Lost in the Woods: Syd Barrett & the Pink Floyd 

Syd Barrett: 
(left: a photo of the real Emily, 
the 16 year old groover at UFO 
who inspired 'See Emily Play') 
 
 

I was sleeping in the woods one night after a gig we'd played somewhere, when I saw this girl appear before me. That girl was Emily.
 

Roger Waters: (1967) We've got a name of sorts now among the public so everybody comes to have a look at us, and we get full houses. But the atmosphere in these places is very stale. There is no feeling of occasion. The sort of thing we are trying to do doesn't fit into the sort of environment we are playing in. The supporting bands play 'Midnight Hour' and the records are all soul, then we come on. On the club scene we rate about two out of ten and 'Must try harder.'

Peter Jenner: Syd was a handsome boy, he was beautiful and one more part of the tragedy is that he became such a fat slob, he became ugly. He was true flower power. He came out in this outrageous gear, he had this permanent, which cost 20 pounds at the time, and he looked like a beautiful woman, all this Thea Porter stuff. He had a lovely girlfriend, Lindsay, she was the spitting image of Syd.

Miles: (Floyd biographer) The Floyd were the loudest band anyone had ever heard at that time. They were also the weirdest. They were the underground band.

Syd Barrett: (1967) Really, we have only just started to scrape the surface of effects and ideas of lights and music combined; we think that the music and the lights are part of the same scene, one enhances and adds to the other. In the future, groups are going to have to offer much more than just a pop show. They'll have to offer a well-presented theatre show.

Roger Waters: (1967) We're trying to play music of which it can be said that it has freedom of feeling. That sounds very corny, but it is very free. We can't go on doing clubs and ballrooms. We want a brand new environment, and we've hit on the idea of using a big top. We'll have a huge tent and go around like a travelling circus. We'll have a huge screen 120 feet wide and 40 feet high inside and project films and slides. We'll play the big cities, or anywhere and become an occasion, just like a circus. It'll be a beautiful scene. It could even be the salvation of the circus! The thing is, I don't think we can go on doing what we are doing now. If we do, we'll all be on the dole.

Roger Waters: 'The Piper at the Gates of Dawn' was Syd. Syd was a genius, but I wouldn't want to go back to playing 'Interstellar Overdrive' for hours and hours.

Nick Mason: We were given Norman Smith (engineer for the Beatles) by EMI, no arguments. So Joe Boyd, our original producer, got written out of the thing. Norman was more interested in making us sound like a classical rock band. It was a bit like the George Martin thing, a useful infleunce to have. But I think Joe would have given Syd his head, let him run in a freer way. We spent three months recording it, which was quite a long time in those days. Bands used to have to finish albums in a week, with session players brought in to play the difficult bits. But because the Beatles were taking their time recording 'Sgt. Pepper' in the studio next door, EMI thought this was the way people now made records. We were taken in to meet them once, while they were recording 'Lovely Rita'. It was a bit like meeting the Royal Family.

Peter Jenner: Norman was being the perfect A&R man. He realised Syd could write great pop songs. If we'd put out what we were playing live, it wouldn't hve sold fuck all. The one song (on 'The Piper at the Gates of Dawn') that ws like the live show was 'Interstellar Overdrive'. They played it twice, one version recorded straight on top of the other. They double tracked the whole track. Why? Well, it sounds pretty fucking weird, doesn't it? That big sound and all those hammering drums.
 

CHAPTER 24

Syd Barrett: 'Chapter 24' was from the 'I Ching', there was someone around who was very into that, most of the words came straight off that.  It didn't mean much to me at the time, but then three or four months later it came to mean a lot.

A movement is accomplished in six stages
And the seventh brings return.
The seven is the number of the young light
It forms when darkness is increased by one.
Change returns success
Going and coming without error.
Action brings good fortune.
Sunset, sunrise.

Roger Waters: (1967) We still do 'Arnold Layne' and struggle through 'See Emily Play' occasionally. We don't think it's dishonest because we can't play live what we play on records. Can you imagine somebody trying to play 'A Day In The Life'? Yet that's one of the greatest tracks ever made. A lot of stuff on our LP is completely impossible to do live. We've got the recording side together and not the playing side. What we've got to do now is get together a stage act that has nothing to do with our records, things like 'Interstellar Overdrive' (which is beautiful), and instrumentals that are much easier to play. It's sometimes depressing (when we fail to communicate with an audience) and becomes a drag. There are various things you can do. You can close your mind to the fact you're not happening with the audience and play for yourself. When the music clicks, even if it's only with ten or twelve people, it's such a gas.
 

