Ex-Pink Floyd guitarist led psychedelic pop revolution

  Cyrus McNally McNally is a fourth-year
neuroscience student who currently spends his time mining for truth
and delusion. E-mail him at [email protected].

Millions of people around the globe probably recognize the name
Pink Floyd ““ a name usually associated with psychedelia,
laser-light shows and top-notch music production.

Perhaps only a handful of those, however, would recognize the
name of the driving force behind the band’s explosively
unique sound and undying legacy, Syd Barrett.

With only a dozen or so contributions to the Floyd catalog and
two half-finished solo albums, Barrett helped to define the term
“psychedelic pop” along with fellow high-ranking,
crazed contemporaries such as Eric Clapton, David Bowie and the
Beatles, to name a few.

Where creativity-inspiring hallucinogenic drugs like LSD,
psilocybin, mescaline and marijuana were all jumping-off points for
rock artists who participated in the 1967 Summer of Love, they
spelled the downfall of Barrett, whose creative output spanned a
mere 18 months before he sank into a maddening and inescapable pit
of schizophrenic disease.

The Pink Floyd sound, generally characterized by multilayered
keyboards, with Hendrix-esque guitar lines and droning bass and
drums, owes many of its retaining features to Barrett, even though
he was out of the band by 1969.

With whimsical lyrics about gnomes, scarecrows, interstellar
space and effervescing elephants, Barrett let the genius of his
subconscious overshadow his ego.

The personality behind his spacey, directionless solos and
four-dimensional lyrics would go on to directly influence several
artists that aren’t normally considered Floydian by any
stretch of imagination, including Robyn Hitchcock, the Smashing
Pumpkins, Blur and REM. Even if Barrett burnt out too early ““
he was barely 22 when the rest of the band decided to nix him
““ his experimentalist attitude, crazed antics and luminous
charm had already made him a rock legend.

Pink Floyd was first formed in 1965, in the midst of a social
revolution, encouraged by the arrival of new sounds, new drugs and
an increased demand for the unconventional ““ which Barrett
happily provided.

Cannabis had arrived in England in the early ’60s; LSD
only a few years later. LSD quickly became the drug to do, with
many cultural icons praising its use. The drug broke down barriers
between what could and couldn’t be done in music. People
looked to the psychedelic pop stars of the time for more than just
danceable music, which Pink Floyd never really gave, but also for
tips on how to lead their lives and align their minds with a
“cosmic” mind.

“We were incredibly awful; we were a dreadful band,”
reflected Floyd drummer Nick Mason in a fanzine interview.
“So the record deal was in fact a really rather good one
considering we had no track record whatsoever and couldn’t
play the instruments.”

Though Barrett’s guitar style was usually described as
stiff and he was nowhere near the virtuoso of acid compatriot Jimi
Hendrix, his songwriting style was instantly catchy and Pink Floyd
released its first single “Arnold Layne” in 1967 to
much success. The ethereal “See Emily Play” soon
followed, hitting the British top 10 and by the end of the year the
band had released its critically-acclaimed debut album,
“Piper at the Gates of Dawn.”

“Piper,” very unique for its time, was full of
fantastic imagery and scenescapes; a journey into the mind of a
grown child fraught with fear and organic delusions set against
blistering guitar noise, tribal drum beats and eastern-sounding
organs. Tracks like the 10-minute “Interstellar
Overdrive” explore the boundaries of harmony in disharmony,
layering odd guitar plucks on top of sporadic keyboard bursts and
other sourceless noises, while tripper tales like “Matilda
Mother” sound like what might happen if the Beach Boys met up
with the Brothers Grimm to do mushrooms together.

The album shot up high on the charts, earning the band an
American tour contract. While all the other members of Pink Floyd
were eager to make it big, Barrett’s eccentric behavior began
to worsen to the point of annoyance. He would reportedly begin each
day of the tour with a couple of drops of LSD in his coffee, and be
so burnt out by late afternoon that he would not want to talk to or
see anybody, including the expectant crowds at scheduled
venues.

While at a show in Venice, Calif., Barrett reportedly detuned
his guitar onstage, rattling the strings and gazing speechlessly
into the audience through the rest of the performance. He would
frequently refuse to play altogether, walking onstage without a
guitar or failing to sing the proper lyrics to songs. For its Dick
Clark’s American Bandstand performance, in which most artists
were asked to lip-sync their songs for television audiences,
Barrett instead let the cameras roll and the record play while he
stood mouth closed, motionless.

Barrett would not be properly diagnosed with schizophrenia for a
couple more years, but by early 1968 it was apparent that his
confusion had overpowered his will to perform as a musician, and
after one contribution to Pink Floyd’s follow-up album,
“A Saucerful of Secrets,” he was kicked out of the
band.

Modern understanding of molecular psychopharmacology and
psychological disease allows us to determine that, contrary to
popular opinion, Barrett did not go nuts simply from ingesting too
much LSD, although his schizophrenic tendencies were certainly
exacerbated by his chronic use of the hallucinogen. In spite of
this, the legend of Barrett’s downfall almost single-handedly
created an unpenetrable stigma on the psychological effects of LSD,
with many opponents of psychedelia using “Look what happened
to Syd!” as a regular slogan.

Nevertheless, Barrett’s adventurous, free-spirited
personality and magnetic lyrics encouraged a whole generation of
experimentation in pop music and continues to influence underground
musicians. His name might not be well known, but his time spent
with Pink Floyd shaped its ensuing success immeasurably.

After two half-hearted solo releases, Barrett soon went into
seclusion. He did manage to show up at Abbey Road recording studios
while his ex-band was making its follow-up to “Dark Side of
the Moon,” “Wish You Were Here” in 1974. His
unexpected appearance couldn’t have come at a more ironic
time ““ on the same day they were recording “Shine On
You Crazy Diamond,” which just happened to be about Barrett.
Now balding and overweight, hardly recognizable to anyone in the
room, Barrett reportedly asked singer Roger Waters, “When
should I put on my guitar?” to which Waters despondently
replied that his job had already been done.