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| Soldatti |
RIP Crazy Diamond. |
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| Egbert |
I think much of the inspiration (or blame, depending on your p.o.v.) for Satanic Majesties Request can be placed on Syd & his Piper album.
[Edited by Egbert] |
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| Zack |
And we'll bask in the shadow of yesterday's triumph, and sail on the steel breeze.Come on you boy child, you winner and loser, come on you miner for truth and delusion,and shine!
RIP Syd. Though no one's heard a peep from him for decades, this makes me very sad. |
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| ebmp |
quote:
pdog wrote:
I'm of the belief "The" should never be used in a bands name!
The Rolling Stones sounds preety good to me :P |
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| Egbert |
quote:
pdog wrote:
I'm of the belief "The" should never be used in a bands name!
What about The The then? |
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| VoodooChileInWOnderl |
This is as sad as his departure of Pink Floyd
I'm not sure but as far as I remember Brian Jones attended some of those "Technicolour Dream Extravaganzas" with Pink Floyd playing live with a light show by Timothy Leary |
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| Factory Girl |
Two Questions--
1. What is Syd's cause of death?
2. Is Madcap Laughs still in print?
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| Irina |
Sad news...
Rest in peace, Syd
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| Gazza |
quote:
Factory Girl wrote:
Two Questions--
1. What is Syd's cause of death?
2. Is Madcap Laughs still in print?
Syd had suffered from diabetes for many years, and I think it's believed that may have something to do with it. Everything's still a bit vague, I suppose as even his death was only confirmed some four days after it had taken place.
I think you can get Syd's two solo abums together as a single package. If theyre not available at the minute, then in true cash-in style, you can bet that they soon will be! |
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| Your Cousin Lou |
You can still get his two official solo albums, The Madcap Laughs and Barrett, as far as I know.
The reason that everything was kept vague and secretive over the years is because certain asshole "fans" would constantly travel to Cambridge and pester him by taking his picture and trying to meet him, sometimes scaling the wall into his yard and taking stuff. Of course, this pissed his family off, as it should have! The Family wanted to avoid all of the spectacle, so they kept the details private. |
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| Factory Girl |
Pink Void
From Slate.Com
The psychedelic legacy of Syd Barrett.
By Jody Rosen
Posted Tuesday, July 11, 2006, at 6:12 PM ET
Syd Barrett, who died several days ago (no one is sure exactly when) at age 60, was, to say the least, a mess. The wire services are remembering the co-founder and first lead singer of Pink Floyd as a "troubled genius"—obit-speak for lunatic—and indeed his life was a lurid tragedy that seemed scripted for a VH-1 Behind the Music special: Gifted psychedelic-rock pioneer streaks like a comet across the Swinging London music scene, sears his mind on drugs, descends into madness, and disappears. He became something more horrifying than a rock martyr like Jim Morrison or Jimi Hendrix; he became a kind of living dead man. The most famous episode in the Barrett legend was his 1975 reunion with Pink Floyd, when he turned up unannounced at Abbey Road Studios just as the band was recording their Barrett elegy, "Shine On, You Crazy Diamond." He was a gruesome apparition—bloated, with a shaved head and shaved eyebrows—and none of his ex-bandmates recognized him.
And yet this epic mess of a man made art that was anything but. Listening to Barrett's songs—to the first Pink Floyd singles, to the band's 1967 debut The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and to Barrett's early '70s solo records—one is struck by the formal rigor, the wit, the satisfying symmetries of his music and words. Barrett was a terrific craftsman, and neither the dissonance and clatter of his soundscapes nor the cheery freakiness of his lyrics could hide the songs' essential classicism. Had Barrett been born 30 years earlier, and done several thousand fewer hits of LSD, he could have made a fine living on Tin Pan Alley. The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is probably the great '60s psychedelic rock album, and it reminds us that psychedelic rock wasn't an atonal maelstrom, but pop gone a little fuzzy and acid-fried around the edges: catchy songs tricked out with weird noises. Barrett's lyrics similarly mixed old-fashioned rigor with drug-fueled surreality, nonsense with wry, funny, haunting sense. "Arnold Layne," Pink Floyd's first single, sounds like doggerel, but listen closer and you hear the tale of a transvestite who steals his wardrobe from clotheslines: "Arnold Layne/ Had a strange hobby/ Collecting clothes/ Moonshine, washing line/ They suit him fine."
