Pollux: outubro 2002

Pros pacientes....

You shone like the sun

Syd Barrett was the prodigiously talented founder of Pink Floyd, but
after just two years at the centre of the 60s psychedelic scene, he
suffered a massive breakdown and has lived as a recluse ever since.
In this extract from his candid new book, Tim Willis tracks him down
and pieces together the story of rock's lost icon

Sunday October 6, 2002
The Observer

Remember when you were young, You shone like the sun. Shine on you
crazy diamond. Now there's a look in your eyes, Like black holes in
the sky. Shine on you crazy diamond.
Pink Floyd's tribute to Syd Barrett on Wish You Were Here, 1975
The received wisdom is that you don't disturb him.The last interview
he gave was in 1971, and from then until now, there are only about 20
recorded encounters of any kind. His family says it upsets him to
discuss the days when he was the spirit of psychedelia, beautiful Syd
Barrett, the leader of Pink Floyd. He doesn't recognise himself as
the shambling visionary who, during an extended nervous breakdown
exacerbated by his drug intake, made two solos LPs, Madcap and
Barrett , which are as eternally eloquent as Van Gogh's cornfields.
He doesn't answer to his 60s nickname now. He's called Roger Barrett,
as he was born in 1946.

On a blistering hot day, pacing the cracked tarmac pavement in this
suburban Cambridge street, I wonder if I can act honourably by him.
When the DJ Nicky Horne doorstepped him in the 80s, Barrett
said, 'Syd can't talk to you now.' Perhaps, in his own way, he was
telling the truth. But I could talk to him as Roger; ask him if he
was still painting, as reported. I could pass on regards from friends
he knew before he became Syd.

Two housewives in the street say he ignores their 'Good mornings'
when he goes out to buy his Daily Mail and changing brands of fags.
Apart from his sister, they don't think he has any visitors - not
even workmen. But they don't see why I shouldn't take my chances.
It's been a few years since backpackers camped by his gate. 'He
didn't open the door for them, and he probably won't for you.'

So I walk up the concrete path of his grey pebble-dashed semi, try
the bell and discover that it's disconnected. At the front of the
house, all the curtains are open. The side passage is closed to
prying eyes by a high gate. I knock on the front door and, after a
minute or two, look through the downstairs bay window. Where you
might expect a television and a three-piece suite, Barrett has
constructed a bare, white-walled workshop. Pushed against the window
is a tattered pink sofa. On the hardboard tops, toolboxes are neatly
stacked, flexes coiled, pens put away in a white mug.

Then, a sound in the hall. Has he come in from the back garden?
Perhaps it needs mowing, like the front lawn - although, judging by
the mound of weeds by the path, he's been tidying the beds today.

I knock again, and hear three heavy steps. The door flies open and
he's standing there. He's stark naked except for a small, tight pair
of bright-blue Y-fronts; bouncing, like the books say he always did,
on the balls of his feet.

He bars the doorway with one hand on the jamb, the other on the
catch. His resemblance to Aleister Crowley in his Cefalu period is
uncanny; his stare about as welcoming...

In 1988, the News of the World quoted the writer Jonathan Meades who,
20 years before had visited a South Kensington flat that Barrett
shared with a bright, druggie clique from his home town of
Cambridge. 'This rather weird, exotic and mildly famous creature was
living in this flat with these people who to some extent were pimping
off him, both professionally and privately,' said Meades. 'There was
this terrible noise. It sounded like the heating pipes shaking. I
said, "What's that?" and [they] sort of giggled and said, "That's Syd
having a bad trip. We put him in the linen cupboard."'

It's a common motif in the Barrett legend: the genius mistreated,
forced to endure unspeakable mental anguish for the fun of his
fairweather friends. But it's not necessarily true. There are some
terrible tales from that flat in Egerton Court. But on this occasion,
as flatmate Aubrey 'Po' Powell remembers it, 'Pete Townshend used to
come there, and Mick and Marianne. It was an incredibly cool scene.
Jonty Meades was a hanger-on, a straight cat just out of school. I'm
sure we told him that version of events - but only to wind him up.'

