Into this turmoil, a strange-looking chubby man with shaved head and eyebrows appeared among the many band members at their Abbey Highway studio on June 5, 1975. It took them a while to grasp it was the previous tousle-topped Bohemian Syd Barrett – the previous chief they’d felt drive to desert 5 years earlier.
On the time of the line-up change, Barrett’s psychedelic genius had turn into overshadowed, apparently, by a mixture of psychedelic medication and his psychological situation. Unable to work with him any longer, the band had made the choice to maneuver on – and in doing so, set a course to turn into the world’s main prog band.
Nick Mason recalled the occasion, as reported by Prog , speculating on what Barrett hoped to realize. “It’s very straightforward to attract parallels with Peter Pan returning to search out the home nonetheless there and the folks modified,” the drummer mentioned. “Did he look forward to finding us as we had been seven years earlier, able to begin to work with him once more?
“Everybody’s story is fractionally totally different. Whether or not he got here as soon as, or twice, what he mentioned, all the remainder of it. All I can say is that he was undoubtedly there, and it was bizarre.”
In some accounts, Barrett arrived whereas Floyd had been mixing Shine On You Loopy Diamond – the topic of which was Barrett himself. Waters is claimed to have been decreased to tears after realising the stranger’s id. It’s reported that, on being requested what he considered the music, Barrett mentioned merely: “Sounds a bit outdated.”
Session vocalist Venetta Fields was there. “They by no means instructed me about Syd – I learn every little thing I find out about him,” she recalled. “No person actually recognised him. I didn’t know who he was. They spoke to him for some time, and we bought on with the session.”
She added: “I might see the affect he had on them that day. They had been shocked to see him there, and actually shocked on the means he appeared and acted.”
A couple of years later, Barrett returned to the anonymity of his mom’s residence in Cambridge, the place he studiously averted the limelight. He by no means stopped creating, although – he stored composing songs, loved portray and wrote a e book concerning the historical past of artwork. He died in 2006, aged 60, from most cancers.
His sister Rosemary later insisted that , whereas he’d spent a short while in a “personal residence for misplaced souls” and had seen a psychiatrist, he wasn’t on remedy or remedy. Whereas he averted media consideration, she mentioned, he was actively concerned within the lives of his nieces and nephews, and was identified to speak with the employees of outlets he frequented.
He might have given a unbelievable quantity… if he had stayed proper he might have crushed Ray Davies at his personal sport
David Gilmour
“He averted contact with journalists and followers,” Rosemary reported. “He merely couldn’t perceive the curiosity in one thing that had occurred so way back and he wasn’t prepared to interrupt his personal musings for his or her sake.”
Prog noticed: “Syd would paint massive canvasses, {photograph} them after which destroy them. He didn’t prefer to be reminded of the previous; he went spherical to his sister’s to look at a BBC TV documentary about him and the Pink Floyd, however left, complaining that it was ‘too loud.’”
Gilmour as soon as described Barrett as “one of many nice rock’n’roll tragedies,” including: “He was probably the most gifted folks and will have given a unbelievable quantity. He actually might write songs, and if he had stayed proper, might have crushed Ray Davies at his personal sport.”
The guitarist later admitted: “We in all probability did about as a lot as we might have – though we had been all very younger. However I’ve a remorse or two. I by no means went to see him, though his household form of discouraged it.
“I remorse that I by no means went as much as his home and knocked on the door. I believe each Syd and I might need gained one thing out of 1 or two folks popping spherical to his home for a cup of tea.”
We prefer to assume {that a} neighbour was giving Syd the key knock and whispering, ‘It’s okay, they’ve buggered off again to London’
Tommy Udo
Prog ’s Tommy Udo recounted a 2006 journey to Cambridge , with the intention of assembly Barrett at residence. Knocking the door produced no outcomes; nor did pushing a observe beneath the doorway. Udo and his companion gave up after ready exterior till after midnight.
“We prefer to assume {that a} neighbour was giving Syd the key knock and whispering, ‘It’s okay, they’ve buggered off again to London.’ Syd would then emerge from his refuge, make a cup of tea, decide up his guitar after which sing one of many many songs that he’d written however by no means recorded – songs that he alone would ever hear.”
