Goodbye, Syd

About a year ago I had a big discussion with another Bucharest DJ about Syd Barrett, the one-time frontman of Pink Floyd. “He’s dead,” my friend insisted, and it proved impossible to prove him otherwise. “Everyone knows Syd Barrett is dead, stupid,” he insisted. Yesterday I sent him an SMS. “You were right about Syd Barratt.” News had just come through of his death in Cambridge , England , from cancer.

It’s an easy mistake to make, thinking that the enigmatic rock star died many years ago, for long before he actually died, it seemed as though he’d genuinely passed away. In reality, he’d just faded into the background. Music aficionados, and Pink Floyd fans especially, mourned his passing long ago.

Barrett is perhaps the original ‘acid casualty’. He spent most of his life, post-fame, as a recluse, living (‘temporarily’, as he used to put it) in his mothers basement, blocking out the windows to stop people from peering in. Very much like the enigmatic and unstable genius behind the Beach Boys, Brian Wilson, Syd Barrett became a victim of the ‘turn on, tune in, drop out’ philosophy, so enthusiastically espoused by counter-cultural figures like Timothy Leary. At a time when many were espousing the use of LSD and psychedelics as a pathway to heightened self-awareness and ‘enlightenment’, Barrett came to represent to dark underbelly of this optimism.

Tales of Barrett’s increasingly erratic behaviour have become the stuff of legend: tales of how he used to completely de-tune his guitar on stage, creating an unlistenable racked much to the distain of the rest of the band; how he’d play a single chord throughout an entire show, or not play at all. Although his use of psychedelic drugs undoubtedly had its part to play, it’s also been suggested that many other factors contributed to Syd’s breakdown. He clearly found fame increasingly difficult to handle, and some say that the death of his father when he was a child left him with some deep-rooted psychological issues. In any case, after about 1975 he became a genuine recluse, shunning any kind of public existence and eventually moving into his mother’s Cambridge basement. His time appears to have been given over to his passion for gardening and painting large, abstract canvasses.

His withdrawal didn’t stop his legendary status growing. Despite the fact that he only ever recorded two albums as part of Pink Floyd and produced two rambling, barely coherent solo albums, he’s held onto his status as an iconic figure in the world of music. Huge numbers of bands have name-checked him, cited his work as inspiration and written songs about him. If anything, his status as a hermit rather enhanced his appeal, with fans often making pilgrimages to his town to try to catch a glimpse of the legend himself as he popped out for a pint of milk and a newspaper. ‘I Know Where Syd Barrett Lives’, a song title by the Television Personalities, rather sums up this mystical infamy.

Though Pink Floyd went on to record a lot of good stuff without him, they also recorded a lot of unforgivably self-indulgent garbage. Much of their later stuff falls into this category. Their last LP, The Division Bell, is a case in point. The idea isn’t that they’d have been a lot better with Syd on board, but that Syds reputation has remained intact because he managed to embody the perfect rock and roll myth. Despite the fact that he lived until the ripe old age of sixty, he lived fast and died young. It’s exactly what we ask of our rock stars: hanging around too long becomes an embarrassment. Syd was thus spared the humiliations of growing older as a rock musician. Pink Floyd’s appearance at the unspeakably execrable Live 8 concert held last summer is just one example of why, in the music industry, it’s far better to die before you get old.

As Syd himself put the question in one of his solo songs, ‘Wouldn’t you miss me?’ The answer is, of course, yes. He will be sadly missed.

© Tom Wilson / Business Magazin 2006