Barrett delivers those lines in a nasal southern English whine, which was something of an innovation for the time. Most British bands, including the Stones and early Beatles, sang in ersatz-American accents, but Barrett proclaimed his Englishness and not just by refusing to Yankee-up his singing voice. His songs are steeped in a pastoral fairy-tale Englishness—enchanted forests and gnomes in tunics and mice romping through barley fields—which is what you get, I guess, when you mix hard drugs with Victorian children's literature. (Barrett took the phrase "piper at the gates of dawn" from Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows.) It's a deeply quaint and provincial worldview, perfect for Barrett's twisty little pop songs but miles from the space-rock grandeur that Pink Floyd would achieve on post-Barrett classics like Dark Side of the Moon. Rock snobs like to say that Pink Floyd lost it when Barrett freaked out and left the band, but the truth is Floyd would probably have gone down in history as a curio had Barrett stuck around—and what's more, there wouldn't be any such thing as Radiohead.
For decades, Barrett was rock's great romantic-tragic recluse, and now that there will definitely be no second act to his sad story, the Byronic myth surrounding him is bound to inflate. (I'm sure we'll be hearing lots of his 1970 ballad "Dark Globe," a terrifying farewell from a man slipping into madness: "Please, please, please lift the hand/ I'm only a person with Eskimo chain/ I tattooed my brain all the way/ Won't you miss me?/ Wouldn't you miss me at all?"*) But it would be nice if Barrett was recalled not just as an acid casualty or as a legendary "rock madman" but as an English eccentric in the surreal-comic tradition that extends from Lewis Carroll to Monty Python and, via Barrett, onto the weirdo-pop specialist Robyn Hitchcock. Barrett spent his final years in his mother's house in Cambridge, England, living comfortably off the royalties that his former bandmates made sure he collected. Reportedly, his pastimes were painting and gardening, and he was often seen by neighbors on his bicycle. It sounds like a pretty nice life, actually, and it's pleasant to think of Barrett ending his days as a vaguely Victorian figure—an odd old Englishman who'd made quite a splash in his youth, tottering through town on two wheels.
[Edited by Factory Girl] |
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| keefjunkie |
quote:
Honky Tonk Man wrote:
Sorry, yep, I meant Gimour!
I don't know when exactly they dropped the THE from their namne, but I know that I have the original 45rpm of Arnold Lane which has The Pink Floyd on it.
Thats sweet man! |
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| StickyFishFingers |
Yep poor old Syd - i was totally bummed out when i heard the news earlier this week. I listened to Piper last night out of respect to the fellow. I think Syd's best work was Lucifer Sam and Arnold Layne. Somebody mentioned earlier See Emily Play - another great Syd era Floyd track, however I'm pretty certain that Rick Wright actually wrote that one.
The one thing that warms my heart about Syd and the Floyd is that even after they (Waters & Co) sacked him - & they had to sack him - was that they still had enough compassion & respect for the guy which continues right up to the present. Both Gilmour & Waters made sure over the years that Syd was being looked after. I have often wondered whether the Stones would have done the same thing for Brian if he was still alive & in a similar situation to Syd. |
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| Factory Girl |
quote:
I have often wondered whether the Stones would have done the same thing for Brian if he was still alive & in a similar situation to Syd.
See Mick Taylor. I don't believe the Stones are a nurturing bunch of blokes. |
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| gustavobala |
quote:
Factory Girl wrote:
Pink Void
From Slate.Com
The psychedelic legacy of Syd Barrett.
By Jody Rosen
Posted Tuesday, July 11, 2006, at 6:12 PM ET
The most famous episode in the Barrett legend was his 1975 reunion with Pink Floyd, when he turned up unannounced at Abbey Road Studios just as the band was recording their Barrett elegy, "Shine On, You Crazy Diamond." He was a gruesome apparition—bloated, with a shaved head and shaved eyebrows—and none of his ex-bandmates recognized him.
