When you think of the band Pink Floyd, most people think of Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall but before they were record-breaking superstars, they were a psychedelic rock band with a different eccentric guitarist and singer. He wasn’t a virtuoso on the guitar like Jimi Hendrix or, the most talented songwriter like John Lennon and Paul McCartney but gained a cult following in the 1960s counterculture in the UK.
Unfortunately for this person as soon as Pink Floyd broke into the mainstream this marked the beginning of the end of his time with the band and left fans with what could’ve been. His name is Syd Barrett and although he is often forgotten about, he was integral to the band’s 1960s stardom and future successes. This Week The Beat Marches On to 26th January 1968, Pink Floyd’s first performance without Syd Barrett.
Although the band was officially formed in London, the origins of Pink Floyd started at Cambridge University. This is where Syd Barrett met future bass player and bandmate Roger Waters. The two agreed to move down to London and play in a band together. By the time Syd managed to move Waters was already settled and in a band playing blues classics. When an opening for a replacement guitarist became available Roger Waters suggested his friend to the rest of the band. They agreed and Pink Floyd was born.
Barrett joined Waters along with keyboardist Richard Wright and drummer Nick Mason in 1965. They started by covering rhythm and blues songs from America like every young band was at the time. It wasn’t until they started writing original songs that Pink Floyd, then known as the Pink Floyd, stood out from the rest of the crowd.
Using his childhood experiences, Syd Barrett became the principal songwriter. The first single, Arnold Layne was a story of a transvestite who stole ladies’ underwear from washing lines and was based on someone in his neighbourhood in Cambridge. Other songs on the first album were based on the rural surroundings in and around the city.
Around this time the band were experimenting with drugs too. They would smoke the occasional joint, but it was LSD that was the main drug of choice for the band. LSD was a new drug on the scene at the time and a new counterculture took to it with open arms taking to have a new experience of music.
The Floyd performed regularly at the UFO club in Tottenham Court Road, London. The club used to hold LSD experiments to see what the reactions were throughout the performance. During this time the band started to use lights projected onto the stage which was the first time any performers used lighting as part of the show rather than just to show the band on the stage.
One of the highlights of Pink Floyd’s early performances was the song Interstellar Overdrive which turned into a long jam of over 20 minutes. It’s the song that gained most of the fans of the band at the time. Unfortunately for Barrett, the new fans became hangers-on and were frequent LSD users. The singer was falling in with the wrong crowd.
The success of the first single (it was a top twenty single in the UK) prompted their record label, EMI, to recommend the band record an album. The band went to the famous Abbey Road Studios to produce the album. The majority of the tracks were written by Barrett who was the creative leader of the group. Including the live favourite Interstellar Overdrive (now cut down to just 9 minutes) and their previous hit single, the label couldn’t have any potential singles on the album. At the end of the sessions, a new song emerged about a girl called Emily.
This was it. The single EMI were looking for. A new song called ‘See Emily Play’ was going to be a hit for the band. Although the label was happy with the new material, Syd Barrett didn’t want to make music because the label asked him to, he wanted to make music when he wanted to. The singer hated the commercialisation of the music.
During the recording sessions, Barrett’s bandmates and other friends were noticing changes in his demeanour. David Gilmour, who visited the band at Abbey Road, noticed the singer was staring into space for brief periods which Gilmour thought was weird, but no one truly knew what was going on in his head.
Outside of the band, Barrett was still experimenting with LSD, taking large amounts every day. Some of his bandmates were convinced his drinks were spiked with acid. The band’s manager, Peter Jenner, found him just staring into space on the side of the street with a girl on her knees crying out. It turns out they were on the end of a seven-day acid trip.
The album ‘Piper at the Gates of Dawn’ taken from a line from the Wind in the Willows book was released in August 1967, in the middle of the summer of love when the counterculture was at its peak. The album exploded and the band climbed up to number six in the UK albums charts along with the single ‘See Emily Play’ which also hit number six. To capitalize on their newfound stardom, they embarked on a UK tour with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Move and Amen Corner the following November.
