Syd Barrett: The Madcap's Legacy

On Wednesday 12 July 2006, considerable media coverage was given to the passing of a man whose star had burned all too briefly and – much to his own cost – all too brightly.  He died quietly on 7 July 2006, not in a moment of rock ’n’ roll excess but due to complications with the diabetes from which he suffered.  The life and times of one Syd Barrett, born Roger Keith Barrett in Cambridge on 6 January 1946, are now part of rock’s apocrypha and yet, his mainstream profile, as driving force behind the early years of Pink Floyd, as a solo artist and as the fragile recluse who lived with his mother until his death, may never be greater than a moon orbiting the super-planetary mass of the success the band he created achieved without him. 

And yet, as we look at many of bands that have followed in subsequent decades – both alternative and mainstream – it’s the influence of Syd, and not that of the bandmates who abandoned the star who’d become a liability to them, that thrives relentlessly on.  Here, Gigwise says goodbye to one of the 20th century’s greatest visionaries, and examines a legacy that shows no signs of abating.

The music of Syd Barrett holds a special place in the pantheon of British rock ‘n’ roll.  On the one hand, Pink Floyd’s gigs at places such as London’s fashionable psychedelic hang-out UFO established Barrett and his band as genuine improvisational pioneers – a kind of English Velvet Underground but way, way more far out, drawing the likes of Paul McCartney and Pete Townshend in regularly.  But even more than that, Pink Floyd’s first singles ‘Arnold Layne’ (a song that Cream’s Jack Bruce describes as “the first truly English song about English life”) and ‘See Emily Play’ marked out Barrett as a writer much like Ray Davies of The Kinks - articulate in the eccentricities of English life at a time when most British combos were still looking to U.S. R’n’B and its themes of love and sex for lyrical inspiration. 

By the time their ‘Piper At The Gates of Dawn’ surfaced in 1967, Pink Floyd were, under the leadership of Barrett, light years ahead of the competition.  ‘Astronomy Domine’ and ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ are the kind of space-rock that wouldn’t be seen again until the likes of Hawkwind or even Spacemen 3, while ‘The Gnome’ and ‘Chapter 24’ pre-empt Marc Bolan’s whimsy and George Harrison’s inspiration from the East respectively.  Bizarre instruments found in their landlord’s loft lend the album an exotic quality, tempered all the time by Barrett’s unmistakeable Cambridge lilt and childlike lyrics (‘The Bike’ in particular may be remembered by many as his greatest song, with lyrics such as “You’re the kind of girl who fits in with my world/I’ll give you anything everything if you want things”, encapsulating the essence of Syd).

There are also certain people to whom the character of Syd Barrett will have a slightly morbid appeal.  They’re the people who enjoy the music of Alexander ‘Skip’ Spence, Roky Ericson, Peter Green, Arthur Lee – the so-called ‘acid casualties’ whose records offer as much a psychological insight into paranoia or madness as they do into an erratic talent.  To the voyeur, Barrett does allow the veil to drop enough times to satisfy the curiosity.  His only song on the second (and Barrett’s last) Pink Floyd album ‘Saucerful Of Secrets’, ‘Jugband Blues’, contains lyrics that can be listened to either as the confusion of a schizophrenic mind or, as is perhaps more likely given his wry humour, the raising of a hurt eyebrow at his gradual marginalising within the band (“And I’m wondering who/Could be writing this song”, asks Barrett in an especially uncomfortable moment). 

Likewise, his two cult solo records, ‘The Madcap Laughs’ and ‘Barrett’, document a man unable to work with other musicians, unable to finish his own songs (or even to start them, as the cruelly edited ‘If It’s In You’ shows).  The fact that much of the music on those two albums is as charming as anything he recorded with Pink Floyd (the rampant ‘Octopus’, the haunting ‘Dark Globe’, the skeletal adaptation of a James Joyce poem ‘Golden Hair’ and the wonderfully mellow ‘Gigolo Aunt’ are magical highlights), is shamefully often overlooked by critics more concerned by the legend of Barrett’s drug-induced psychosis.