The Pink Floyd's second appearance on 'Top of the Pops', July 1967

Roger Waters: When 'Emily' was a hit and we were (number #3 in the pop charts) for three weeks, we did 'Top Of The Pops', and the third week we did it he didn't want to know. He got down there in an incredible state and said he wasn't gonna do it. We finally discovered the reason was that John Lennon didn't have to do 'Top Of The Pops' so he didn't (either).

Peter Jenner: (On the Pink Floyd's 'Top of the Pops' appearances) The first time Syd dressed up like a pop star. The second time he came on in his straightforward, fairly scruffy clothes, looking rather unshaven. The third time he came to the studio in his pop star clothes and then changed into complete rags for the actual TV spot.
 

Syd Barrett: (on record companies, wholesalers and retailers) All middle men are bad.

Syd Barrett: (asked how they felt about the commercial failure of third single 'Apples and Oranges' after the success of 'Arnold Layne' and 'See Emily Play') Couldn't care less. All we can do is make records which we like. If the kids don't, then they won't buy it. The kids dig the Beatles and Mick Jagger not so much because of their music, but because they always do what they want to do and to hell with everyone else....

....The kids know this."

Peter Jenner: Syd didn't really talk to anyone. By now he was going onstage and playing one chord throughout the set. He was into this thing of total anarchistic experiment and never really considered the other members of the band.

David Gilmour: I remember I really started to get worried when I went along to the session for 'See Emily Play'. Syd was still functioning, but he definitely wasn't the person I knew. He looked through you. He wasn't quite there. He was strange even then. That stare, you know?

June Bolan: I went through all of Syd's acid breakdowns. He used to go to the Youth Hostel in Holland Park, climb up on the roof and get wrecked and get spaced and he'd walk all the way to Shepherd's Bush where I was living. He used to come round to my house at five in the morning covered in mud from Holland Park when he'd freaked out and the police chased him. I meant money, meant wages, meant security to him.

Peter Jenner: Even at that point, Syd actually knew what was happening to him. 'Jugband Blues' is a really sad song, the portrait of a nervous breakdown. 'Jugband Blues' is the ultimate self-diagnosis on a state of schizophrenia.

JUGBAND BLUES

It's awfully considerate of you to think of me here
And I'm much obliged to you for making it clear
That I'm not here.

And what exactly is a dream?
And what exactly is a joke?

June Bolan: Syd Barrett had this quality like a candle that was about to be snuffed out at any minute. Really all illumination. An extraordinary, wonderful man. He took lots of LSD. Lots of people can take some LSD and cope with it in their lives, but if you take three or four trips every day....and then, because it was the done drug, you'd go round somebody's house for a cup of tea and they'd spike it. People did this to Syd.
 

Mick Rock: (Syd's flat was) a burnt-out place, the biggest hovel, the biggest shit-heap; a total acid-shell, the craziest flat in the world. There were so many people, it was like a railway station. Two cats Syd had, one called Pink and one called Floyd, were still living in the flat after he left. He just left them there. Those were the cats they used to give acid to. You know what heavy dope scenes were like.

John Marsh: Syd was one of the earliest acid casualties. He lived in a flat in the Cromwell Road with various characters, among whom was a psychotic kind of character called Scotty. He was one of the original acid-in-the-reservoir, change-the-face-of-the-world missionaries. He was also a desperately twisted freak and really malovelent crazy. Everyone knew that if you went round to see Syd never have a cup of tea, never take a glass of water unless you got it yourself from the tap and even then be desperately worried, because Scotty's thing was spiking everything. By this time, Syd was living on a diet that must have been comprised of 80% acid. Poor old Syd was really in the poo.