Similarly, Barrett's lover and flatmate at the time, Lindsay Corner,
denies the stories that he locked her in her room for three days,
feeding her biscuits under the door, then smashed a guitar over her
head. This time, however, three other residents swear he did: 'I
remember pulling Syd off her,' says Po. And that's the trouble with
the whole Barrett business. There are witness accounts by people who
weren't there, those who were there disagree - half of them, being as
totally off their faces as Barrett was, must have a question mark
over their evidence. If you can remember the 60s, as they say...

By October 1966, Barrett was already well on the way to stardom. Pink
Floyd supported the Soft Machine's experimental jazz-rock at the IT
magazine launch party, a 2,000-strong happening in the disused
Roundhouse theatre, featuring acid aplenty, Marianne Faithfull
dressed as a nun in a pussy-pelmet, and Paul McCartney disguised as
an Arab. There was a giant jelly and a Pop Art-painted Cadillac, a
mini-cinema and a performance piece by Yoko Ono.

'All apparently very psychedelic,' sniffed The Sunday Times of the
Floyd, thus encouraging hundreds of difficult teenagers to check out
their new residency at the All Saints Hall in Ladbroke Grove.

Now once- or twice-weekly, the shows took time to take off. Barrett's
friend Juliet Wright remembers an occasion when there were so few
punters that Barrett movingly recited Hamlet's 'To be or not to be'
soliloquy onstage. But soon ravers were crossing London for the
lights and the weirdness, titillated by music-press adverts using
Timothy Leary's phrase of 'Turn on, Tune in, Drop out'. With
Barrett's nursery-rhyme freak-outs lasting 40 minutes each, the Floyd
become known as Britain's first 'psychedelic' band.

Apart from playing a packed live schedule, the Floyd were in pursuit
of a recording contract, rehearsing and making rough demos. Floyd gig
promoter Joe Boyd, who had production experience, took them into a
studio in late January. Barrett had written 'Arnold Layne' by then,
and perfected the relentless riff of 'Interstellar Overdrive'. EMI -
the same label as the Beatles - signed them up on the basis of these
demos, nominating 'Arnold' as the first single. Barrett was
delighted. 'We want to be pop stars,' he said, gladly grinning for
cheesy publicity shots of the band high-kicking on the street.
However, by the beginning of April, he was already railing in the
music papers against record-company executives who were pressing him
for more commercial material.

He was even less cheery by the end of the month. Six weeks
before, 'Arnold Layne' had been released. This jolly tale of
Barrett's childhood pal and later Pink Floyd member Roger Waters's
mum's washing-line raider was helped up the charts by a ban from
Radio London, due to its lyrics about transvestism. But Barrett had
grown to hate playing note-perfect, three-minute renditions on stage.
On 22 April it reached number 20, its highest position. On 29 April,
Barrett was still playing it, at Joe Boyd's UFO club at dawn and on a
TV show in Holland that evening. The band then drove back to London
to headline at 3am in Britain's biggest happening ever, the '14 Hour
Technicolor Dream' at the cavernous Alexandra Palace.

It was a druggy affair. Floyd's co-manager Peter Jenner was certainly
tripping that night, and Barrett is said to have been. John Lennon,
Brian Jones and Jimi Hendrix were among those who played to a 10,000-
strong audience. There were 40 bands, dancers in strobe shows, a
helter-skelter and a noticeboard made of lightbulbs which displayed
messages like 'Vietnam Is A Sad Trip'. The Floyd came on as the sun's
pink fingers touched the huge eastern window. Barry Miles, the 60s
chronicler, reported: 'Syd's eyes blazed as his notes soared up into
the strengthening light, as the dawn was reflected in his famous
mirror-disc Telecaster [or rather, Esquire].' The truth was less
rosy. Barrett was tired, so terribly tired.

There's a horrible ring of truth to Barrett's old college friend Sue
Kingsford's contention that, in 1967, Barrett would regularly visit
her in Beaufort Street, to score from a heavy acid dealer in the
basement called 'Captain Bob'. It certainly sounds more likely than
the rumours that Barrett's camp-followers were lacing his tea with
LSD. Kingsford's boyfriend Jock says: 'Spiking was a heinous crime.
You just wouldn't do it. There was a ritual to acid-taking those
days - a peaceful scene, good sounds.'

