:: NEWS ::
The Madcap Is Gone: Syd Barrett Dead At 60 Cary Jul 11th
Pink Floyd founder and frontman Syd Barrett apparently passed away on July 7th, 2006, from unspecified causes – though his death was not widely announced until today.
If you came to know Pink Floyd during their 1970s heyday (think The Wall) you may not be aware of Barrett’s influence on the band – he left Floyd in 1968 – but his early songwriting and over-the-top stage presence helped put Pink Floyd on the psychedelic musical map.
Syd Barrett’s musical legacy includes his incredibly wistful work on songs like Lucifer Sam, Astronomy Domine, and the enigmatic See Emily Play – all of which have been covered by numerous bands in the decades since their release.
Record credits include Pink Floyd’s first two albums – The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and Saucerful of Secrets – and the two albums Barrett released during his short-lived solo career – The Madcap Laughs, and Barrett. A compilation of rare singles and b-sides was released in 1988. It was titled Opel.
Though he’d already left Pink Floyd by the time I was even born, Syd Barrett became a huge influence on my early musical interests, and I’m very sorry to hear he’s gone… lucky for us, he left behind a short, but truly magical repertoire of recordings.
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Howdy! Care to Comment?
July 11th, 2006 at 1:23 pm
In the time since I first discovered Pink Floyd (about a year ago), I’ve often found myself wondering what the band would have become had Gilmour, and not Barrett, been one of the founding members. It seems easy enough to suggest that it would have been superior - after all, Gilmour’s presence on the critically lauded classic era albums is certainly a profound reason Pink Floyd is one of the largest bands in rock history. Beyond that, it is undoubtedly possible to “know” Pink Floyd the band without ever an awareness of the roots upon which the band grew and therefore never even realize that Syd Barrett even existed.
But to do this would be to do a wonderful musician a wonderful disservice. To glibly ignore Syd is to ignore the experimental nature, the (perhaps unparalleled) attention to aural details that Pink Floyd embodies. To do this would be to ignore the profound contributions that Syd Barrett left in his own right in but a few brief years - in less than half a decade, Syd accrued a mythos that most rock groups spent decades building.
I can’t say that Syd Barrett was a favorite musician of mine (though Terrapin was the first thing I learned on the guitar, and I find both The Madcap Laughs and Piper At the Gates of Dawn fantastic), but I truly feel as if something meaningful was lost to me today. Something that I never really knew, something that I’ll never really know.
July 11th, 2006 at 1:41 pm
Thanks for the loveley comment, Charles
Perhaps another influence that Barrett had on Pink Floyd, and that many younger players are completely unaware of, is the fact that much of the band’s most popular later work was directly inspired by Syd’s ongoing battle with mental illness.
From the album “Wish You Were Here,” which is said to have been a tribute to their former bandmate (Shine On You Crazy Diamond is an obvious reference to Barrett,) to “The Wall,” which, well… the correlations on that one are obvious.
Anyways, definitely the passing of a great one.