Syd Barrett – Unforgotten hero

Mark Paytress celebrates the recorded legacy and unravels the enigma that was Syd

The Summer Of Love was hitting its stride, but Syd Barrett had already had too much to think. He was 21 years old. His group, The Pink Floyd, were riding high with See Emily Play, and were about to release their first album, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn – the pinnacle of English psychedelia.

Syd was the darling of the London underground  – with a queue of female admirers to prove it. Yet, by the beginning of August 1967, barely six months after the band had signed to EMI, none of this mattered. Barrett had endured the mental breakdown that would determine his passage from musical visionary to tormented troubadour and, ultimately, his virtual retreat from the world.

Barrett’s early work with the Floyd helped define the sound of the emerging underground: ripped R&B riffs, electronically modified vocal pop and dope-fuelled folksong augmented with jazz-inspired jamming and the grand vistas of classical music. While Syd and the others were a group – and one that thrived on collective improvisation – it was Barrett’s songwriting, his search for a new musical language, and his fantasy-led vision that ultimately took the Floyd from the quiet suburbs of Cambridge to the heart of Swinging London.

‘Syd was the most creative person I’d ever known,’ said the band’s original co-manager Pete …

by Mark Paytress
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