The Twilight World Of Syd Barrett

[Webster]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eQ-Mog0PUY

Six years after his death (7th July 2006) Syd Barrett lives on freeze framed, still young and a striking lost soul of the sixties whose brief moment of creativity outshines those long years of solitude shut away in a terraced house in his home town of Cambridge.

This revealing programme hears how his band Pink Floyd (and family) coped with Barrett's mental breakdown and explores the hurriedly arranged holiday to the Spanish island of Formentera - where the star unravelled. In the programme we also hear about Barrett's pioneering brand of English psychedelic pop typified on early Pink Floyd recordings 'Arnold Layne', 'See Emily Play' and the strange songs on Pink Floyd's impressive debut album 'The Piper At the Gates of Dawn'.

Undoubtedly Barrett's experimentation with the drug LSD affected him mentally and the band members reveal how concerned they were when he began to go catatonic on-stage, playing music that had little to do with their material, or not playing at all. By Spring 1968 Barrett was out of the group and after a brief period of hibernation, he re-emerged in 1970 with a pair of albums, 'The Madcap Laughs' and 'Barrett', but they failed to chart and Barrett retired to a hermit life existing under the watchful gaze of his caring sister Rosemary (featured in the programme).

We hear from David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Rick Wright (one of the last interviews before his sad passing) about how there was little understanding of mental illness when it came to the drug fused culture of the time. These days a strung out star is hurriedly booked into the Priory and given counselling. As this programme reveals Barrett's mental breakdown was not understood and the steps taken to help him were inappropriate and still rankle the members of Pink Floyd today.

 

[Nebulous]

Interesting find there. So LSD made him go insane?

 

[Webster]

Interesting find there. So LSD made him go insane?

Not quite, Nebulous. It didn't help, by any stretch of the imagination, as Barrett was already suffering from mental illness back in the late 60's. Unfortunately, the LSD - plus the wholly inadequate manner in which mental health issues were dealt with at the time - helped exacerbate it. FWIW, its' also helped bring about one of those alternate-history questions in the music world: what would Pink Floyd look like had Syd Barrett not gone off the deep end, so to speak?

 

[seasidemike]

I think that although Sid was definitely a huge part of Pink Floyd's beginnings, the success of Pink Floyd is what came after. Sid legacy is more nostalgic than anything else.