Cambridge pal and future Floyd member David Gilmour reckons: 'Syd
didn't need encouraging. If drugs were going, he'd take them by the
shovelful.' Gilmour tends to agree with something fellow Camridgian
and Floyd's bassist Waters once said that 'Syd was being fed acid.'
But Sue Kingsford giggles: 'We were all feeding it to each other...
It was a crazy time.' Despite her attachment to Jock, she had a one-
night stand with Barrett. 'We were tripping,' she explains.

Ah, but what does she mean by tripping? Another of Barrett's
Cambridge friends, Andrew Rawlinson, comments: 'Acid in those days
was five times stronger than today's stuff. On a proper trip, you
might take 250 micrograms. But a faction believed in taking 50mcg
every day. [There was even a popular hippy-handbook on the subject.]
On that, you could function - you might even appear normal - but you
couldn't initiate much.'

Perhaps that was Barrett's way. But if he had actually taken a proper
dose of acid at the Technicolor Dream then it was a fairly rare
event. He simply didn't have the time for anything stronger than
dope - which he did smoke in copious quantities. And maybe for a few
Mandrax, the hypnotic tranquillisers which, if one can ride the first
wave of tiredness, induced an opiate-like buzz when swallowed with
alcohol. In legend, 'Mandies make you randy.' They may have appealed
to Barrett because they were fashionable in the late 60s - or because
they stopped his mind from spinning.

The band weren't worried by his behaviour, yet Syd was Syd. And if,
by the end of May, people who hadn't seen Barrett for a while thought
he had changed, his month had started well. On 12 May 1967 the band
played the 'Games for May' concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.
Barrett wrote an early version of 'See Emily Play' for the event,
which was essentially a normal concert bookended by some pretentious
bits. The Floyd introduced a rudimentary quad sound-system, played
taped noises from nature and had a liquid red light show. Mason was
amplified sawing a log. Waters threw potatoes at a gong. The roadies
pumped out thousands of soap bubbles and one of them, dressed as an
admiral, threw daffodils into the stalls. The mess earnt the Floyd a
ban from the hall and a favourable review from The Financial Times.

On 2 June, the Floyd played Joe Boyd's UFO after a two-month absence.
Though the other band members were friendly, Boyd said Barrett 'just
looked at me. I looked right in his eye and there was no twinkle, no
glint... you know, nobody home.' Visiting London from France, David
Gilmour dropped in on the recording of 'Emily': 'Syd didn't seem to
recognise me and he just stared back,' he says. 'He was a different
person from the one I'd last seen in October.' Was he on drugs,
though? 'I'd done plenty of acid and dope - often with Syd - and that
was different from how he had become.'

Touring the provinces in July, like the rest of the band, Barrett
resented the beery mob baying for 'Arnold' and 'Emily'. The Floyd
even wrote a white-noise number called 'Reaction in G' to express
their feelings. But Barrett's inner reaction was harder to fathom.
With his echo-machines on full tilt, he might detune his Fender until
its strings were flapping, and hit one note all night. He might stand
with his arms by his side, the guitar hanging from his neck, staring
straight ahead, while the others performed as a three-piece.

Perhaps Barrett was making a statement. Perhaps he was pushing his
experimental notions of 'music-of-the-moment' to new boundaries.
Whatever else, he was now seriously mentally ill. And almost
certainly he suspected it himself.

After a couple of further concert debacles, Jenner and his partner
Andrew King were forced to act. Though their debut LP Piper at the
Gates of Dawn was released on 4 August, Blackhill cancelled the next
three weeks' gigs and arranged a holiday for Barrett and Corner on
the Balearic island of Formentera. Hutt and Rick Wright would be
chaperones, accompanied by their partners and Hutt's baby son. Waters
and his wife would be in Ibiza. When Melody Maker learnt of this,
their front-page splash read: 'Pink Floyd Flake Out'.

2 November 1967, US mini-tour. Pink Floyd were not prepared for the
American way. They had expected the San Francisco scene to be similar
to Britain's. Instead, they found themselves in humungous venues like
the Winterland, supporting such blues bands as Big Brother and the
Holding Company (led by Janis Joplin). The three nights they played
with Joplin, they borrowed her lighting because their own seemed too
weedy. The crowd weren't into feedback or English whimsy - acid-
inspired or not. Barrett was off the map, and when he did play, it
was to a different tune.