The tour was a disaster for Pink Floyd. Syd Barrett would wander off when the bus arrived at the venue and then would show up just before the band were about to start their set. That was if he showed up at all. They had to get The Nice’s Davy O’List to fill in. It wasn’t just the tour the singer was disappearing from, there were TV and radio appearances in which he would disappear for hours on end.
The popularity of Pink Floyd in the UK meant the next step was to tour the USA. The album had modest sales in America but enough to tour the country. The band did some TV appearances on popular shows like American Bandstand which can be viewed on YouTube. The band were interviewed by host Dick Clark and they seemed nervous but nothing that seemed out of the ordinary.
By the time the Floyd arrived in San Francisco, things had changed. Performing at the legendary Fillmore West, the band went on stage and Syd Barrett was very different. He went on stage facing the drum kit rather than the audience. Then instead of playing the setlist, he started to detune one string on his guitar and strum. They had to cut short the American tour feeling they blew it. This wasn’t the only time the band had noticed some strange behaviour on stage from Barrett. There were instances when they noticed the singer just staring into space midway through performances.
The band knew they had to make a change. It felt uncomfortable but they knew Barrett wasn’t reliable on-stage. To fix the problem they brought in a friend of the band David Gilmour as a touring guitarist. They didn’t want Syd to leave because at this time he was the creative force of Pink Floyd. The plan was to have him in the studio and create new songs then the others go out on tour a la Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. Unfortunately, Barrett was too far gone to do that.
They did go back into the studio in early 1968 to record a follow-up to the Piper album but Barrett only contributed one song, ‘Jughead Blues’ where before he was involved with all of them. The final straw in the studio was when the singer brought a new song to the band. Called ‘Have You Got It, yet?’ it was a practical joke where Barrett kept changing the riff ever so slightly to wind up the band. Roger Waters ‘got it’ but put his bass down and walked out of the studio. This was the last interaction he would have with Syd.
By the spring of that year, Syd Barrett was gone from the band. They did try to help him with his mental health as they could see something was wrong. They drove him to a mental institution but he refused to go in.
Post Pink Floyd Syd Barrett did record a couple of solo albums in 1969 and 1970. The second was produced by David Gilmour. The albums have a cult following but didn’t make an impact on any chart. After the solo experiences, he decided to move back to Cambridge walking barefoot and concentrate on his first love, art. He stayed a recluse until his death in 2006. He did visit the band once more in 1975 during the recording sessions of Wish You Were Here. No one in the band recognised him as he had shaved off all his body hair and put on a lot of weight. Weirdly the song they were recording was the tribute to him ‘Shine on You Crazy Diamond’.
Syd Barrett was never diagnosed with any mental illness. Although experts believe it was Schizophrenia without the proper testing it’s all down to speculation. Experts also believe that the most creative people are exposed to mental health problems. It’s the most logical answer to be the cause you can’t necessarily say it was all down to the copious amounts of LSD he took. From watching videos and reading about Barrett it could be possible that he had an illness before, and the drugs exacerbated it. The truth is we will never know what happened to cause his strange behaviour. My personal view is a mixture of drugs, the relentless touring schedule, and the stress of being the creative force for the band.
The way mental health is treated now, especially in pandemic times, is completely different to how it was treated then and if it was the current times there may have been a way to help the singer and he may still be a member of Pink Floyd.
The Beat Marches On is a music blog written by Jimmy Whitehead. Jimmy has been blogging for four years specialising in Sports (especially American Football). If you want to follow Jimmy on Twitter: @Jimmy_W1987
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YouTube was mostly used for research, links to videos are:
Syd Barrett – Up Close & Personal – YouTube
Information on the tour with Hendrix, The Move and Amen Corner:
Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, The Move, Nice & Amen Corner Tour Together (udiscovermusic.com)
Jimi Hendrix, The Move & Pink Floyd On The Same Night? Yes, Please! (thisdayinmusic.com)
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