Exactly 50 years ago today....

[Steve F.]

Exactly 50 years ago today, on April 6, 1968, it was announced that Syd Barrett was no longer a member of Pink Floyd!

[strawberrybrick]

Whoa...

[progman1975]

U mean they never picked him up for a gig again[emoji6]

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[ThomasKDye]

Exactly 50 years ago today, on April 6, 1968, it was announced that Syd Barrett was no longer a member of Pink Floyd!

And thus the short-lived, bizarre five-man version of Floyd came to an end, with Syd probably barely aware Dave was doing many of his guitar parts.

[Mister Triscuits]

Wait--Syd's not in Pink Floyd anymore???

[progmatist]

He's no doubt playing with Rick in Rock'n'Roll heaven.

[Enidi]

Norman Smith brought in a Salvation Army Band and asked Syd..."What would you like them to play?" Syd Barrett replied...."Well, they can play anything really...they can play anything they'd like"

[Jerjo]

He's no doubt playing with Rick in Rock'n'Roll heaven.

Provided that even Jesus could get him to focus.

[Paulrus]

Norman Smith brought in a Salvation Army Band and asked Syd..."What would you like them to play?" Syd Barrett replied...."Well, they can play anything really...they can play anything they'd like"

This is my favorite "Why Pink Floyd fired Syd story":

According to Waters, Barrett came into what would be their last rehearsal session together with a new song. He was calling it, "Have You Got It Yet?," and the first couple times they ran through it, it seemed simple enough. Soon the band realized that the song wasn't simple at all - Barrett would change the melody and the arrangement constantly with each new practice run - slightly at first, but more and more each time they played it. Barrett would play it again for them, with the capricious structure changes, and each time he would ask, "Have you got it yet?"

Of course, the band never did quite get it, as they were chasing the proverbial carrot on the string. Eventually they realized that they had become victims of Barrett's eccentric sense of humor. In fact Waters stated, in an interview for The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story, that upon realizing Barrett was deliberately making the tune impossible to learn, he put down his bass guitar, left the room, and never attempted to play with Barrett again.

[aith01]

This is my favorite "Why Pink Floyd fired Syd story":

According to Waters, Barrett came into what would be their last rehearsal session together with a new song. He was calling it, "Have You Got It Yet?," and the first couple times they ran through it, it seemed simple enough. Soon the band realized that the song wasn't simple at all - Barrett would change the melody and the arrangement constantly with each new practice run - slightly at first, but more and more each time they played it. Barrett would play it again for them, with the capricious structure changes, and each time he would ask, "Have you got it yet?"

Of course, the band never did quite get it, as they were chasing the proverbial carrot on the string. Eventually they realized that they had become victims of Barrett's eccentric sense of humor. In fact Waters stated, in an interview for The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story, that upon realizing Barrett was deliberately making the tune impossible to learn, he put down his bass guitar, left the room, and never attempted to play with Barrett again.

Okay, now that is priceless.

[GuitarGeek]

According to Waters, Barrett came into what would be their last rehearsal session together with a new song. He was calling it, "Have You Got It Yet?," and the first couple times they ran through it, it seemed simple enough. Soon the band realized that the song wasn't simple at all - Barrett would change the melody and the arrangement constantly with each new practice run - slightly at first, but more and more each time they played it. Barrett would play it again for them, with the capricious structure changes, and each time he would ask, "Have you got it yet?"

Apparently, he pulled similar stunts when recording at least his first solo album, confounding the frell out of Soft Machine, who were backing him on a recording session which they thought was "just a rehearsal".

I forget who it was who said the reason Syd kept changing his mind was that he seemed to have so many good ideas in his head, he couldn't decide which ones to go with at any given time. Another one of his associates suggested that Syd felt that as things were, the future was "unlimited", but as soon as he picked something, made a concrete decision about an arrangement or whatever, then the future became very "limited", so that's apparently why, according to him anyway, that Syd would do that sort of stuff.

[NogbadTheBad]

Nearly killed The Floyd but in hindsight an essential decision

[zombywoof]

Wait--Syd's not in Pink Floyd anymore???

Which one's Pink?

[GuitarGeek]

Nearly killed The Floyd but in hindsight an essential decision

Well, at the time, they probably felt that if they kept Syd in the band it would have killed them altogether. Syd was the songwriter, but he was proving mercurial in terms of coming up with new songs after a certain point (as detailed by the above account). He was the guitarist, lead singer, and frontman, who proved increasingly unable (or unwilling) to perform those duties live. There's stories of him just sort of standing there onstage, doing nothing, or strumming one chord through an entire performance.

So if The Pink Floyd (as they were then known) were to have any kind of future, it was gonna be without Syd. But yeah, I guess when the other guys in the band aren't really songwriters, or at least hadn't been until that point in time, the immediate upshot was probably just as uncertain as if they had kept Syd in the band. And as I understand it, there was a lot of people who just abandoned them when Syd was eased out of the band. Their original manager, Peter Jenner dropped them, because he didn't think they had a future without Syd, etc. That's how Steve O'Rourke ended up taking over, because he had been working for Jenner as a subordinate, and he was apparently the only person who wanted the job of being the manager for a band who "have no future".