At the beginning of the week his hair had been badly permed at Vidal
Sassoon, and he was distraught. The greased-up 'punk' style with
which he'd been experimenting would be better. Waters remembers that
in the dressing-room at the Cheetah Club in Santa Monica, Barrett
suddenly called for a tin of Brylcreem and tipped the whole lot on
his head. As the gunk melted, it slipped down his face until Barrett
resembled 'a gutted candle'. Producing a bottle of Mandrax, he
crushed them into the mess before taking the stage. David Gilmour
says he 'still can't believe that Syd would waste good Mandies'. But
a lighting man called John Marsh, who was also there, confirms the
story. Girls in the front row, seeing his lips and nostrils bubbling
with Brylcreem, screamed. He looked like he was decomposing onstage.
Faced with this farce, some of the band and crew abandoned themselves
to drink, drugs, groupies and the sights. When they arrived in Los
Angeles, Barrett had forgotten his guitar, which caused much cost and
fuss. 'It's great to be in Las Vegas,' he said to a record company
man in Hollywood. He fell into a swimming-pool and left his wet
clothes behind.

The Floyd survived the tour by the skin of their teeth. On TV's Pat
Boone Show, where they did 'Apples and Oranges', Barrett was happy to
mime in rehearsals - but live he ignored the call to 'Action' four or
five times, leaving Waters to fill in. Asked what he liked in the
after-show chat, Barrett replied... after a dreadful
pause... 'America!', which made the audience whoop. On American
Bandstand and the Perry Como Show, he did not move his lips, to speak
or mime.

Finishing their commitments on the West Coast, the band began
thinking of how to replace or augment him. The next day, they were in
Holland, handing Barrett notes in the hope that he would talk to
them. The day after, they were bus-bound on a British package tour
with Hendrix, the Move, Amen Corner, the Nice and others, playing two
17-minute sets a night for three weeks, with three days off in
middle.Though he had worked harder, the schedule was too much for
Barrett. Onstage, he was unable to function. Sometimes he failed to
show up and the Nice's Dave O'List stood in for him. Once, Jenner had
to stop him escaping by train.

Barrett did play occasional blinders through out the autumn of 1967,
but these instances were as unpredictable as spring showers, and the
band's hopes that he might 'return' dimmed. The Floyd stumbled
through to Christmas, while the three other band members hatched a
plan: they would ask David Gilmour to join the group to cover lead
guitar and vocals while their sick colleague could do what he wanted,
so long as he stood onstage.

Barrett couldn't care less, and Gilmour, broke, bandless and driving
a van for a living - was known to be not only a terrific guitarist
but also a wonderful mimic of musical parts. Drummer Nick Mason had
already sounded him out when they ran into each other at a gig in
Soho. On 3 January 1968, Gilmour accepted a try-out. The band had a
week booked in a north London rehearsal hall before going back on the
road.

Four gigs followed in the next fortnight, with Barrett contributing
little. He looks happy enough in a cine-clip from the time, joining
in with the lads for a tap-dance in a dressing-room. 'But in
reality,' says Gilmour, 'he was rather pathetic.' On the day of the
fifth gig the others were driving south from a business meeting in
central London. As they drove, one of them - no one remembers who -
asked, 'Shall we pick up Syd?' 'Fuck it,' said the others. 'Let's not
bother.' Barrett, who probably didn't notice that night, would never
work again with the band that he had crafted in his image. And they
never quite put him out of their minds.

Not that their minds were made up. Though the Floyd would go on to
huge fame and fortune, at the time they believed they probably had a
few months left of milking psychedelia before ignominious
disbandment. Barrett, as Waters says, was the 'goose that had laid
the golden egg'. Now their frontman had become such a liability on
tour, they would rather appear without their main attraction than
risk his involvement.

However, Barrett still had the band's schedule. Waters remembers him
turning up with his guitar at 'an Imperial College gig, I think, and
he had to be very firmly told that he wasn't coming on stage with
us'. At the Middle Earth, wearing all his Chelsea threads, he
positioned himself in front of the low stage and stared at Gilmour
throughout his performance. Now he had to watch his old college
friend playing his licks. Undoubtedly, he felt hurt by this
treatment.