Ian Moore: (friend of Syd) We got hold of some liquid LSD bottles, laid out hundreds of sugar cubes in rows and put two drops on each. But the stuff was so strong we were absorbing it through our fingers, or more likely by licking it off them. As it took effect we had no idea which cubes we had done, so many of them probably got double doses while the rest did not have any. Syd had his plum, orange and matchbox and was sitting staring at them during his trip. Whatever he was into was his whole world - to him the plum was the planet Venus and the orange was Jupiter. Syd was floating in space between them.

Syd Barrett: (on whether he had taken too much acid) Well, I don't know, it doesn't seem to have much to do with the job. I only know the thing of playing, of being a musician, was very exciting. Obviously, one was better off with a silver guitar with mirrors and things all over it than people who ended up on the floor or anywhere else in London. The general concept, I didn't feel so conscious of it as perhaps I should. I mean, one's position as a member of London's young people's (I don't know what you'd call it, underground wasn't it?) wasn't necessarily realised and felt, I don't think, especially from the point of view of groups. I remember at UFO, one week one group, then another week another group, going in and out, making that set-up, and I didn't think it was as active as it could've been. I was really surprised that UFO finished. Joe Boyd did all the work on it and I was really amazed when he left. What we were doing was a microcosm of the whole sort of philosophy and it tended to be a little bit cheap. The fact that the show had to be put together; the fact that we weren't living in luxurious places with luxurious things around us. I think I would always advocate that sort of thing, the luxurious life. It's probably because I don't do much work. It was all, I suppose, related to living in London. I was lucky enough...I've always thought of going back to a place where you can drink tea and sit on the carpet. I've been fortunate enough to do that. All that time...you've just reminded me of it. I thought it was good fun.

Peter Jenner: It was all getting too much with Syd, just getting too spacey. The American trip, which Syd went on, was quite extraordinary.

Nick Mason: Syd went mad on that first American tour in the autumn of 1967. He didn't know where he was most of the time. I remember he detuned his guitar onstage in Venice, LA, and he just stood there rattling the strings which was a bit weird, even for us.

Glen Buxton: Syd Barrett I remember, (though) I don't remember him ever saying two words. It wasn't because he was a snob; he was a very strange person. He never talked, but we'd be sitting at dinner (at our house in Venice, LA) and all of a sudden I'd pick up the sugar and pass it to him, and he'd shake his head like 'Yeah, thanks,' It was like I heard him say 'Pass the sugar' - it's like telepathy; it really was. It was very weird. You would find yourself right in the middle of doing something, as you were passing the sugar or whatever, and you'd think, 'Well, damn! I didn't hear anybody say anything!' That was the first time in my life I'd ever met anybody that could actually do that freely. And this guy did it all the time.

John Marsh: On their first American tour the Floyd were being taken by some A&R man around Hollywood. They were taken for the classic tour of the stars' homes and so on. And they ended up on the corner of Hollywood and Vine. The band are looking around: 'Hey, made it, Hollywood,' and the A&R man's saying, 'Yes, here we are, the centre of it all, Hollywood and Vine,' and Syd's wandering around the place, wide-eyed, reckless and legged. 'Gee,' he says, 'it's great to be in Las Vegas.'
 

Peter Jenner: 
Syd wasn't into moving his lips that day....
 
 
 
 

Syd, on Dick Clark's 'American Bandstand'

Glen Buxton: The crew used to say he was impossible on the road. They'd fly a thousand miles, get to the gig, he'd get up onstage and wouldn't have a guitar. He would do things like leave all his money in his clothes in the hotel room, or on the plane. Sometimes, they'd have to fly back and pick up his guitar. I didn't pick up that he was a drug casualty, although there were lots at the time who would do those exact things because they were drugged out. But Syd was definitely from Mars or something.

Lindsay Korner: (During the fall of 1967) it got a bit crazed. (By Christmas) Syd had started to act a little bonkers, schizophrenia had set in.

Duggie Fields: Oh, he went more than slightly bonkers, it must have been very difficult for him. I think the pressures on Syd before that time must have upset him very much, the kind of pressure where it takes off very fast, which Pink Floyd did - certainly in terms of the way people behaved towards them. I used to be speechless at the number of people who would invade our flat, and how they would behave towards anyone who was in the group; especially girls. I'd never seen anything like it. Some of the girls were stunning, and they would literally throw themselves at Syd. He was the most attractive one; Syd was a very physically attractive person - I think he had problems with that.

