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The Biker at the Pipes of Dawn
Syd Barrett dies at 60
Madcap Laughs
It was something about his eyes that made him stand out, the same piercing, thousand-yard stare beaming from beneath a tousle of black curls has anchored almost every photo I have ever seen of him since.
"My dad, for some reason or another, had been coaxed during a long car trip or a hike or some other instance of casual father/son bonding onto the subject of a musician friend who'd declined playing keyboards for a young Manfred Mann mere months before "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" hit - foolish from a financial standpoint, perhaps, but a defensible artistic decision. It led into a discussion of other "celebrities" he'd known during his youth. And the list didn't go much farther than that: There was Martin Amis, whose books I'd seen around the house and have since come to cherish as much as life itself. And then there was Barrett - the same Barrett who died a recluse last week at age 60." - An old school fan reminisces...
"Barrett was a question mark. No more than 10 or 11 years old, I knew Pink Floyd - my parents would both sniff that the band was "pretentious" whenever "Another Brick in the Wall" came on the radio - and had read enough withering reviews of The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking (probably because of the naked lady on the cover) to know Roger Waters was the frontman. But Barrett's brief, formative involvement in the band was then a complete mystery."
"Who?"
He was gone from Floyd early on, it was explained. Drugs and madness or madness and drugs; either way, a volatile enough cocktail that he'd lived with his mother and passed his days staring into a pool since his 20s. A peculiarly affecting rock 'n' roll tale, even for a kid. Pink Floyd, it was added, had been even stranger before Barrett left.
The three early Barrett/Floyd singles (particularly the transvestite ode "Arnold Layne") were careening psych-pop trailblazers and, like his two fractured 1970 solo albums, The Madcap Laughs and Barrett, are often regarded by the Cult of Syd as somehow more worthy than 1967's Piper. It's this album, though, where Barrett's whimsical, LSD-spiked genius crests, putting a fanciful, lunatic spin on British Invasion pop and English folk without fear of tilting into the avant-garde.
"Interstellar Overdrive" and "Astronomy Domine" - Barrett's lilting verses to which were scrawled reverently on every single one of my high-school scribblers - more or less invented space-rock. "Lucifer Sam" is reverberant proto-punk that would echo through everyone from David Bowie to Adam and the Ants for years to come. "Scarecrow" is durably haunting acid balladry.
Pink Floyd - Bike by Syd Barrett - The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (1967)
.
Syd Barrett dies at 60
Madcap Laughs
It was something about his eyes that made him stand out, the same piercing, thousand-yard stare beaming from beneath a tousle of black curls has anchored almost every photo I have ever seen of him since.
"My dad, for some reason or another, had been coaxed during a long car trip or a hike or some other instance of casual father/son bonding onto the subject of a musician friend who'd declined playing keyboards for a young Manfred Mann mere months before "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" hit - foolish from a financial standpoint, perhaps, but a defensible artistic decision. It led into a discussion of other "celebrities" he'd known during his youth. And the list didn't go much farther than that: There was Martin Amis, whose books I'd seen around the house and have since come to cherish as much as life itself. And then there was Barrett - the same Barrett who died a recluse last week at age 60." - An old school fan reminisces...
"Barrett was a question mark. No more than 10 or 11 years old, I knew Pink Floyd - my parents would both sniff that the band was "pretentious" whenever "Another Brick in the Wall" came on the radio - and had read enough withering reviews of The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking (probably because of the naked lady on the cover) to know Roger Waters was the frontman. But Barrett's brief, formative involvement in the band was then a complete mystery."
"Who?"
He was gone from Floyd early on, it was explained. Drugs and madness or madness and drugs; either way, a volatile enough cocktail that he'd lived with his mother and passed his days staring into a pool since his 20s. A peculiarly affecting rock 'n' roll tale, even for a kid. Pink Floyd, it was added, had been even stranger before Barrett left.
The three early Barrett/Floyd singles (particularly the transvestite ode "Arnold Layne") were careening psych-pop trailblazers and, like his two fractured 1970 solo albums, The Madcap Laughs and Barrett, are often regarded by the Cult of Syd as somehow more worthy than 1967's Piper. It's this album, though, where Barrett's whimsical, LSD-spiked genius crests, putting a fanciful, lunatic spin on British Invasion pop and English folk without fear of tilting into the avant-garde.
"Interstellar Overdrive" and "Astronomy Domine" - Barrett's lilting verses to which were scrawled reverently on every single one of my high-school scribblers - more or less invented space-rock. "Lucifer Sam" is reverberant proto-punk that would echo through everyone from David Bowie to Adam and the Ants for years to come. "Scarecrow" is durably haunting acid balladry.
Pink Floyd - Bike by Syd Barrett - The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (1967)
.