Though the money from Piper came rolling in, Barrett's work went
completely to pot. Jenner took him into the Abbey Road studios
several times between May and July 1968, bringing various musicians
and musical friends to help out, but achieved next to nothing.

Barrett was all over the place - forgetting to bring his guitar to
sessions, breaking equipment to EMI's displeasure. Sometimes he
couldn't even hold his plectrum. He was in a state, and had little
new material. Jenner had the experience neither as a person not as a
producer to coax anything out of him. By August, he and King were
having less and less to do with Barrett - which could equally be said
of the other lodgers in Egerton Court.

According to flatmate Po, 'Syd could still be very funny and lucid,
but he could also be uncommunicative. Staring. Heavy, you know?'

In the spring of 1968, Roger Walters had talked to the hip
psychiatrist RD Laing. He had even dri ven Barrett to an
appointment: 'Syd wouldn't get out. What can you do?' In the
intervening months, however, Barrett became less hostile to the idea
of treatment. So Gale placed a call to Laing and Po booked a cab. But
with the taxi-meter ticking outside, Barrett refused to leave the
flat.

By the autumn of 68, he was homeless. Periodically he returned to
Cambridge, where his mother Win fretted, urged him to see a doctor,
and blindly hoped for the best. In London, he crashed on friends'
floors - and began the midnight ramblings which would continue for
two years.

By the mid 70s, the Syd Barrett Appreciation Society had folded, due
to 'lack of Syd'. But he wasn't quite invisible. In 1977, ex-
girlfriend Gala Pinion was in a supermarket on the Fulham
Road. 'Where are you going, then?' he said. 'I'm going to buy you a
drink.' They went for a drink, and he invited her back to his flat.
Once there, 'He dropped his trousers and pulled out his cheque book,'
says Pinion. 'How much do you want?' he asked. 'Come on, get your
knickers down.'

Gala made her excuses and left, never to see him again. However, even
as an invisible presence, he loomed large. The previous year, punk
rock had appeared and the King's Road had become heartland. Without
success, the Sex Pistols, their manager Malcolm McLaren and their art
director Jamie Reid tried to contact Barrett, to ask him to produce
their first album. The Damned hoped he would produce their second,
realised it was impossible and settled for the Floyd's Nick Mason
('Who didn't have a clue', according to the band's bassist Captain
Sensible).

Barrett continued to do as little and spend as much as ever.
Bankrupt, he left London for Win's new Cambridge home in 1981.

From then until now, only a handful of encounters with Barrett have
been reported first-hand, but some facts have come to light. An
operation on his ulcer meant that Barrett lost much of his excess
weight. Win thought he should keep himself occupied, so Roger
Waters's mother Mary found him a gardening job with some wealthy
friends. At first he prospered but, during a thunderstorm, he threw
down his tools and left.

By this time, he was just calling himself 'Roger'. In 1982, his
finances restored, he booked into the Chelsea Cloisters for a few
weeks, but found he disliked London. He heard the voice of freedom
and he followed - walking back to Cambridge, where he was found on
Win's doorstep - and leaving his dirty laundry behind.

The circumstances of his final return to Cambridge were rightly
interpreted by his family as a 'cry for help' and he agreed to spend
a spell in Fulbourne psychiatric hospital. (It has often been said,
on the grounds that he has an 'odd' mind, rather than a sick one.) He
continued for a while as an outpatient at Fulbourne, with no trouble.

Barrett has never been sectioned. He has never had to take drugs for
his mental health, except after one or two uncontrollable fits of
anger, when he was admitted to Fulbourne and administered Largactyl.
However, he has received other treatments. In the early 80s, he spent
two years in a charitable institution, Greenwoods, in Essex. At this
halfway house for lost souls, he joined in group and other forms of
therapy, and was very content. But after an imagined slight, he
walked out - again all the way to Win's house. The increasingly frail
Win moved in with her daughter Roe and her husband Paul Breen,
according to Mary Waters, 'because she was so scared of his
outbursts'.

Some people think Barrett suffers from Asperger's Syndrome. It
certainly seems he can't be bothered to think about anything that
doesn't directly affect him. He kept rabbits and cats for a while but
forgot to feed them, so they had to be sent to more caring homes.
Thereafter, the only intimate contacts he maintained were with Win
and Roe. Otherwise, he seems to have lost the habit - and become
wary - of human interaction, limiting himself to encounters with shop
assistants and his sympathetic GP, whose surgery has become a second
home. He was - and is still - in and out of hospital for his ulcers.

