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| Ten Thousand Motels |
‘Poverty-stricken’ Syd Barrett and the £1.7m inheritance
by RICHARD SIMPSON
Daily Mail
17th May 2007
He died a recluse, having lived what many assumed to have been a poverty-stricken existence in a modest semi inherited from his late mother.
Yet Syd Barrett, the founder of Pink Floyd, was not quite so badly off as he seemed.
Syd Barrett: In his heyday in 1967 and as a recluse in 2003
Barrett, who shunned the limelight for more than 30 years, left almost £1.7million following his death from cancer aged 60 last summer.
Documents made public yesterday show that Barrett, who left the Floyd before they became one of the world's biggest rock bands, split his fortune between his two brothers and two sisters.
His brother Alan receives £425,000 and his other siblings, Rosemary Breen, Ruth Brown and Donald Barrett each receive £275,000.
Rosemary, who cared for him during the last few years of his life, also receives the proceeds of selling the house, which fetched £310,000, and all the late singer's possessions, some of which were auctioned for £119,000.
The papers also revealed that Barrett's mental state had deteriorated so much in his latter years that his brother Alan had to authorise the will under the Mental Health Act.
It is clear that Barrett's legendary consumption of mind-bending drugs during the band's formative years had taken its toll.
He wrote the hit singles Arnold Layne and See Emily Play, along with most of the songs on the group's first album in 1967, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn.
The album was a commercial and critical hit, but Barrett's heavy use of LSD was already leading to erratic behaviour. During his final days with the band, he was so high on drugs he could barely perform and in 1968, he quit and returned to Cambridge.
In 1970, he emerged from his seclusion with two solo albums, The Madcap Laughs and Barrett, but his psychological problems grew worse and he withdrew totally from public life, eventually suffering a mental breakdown in the 1980s.
An album of previously unreleased material, Opel, was issued in 1988.
It is understood that Barrett financed his modest lifestyle through royalties from his solo records and Pink Floyd work. He shied away from interviews and spent his days weeding his plants and painting.
After Barrett disappeared, Pink Floyd went on to become one of the world's biggest rock bands.
Waters wrote the song Shine On You Crazy Diamond about his friend. It appeared on the 1975 Wish You Were Here album.
What is clear from his will is that the 30 years Barrett spent shunning the limelight had extraordinary consequences for his fortune. His former bandmates made some £100million each. Barrett shared the semi with his mother until she died several years ago. After that he ventured out only rarely, to go shopping or pay his newsagent's bill.
A neighbour said: "He hardly ever opened his door to anyone. One of the only people he ever spoke to was his sister."
[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels] |
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| VoodooChileInWOnderl |
These are the pix on the article
Syd Barrett: In his heyday in 1967 and as a recluse in 2003
Modest: The Cambridge semi he shared with his mother |
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