[Edited by Factory Girl]
photo from this day: 
http://www.sydbarrett.net/images/74-Now/SydAbbeyRd75.jpg
photo from him in 2001:
http://www.pinkfloydz.com/personal/Syd-Barrett-abril-2001-3.jpg
http://www.pinkfloydz.com/personal/Syd-Barrett-abril-2001-1.jpg
a friend of mine said that he sttopped with the drugs after his 30th anniversary, is true? |
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| Factory Girl |
Thank you, gustavbola!
The first photo is after 2001, or in 2006? He looks fairly young there, I can still see his good looks. But, he looks like a mental patient.
I don't know if he stopped tripping when he hit 30. Maybe, didn't acid eventually go out of style? |
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| Your Cousin Lou |
quote:
Somebody mentioned earlier See Emily Play - another great Syd era Floyd track, however I'm pretty certain that Rick Wright actually wrote that one.
Nope, Syd wrote Emily, supposedly about some naked girl he saw in the woods when he was on an acid trip. Rick Wright wrote Paintbox, as well as some other early Floyd tunes.
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| Your Cousin Lou |
quote:
Factory Girl wrote:
Thank you, gustavbola!
The first photo is after 2001, or in 2006? He looks fairly young there, I can still see his good looks. But, he looks like a mental patient.
I don't know if he stopped tripping when he hit 30. Maybe, didn't acid eventually go out of style?
The first photo was in 1975, when he showed up at the Wish You Were Here sessions. |
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| Factory Girl |
Thank you, Your Cousin Lou! |
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| Gazza |
I'd heard about the infamous 1975 incident before, but never realised there was a photo from it..thanks |
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| Gazza |
The Sunday Times - Review
The Sunday Times July 16, 2006
My lovably ordinary brother Syd
The ‘crazy diamond’ founder of Pink Floyd was no acid casualty or recluse. He loved art and DIY, his sister Rosemary tells his biographer Tim Willis in her first interview for 30 years
When the death of 60-year-old Roger “Syd” Barrett was announced on Tuesday, the media raised an astonishing last hurrah for the founder of Pink Floyd, the “crazy diamond” who had shunned the public gaze for decades.
The descriptions of him as a “mad genius”, “recluse” and “acid casualty” were far off the mark, however, according to his sister Rosemary.
When I wrote Barrett’s biography, Madcap, four years ago I had off-the-record guidance from Rosemary — his junior by two years and closest friend. Last week, after his death, we spoke again and this time she went on the record — the first time she has given a press interview for more than 30 years.
She described him as a loving man who “simply couldn’t understand” the continued interest in his distant Pink Floyd years and was too absorbed in his own thoughts to spare time for fans.
While her account is naturally fond, one should remember that she has spent much of her working life as a nurse and therefore sees no stigma in mental illness. As children, she and Barrett shared a bedroom and she recalls him leaping from his sheets to conduct an imaginary orchestra. He always had an extraordinary mind, bordering on the autistic or Aspergic. He had a rare talent to exploit ambiguities in language and also experienced synaesthesia — the ability to “see sounds and hear colours” — which was to be a huge influence on his music in his psychedelic phase.
As a performing artist, signed to a label, he was under enormous strain. Not only did he find fame a two-edged sword, he was also deeply resistant to his record company’s commercial demands. He was run ragged. Between January 1966, when the Floyd turned professional, and January 1968, Barrett played 220 gigs around Britain — not to mention broadcasting and performances abroad — as well as writing, recording and co-producing two hit singles, most of the band’s first album and part of the second.
While his enthusiastic ingestion of any drugs available might have triggered some disturbing behaviour, such stress might tip anyone into nervous collapse.
From 1981, when he returned from London to the suburbs of his native Cambridge, resumed the name Roger and set up home in his mother’s modest semi, he made faltering but significant progress.
Rosemary is adamant that he neither suffered from mental illness nor received treatment for it at any time since they resumed regular contact 25 years ago. At first he did spend some time in a private “home for lost souls” — Greenwoods in Essex — but she says there was no formal therapy programme there. (“And besides, he didn’t mix, because he was very content to be basket weaving and making things.”) Later he agreed to some sessions with a psychiatrist at Fulbourn psychiatric hospital, Cambridge, but neither medication nor therapy was considered appropriate.
