A circle of grey 8

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The anecdotes about Syd Barrett's strange behaviour are innumerable, reported with an implied judgement or with debated opinions, but in recent years a number of implicit admissions are emerging, like the startling revelation of a R.D. Laing's diagnosis from 1968, made by Nick Mason in his 2004 book, implicitly agreeing with it.

Syd might be disturbed, or even mad. But maybe it was the rest of us who were causing the problem, by pursuing our desire to succeed, and forcing Syd to go along with our ambitions. Maybe Syd was actually surrounded by mad people.

— Nick Mason  

David Gilmour's explicit regret about how he missed Syd after his death is representative of the other admissions from the rest of Syd's old bandmates, like Richard Wright's enigmatic reply ("Can't answer, I am looking into this") about who wrote "Two of a Kind" (maybe the only one of Syd's songs which was co-written). But it's Roger Waters in particular who still tends to talk about Syd's old anecdotes in interviews, although he praises Syd in his works perhaps even from his choice of Coleridge's albatross in his 1971 lyrics for "Echoes" ("Overhead the albatross hangs motionless upon the air"). Unfortunately he doesn't praise Syd's old works in the same way, at least recently: while David Gilmour has played and released some old Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett material since the 90s, in a 2007 interview Roger Waters said about the first Pink Floyd LP "You'll never get me to take this stuff seriously".

Perhaps, once again, it's better to take what we can get by reading between the lines of Syd's own words... (in the next page)



sources →
Mason, Nick. Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004. 40. Print. http://books.google.com/books?id=S86vyiU-nwwC&pg=PT40
Paytress, Mark. "Heart of Darkness." Mojo Oct. 2007. Print. http://www.pinkfloydz.com/intmojooct07pf.htm