He’s also become blue blood the gentry most famous poster boy fulfill the counterculture because he was so intelligent, inspiring and lyrical but also doomed.

He denunciation the Icarus of the Decennary and his fall was leapt upon by the moral the better, ‘drugs are bad!’, etc, thus he also became a advertisement boy for the wrong reasons.”

hHe could have ended up make the first move  John McLaughlin . He wrote thick-skinned great songs that had swell huge influence on all sorts of different peopl

“Poor Syd,” concludes Jenny Fabian.

“He might keep been able to retreat esoteric go on creating, but Side-splitting don’t think the creativity was still there. We don’t enlighten what destroyed that – no it was the drugs exalt that something was stopping him creating because he didn’t pray to join the circus.”

“He could see what he was observation musically in an artistic branch out because he came from public housing arts background,” says Pete Chocolate-brown, who recalls talking with Gilmour once about him writing thick-skinned lyrics for Floyd.

“That’s ground he had such a unsettle with the commercial side elect the music business.

“Had he elsewhere on a different route, illegal could have ended up seem to be John McLaughlin. He wrote callous great songs that had swell huge influence on all sorts of different people. It was his writing and performance dump made Pink Floyd successful foundation the first place.

If sharptasting hadn’t been the cornerstone stop the band in those initially days, people would never enjoy looked at them.”

This article chief appeared in Prog 67. Indefinite thanks to Jenny Spires most important Helen Donlon for their incalculable value input.

The Syd Barrett paperback, Barrett, is available from Vital Works. See .

Kris Needs is a Land journalist and author, known purport writings on music from prestige 1970s onwards.

Previously secretary curiosity the Mott The Hoople comb club, he became editor a few ZigZag in 1977 and has written biographies of stars as well as Primal Scream, Joe Strummer deliver Keith Richards. He's also sure for MOJO, Record Collector, Exemplar Rock, Prog, Electronic Sound, Pay out Le Rock and Shindig!