He might have continued to find social interaction difficult — when I knocked on his door while writing my book he greeted me in his underpants and avoided conversation by saying that he was just looking after the house — but the idea that he “didn’t recognise he was Syd” is nonsense. His troubled years had been so painful that even thinking about his former incarnation upset him, so he made a conscious effort to avoid that trap.
Because he was so interested in his own thoughts, his sister said, he often forgot about the mundane chores essential to comfort. To keep an eye on him, she would visit or phone every day and sometimes accompany him on expeditions into town.
Earlier this year an old friend saw the pair in Robert Sayles, the Cambridge department store, and went up to renew their acquaintance. “Hello, Syd,” he said. “Do you remember me?”
“Yup,” replied Barrett. But Rosemary cut in with “Roger is only interested in buying some ties today”, and led her brother away. Now she admits she might have been over-protective.
Barrett lived in the semi with his mother until her death in 1991 and then remained there alone. “So much of his life was boringly normal,” said Rosemary. “He looked after himself and the house and garden. He went shopping for basics on his bike — always passing the time of day with the local shopkeepers — and he went to DIY stores like B&Q for wood, which he brought home to make things for the house and garden.
“Actually, he was a hopeless handyman, he was always laughing at his attempts, but he enjoyed it. Then there was his cooking. Like everyone who lives on their own, he sometimes found that boring but he became good at curries.
“When Roger was working he liked to listen to jazz tapes. Thelonious Monk, Django Reinhardt, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis were his favourites — he always found something new in them — but apart from the early Rolling Stones, he’d lost interest in pop music a long time ago.
“As for a television or radio, he didn’t feel the need to own one because he didn’t want to waste any energy concentrating on it. It’s not that he couldn’t apply his mind. He read very deeply about the history of art and actually wrote an unpublished book about it, which I’m too sad to read at the moment. But he found his own mind so absorbing that he didn’t want to be distracted.
“He did have leisure interests. He took up photography, and sometimes we went to the seaside together. Quite often he took the train on his own to London to look at the major art collections — and he loved flowers. He made regular trips to the Botanic Gardens and to the dahlias at Anglesey Abbey, near Lode. But of course, his passion was his painting.
“Roger worked in a variety of styles — though he admired no one after the impressionists — and you could say he came up with his own type of conceptual art. He would photograph a particular flower and paint a large canvas from the photograph. Then he would make a photographic record of the picture before destroying the canvas. In a way, that was very typical of his approach to life. Once something was over, it was over. He felt no need to revisit it.
“That’s why he avoided contact with journalists and fans. He simply couldn’t understand the interest in something that had happened so long ago and he wasn’t willing to interrupt his own musings for their sake. After a while he and I stopped discussing the times he was bothered. We both knew what we thought and we simply had nothing more to add. It became easiest to pretend those incidents never happened and just blank them out.
“Roger may have been a bit selfish — or rather self-absorbed — but when people called him a recluse they were really only projecting their own disappointment. He knew what they wanted but he wasn’t willing to give it to them.
“Roger was unique; they didn’t have the vocabulary to describe him and so they pigeonholed him. If only they had seen him with children. His nieces and nephews, the kids in the road — he would have them in stitches. He could talk at length and he played with words in a way that children instinctively appreciated, even if it sometimes threw adults.”
He was quite a sharp dresser, too. “He didn’t follow fashion — he just bought what he liked for himself — but he liked to look presentable. His clothes were always clean and pressed. In fact, if he had an obsession, it was with that.”
Barrett suffered from stomach ulcers for 30 years — which he managed by drinking milk — and also developed diabetes. “But he simply refused to admit it to himself. For days at a time he wouldn’t take his pills — which, being a nurse, could have worried me. But to be honest, it can’t have been very severe because he never showed any ill effects.”
What he did show, she said, was love: “I gave it to him and he gave it to me. He was incredibly supportive when our mother died. And in the past week I’ve been surprised to learn how popular he was with the local tradesmen. He was simply a very lovable person.
“He showed his personality in lots of different ways — which some outsiders found confusing — but underneath he was solid as a rock. It may have been a responsibility to look out for him, but it was never a burden.”
Madcap by Tim Willis is published by Short Books, £7.99
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2271741,00.html
[Edited by Gazza] |
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| Factory Girl |
Gazza, thank you for posting a great article. |
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| FotiniD |
RIP Syd |
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