Paul Breen revealed that his brother-in-law was 'painting again', and
meeting his mother in town for shopping trips. It was a 'very, very
ordinary lifestyle,' said Breen, but not reclusive: 'I think the
word "recluse" is probably emotive. It would be truer to say that he
enjoys his own company now, rather than that of others.'

As more years went by, other news leaked out. Barrett was collecting
coins. He was learning to cook, and could stuff a mean pepper. On the
death of Win in 1991, he destroyed all his old diaries and art books -
and also chopped down the front garden's fence and tree, and burnt
them (though more in a spirit of renewal than grief). He had been a
great support to Roe in her mourning, but hadn't attended the funeral
because he 'wouldn't know what to do'. He still wrote down his
thoughts all the time. He still painted - big works, six foot by
four - but destroyed any that he didn't consider perfect, and stacked
the rest against the wall. And sometimes he was unable to finish
them, because obsessive fans had climbed over his back fence, and
stolen the brushes from the table outside, where he worked.

A few titbits, to finish. In 1998, Barrett was diagnosed as a B-type
diabetic - a genetic condition - and was prescribed a regime of
medication and diet to which he is sporadically faithful. His
eyesight will inevitably become 'tunnelled' as a result - sooner,
rather than later, unless he regularly takes his tablets. However, he
is far from 'blind', as reported on the more excitable websites.

For Christmas 2001, Barrett gave his sister a painting. For his
birthday in January 2002, she brought him a new stereo, because he
likes to listen to the Stones, Booker-T and the classical composers.
However, he evinced no interest in the recent Echoes: The Best of
Pink Floyd (on which nearly a fifth of the tracks are written by him,
despite the fact that he only recorded with the band for less than a
30th of its lifespan). To coincide with the album's release, the BBC
screened an Omnibus documentary about him, which he watched round at
Roe's house. He is reported to have liked hearing 'Emily' and,
particularly, seeing his old landlord Mike Leonard - who he called
his 'teacher'. Otherwise, he thought the film 'a bit noisy'.

'Mister Barrett?'

'Yes.'

His voice is deeper than on any recordings, more cockneyfied than on
the TV interviews he gave in 67. Behind him, the hall is clean but
bare, the floorboards mostly covered in linoleum. I mention someone
dear to him, from his childhood. She'd be coming to Cambridge in a
couple of weeks, and wondered if Barrett might like a visit?

'No.'

He stands and stares, less embarrassed than me by the vision of him
in his underpants.

'So is everything all right?'

'Yeah.'

'You're still painting?'

'No, I'm not doing anything,' he says (which is true - he's talking
to me). 'I'm just looking after this place for the moment.'

'For the moment? Are you thinking of moving on?'

'Well, I'm not going to stay here for ever.' He pauses a split
second, delivers an unexpected 'Bye-bye', and slams the door.

I'm left like others before me, trying to work out just what he
meant. 'I'm not going to stay here for ever.' Does he just mean, 'One
day, I might move house.' Or is it a nod to the fate that awaits us
all? A coded message that he may re-emerge into the world - perhaps
show new work or perform? And is opening the door in your underpants
an unwitting demonstration of self-confidence, or an eccentricity, or
worse? I retrace my steps, cross the main road to my car where I
write a note that I hope is tactful: 'Dear Mr Barrett, I'm sorry to
have disturbed your sunbathing. I didn't have time to mention that
I'm writing a book on you...' I plead my case, give my telephone
number, and return down the cracked pavement.

As I reach the gate, I see him weeding in the front corner of the
garden, on his knees.

'Hi,' I say. 'I've written you a note.'

'Huh,' he says, not looking up, throwing roots behind him.

'May I leave it?' He straightens and stares into my eyes, but doesn't
answer. He's wearing khaki shorts now, and gardening gloves, which
aren't really suited to receiving the note - and I would be tempting
fate to rest it on the side of the wheelbarrow which he has bought
with him.

'Shall I put it through the letterbox?'

'It's nothing to do with me,' he says. So I do.

'Nice day,' I say, on leaving. 'Goodbye.'

He doesn't reply, and I never hear from him.

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