The death of a 60-year-old man, the inhabitant of an unremarkable house on a quiet suburban street in Cambridge, brings to an end one of the most enduring legends of the psychedelic era. Few musicians embodied the possibilities and perils of the 1960s as clearly as Syd Barrett, whose decision to abandon public life more than three decades ago precipitated a growing interest not just in his brief career as a rock music pioneer but in the curious story of his decision to renounce music altogether.
Barrett had nothing at all to do with the later recordings, such as Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, that turned his former bandmates into multimillionaires. For the last 35 years of his life he produced not a note of music. Without him, however, Pink Floyd could not have built the platform from which its members launched themselves to worldwide stardom. And so striking a figure was he, his fate so dramatically illustrating the places to which unfettered experiments with hallucinatory drugs could lead, that in his absence he grew more famous than any of his former colleagues.
It was Barrett's melodic instinct and whimsical lyrics that transformed a band into acid-rock innovators. He wrote and sang their early hits, Arnold Layne and See Emily Play, and he was widely assumed to be the group's frontman, thanks not least to the charisma imparted by his long curly hair, pretty features, kohl-shadowed eyes and wardrobe of hippie silks and satins.
The group's first album, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, followed their singles into the charts in the summer of 1967.
A heavy intake of LSD undoubtedly fuelled the visions that took shape in Barrett's songs, but it also rendered his behavior so erratic that, after a series of embarrassing live performances on their first US tour, his exasperated colleagues took the decision to replace him. “If drugs were going, he'd take them by the shovelful,” said David Gilmour, who replaced him in the line-up in the early weeks of 1968. Six years later, still half-ashamed of their youthful callousness, the band wrote and recorded Shine On, You Crazy Diamond, perhaps the tenderest and most touching elegy ever written for a living musician.
Barrett released two solo albums in 1970 but was unable to take his career any further. He returned to Cambridge, resolutely refusing to acknowledge his past. Accosted on his doorstep by one would-be interviewer, he produced the reply that summed up the whole story: “Syd can't talk to you now.”
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