Peter Jenner: (When Lindsay Korner turned up on his doorstep after being beaten up by Syd) I couldn't believe it at the time. I had this firm picture of Syd as this really gentle guy, which is what he was, basically.

Sam Hutt: I went to UFO quite a lot. Saw the bands, the very loud music, the oil lights. I remember near the end with Syd, him coming up and somebody had given him a bottle of mandies. Mandies were the big-bouncing around drug, very dodgy indeed, and probably a very good idea that they took them off the market. Syd appeared on stage with this jar of Brylcreem, having crushed the mandies into little pieces, mixing them up with the Brylcreem and putting this mixture of Brylcreem and broken mandy tablets all over his hair, so that when he went out on stage the heat of the lights melted the Brylcreem and it all started to drip down his face with these bits of Mandrax.

Peter Jenner: He was extraordinarily creative and what happened was catastrophic: a total burnt-out case. All his talent just came out in a flood in two years and then it was burnt out. Syd got burnt out from acid in the coffee every morning. 

John Marsh: He was going further and further down the tubes because nobody wished to be thought uncool and take him away from these circumstances. So Syd went down the mine because of the inertia of those around him.

Jenny Fabian: Syd was so beautiful with his violet eyes. I only sort of lay beside him, nothing more could be accomplished. Then he had a breakdown and was gone. He hardly spoke. He would just tolerate me because I was so overpowered, so in awe that I didn't really speak either. I only hung around him for two or three weeks just before he flipped and was virtually removed from the group. I knew Syd was wonderful because he wrote such wonderful songs. He didn't have to speak because the fact that he couldn't speak made him who he was: this prson who wrote they mysterious songs. I just liked looking at him: he was very pretty. A lot of the time with pop stars, when they opne their mouths, it was all completely ruined anyway. So it was perfect that he was like that. My first pop star and it was just wonderful that he didn't speak.

Peter Jenner: It was really stressful waiting for Syd to come up with the songs for the second album. Everybody was looking at him and he couldn't do it. The last Floyd song Syd wrote, 'Vegetable Man', was done for those sessions, though it never came out. Syd was around at my house just before he had to go to record and, because a song was needed, he just wrote a description of what he was wearing at the time and threw in a chorus that went 'Vegetable man - where are you?' It's very disturbing. Roger took it off the album because it was too dark, and it is. It's like psychological flashing.

Vegetable man! Where are you?
I've been looking all over the place
for a place for me
But it ain't anywhere
It just ain't anywhere.
He's the kind of fella you just gotta see if you can,
Vegetable man.

Jonathan Meades: I had a friend called Harry Dodson who was at that time very friendly with a guy called Po, who was part of Hipgnosis. They were two guys - Po and Storm. They were friendly with the Pink Floyd because they all came from Cambridge. In late 1967 Harry, Po, Syd Barrett and other people lived in Egerton Court, a mansion block right opposite South Kensignton tube station. Syd certainly was the crazy of the party and one also got the ipression that he was rather disliked. I went there at the time when Syd had either just left the band or was ready for the final heave-ho, and by this time he was a total casualty. Syd was this rather weird, exotic and mildly famous creature, who happened to be living in this flat with these people who were pimping off him both professionally and privately. I went there and there was this horrible noise. It sounded like 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 line cupboard.' And that seemed a terrible thing to do.

Roger Waters: I believe Syd was a casualty of the so-called 'Psychedelic Period' that we were meant to represent. 'Cause everybody believed that we were taking acid before we went on stage and all that stuff....unfortunately, one of us was, and that was Syd. It's a simple matter, really, Syd just had a big overdose of acid and that was it. It was very frightening, and I couldn't believe what had happened, 'cause, I remember we had to do a radio show, and we were waiting for him, and he didn't turn up. And then he came the next day, and he was a different person.

June Bolan: The last gig Syd played was at the Alexandra Palace. We found Syd in the dressing room and he was so....gone. Roger waters and I got him to his feet and onto the stage. He had a white Stratocaster and we put it around his neck and he walked onstage. The band started to play and Syd just stood there. He had his guitar around his neck and his arms just hanging down and I was in the wings wondering what to do. Suddenly he put his hands on the guiatr and we thought, 'Great, he's actually going to do it!' But he just stood there, he just stood there tripping out of his mind.