[Steve F.]

and he was apparently the only person who wanted the job of being the manager for a band who "have no future"

Take it from me, it’s a great way to spend your career....

[Enidi]

In the earlier stages of songwriting...people in his past have stated that he was bubbly or high energy and on Piper it seems to be obvious that all of his songs are well organized, thought out, ..opposed to a few years later when he seemed organizationally impaired in songwriting. Otherwise notable that "Vegetable Man", "Scream Thy Last Scream" and "Jugband Blues" had a purpose to be disorganized , misleading, and trippy. However..sometimes it was obvious that Syd Barrett, ( on his solo albums) lacked in the area of coordination with his strumming, his timing, and additionally having difficulties in stumbling with his speech during studio chatter. He still wrote and recorded interesting songs in that functionality of being broken. Certain tracks like "Opel" could have been re-recorded by Pink Floyd with choir and orchestra..as several of his songs ..if they were re-recorded with the right choice of instruments...they would be timeless. Syd Barrett was not a virtuoso guitar player....and definitely not the status of Clapton and Green in the 60's....but he did understand writing in some unique way..such as Piper ..Children's literature in British Psychedelic ..which..John Lennon had approached the style before with a song or 2 on a Beatles album, Syd Barrett wanted to be more consistent with. "Interstellar Overdrive" ..the idea to sound like that..or noodle like that...was completely cemented into the Krautrock movement. He was highly influential to Space Rock bands in the 70's..no doubt. I remember when he said..."People make a huge deal out of Piper..to me it's just a collection of songs." He probably did feel that way....but maybe because his timing was good when his music was released..it influenced many bands. It's all over the map with bands that write a chord progression in the style that he would have written it in....for example...several songs by Amon Duul II and Gong . Strange how the song "Dominos" would have fit nicely on Meddle ..maybe track #3 or 4. Strange how the song "Pigs On The Wing" could have easily passed for a later Syd Barrett song or the song "Mother". Seems real.

[Fracktured]

RIP Syd


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[rcarlberg]

Take it from me, it’s a great way to spend your career....

Five Percent For Nothing - Yes

[Kavus Torabi]

[/QUOTE] songs by Amon Duul II and Gong .[/QUOTE]

Daevid was an enormous fan of Syd.
They only met once, both tripping, very briefly but Daevid got the whole idea for Gliss guitar after seeing Syd perform.
He witnessed the Alexandra Palace 24 hour show and described the Floyd as being like 'An electric Bartok'.

[Steve983]

I don't understand the whole fascination with Syd Barrett, he seemed to have limited talent and if he hadn't OD'd and left (and Gilmour joined) we would likely have never heard of an obscure band called Pink Floyd who split up in the late 60's.

[Kavus Torabi]

^ Take, for example, his song Baby Lemonade. The chord progression at the start and the vocal melody that follows it.
I just don't know of anyone before Syd Barrett who was writing stuff like that. Certainly nothing the Floyd did, post-Syd, used anything that resembled that sort of writing.
You may not dig it, but to dismiss his unique compositional skill does him a real disservice.
A very small body of work, relatively speaking, and yet such a singular vision from a pretty young guy.
A gifted lyricist too.

He didn't OD, by the way.

[Sunlight Caller]

Some of the fascination undoubtedly comes from the whole rock n roll casualty angle, but to write him off because of that is unfair. Personally Piper is my favourite Floyd album, and the cornerstone of English psychedelia, I prefer their Syd psych era to almost anything that came later, even though I think they were brilliant all the way through to Animals.

His solo pair are certainly flawed, but there are some unique and revealing gems included. I have to wonder what could have been if he hadn’t fried his synapses so disastrously in the 60’s, ultimately it’s a sad and precautionary tale, for his was a brilliant and creative mind.

[GuitarGeek]

I don't understand the whole fascination with Syd Barrett, he seemed to have limited talent and if he hadn't OD'd and left (and Gilmour joined) we would likely have never heard of an obscure band called Pink Floyd who split up in the late 60's.

First of all, as far as I know, Syd never OD'd. He "went off the reservation", which may or may not have been the result of excessive drug use, but as far as I know, there was never an overdose. It's certainly never mentioned in any of the Floyd books I've read (and while I've never read the Nick Mason book, I do have about four on the subject of the band's career).

Secondly, by the Syd was sacked from the band, they had already recorded and released an album and three singles. Two of those singles, Arnold Layne and See Emily Play, were bona fide hits. So while they might have remained "obscure", I think they would have had at least a "cult following", maybe comparable to something like The Velvet Underground or The Fugs or Love. I was hearing about those band for years before I actually ever heard any of them (in fact, to this day, I don't think I've actually ever heard The Fugs).

Personally, I think A Piper At The Gates Of Dawn is one of the best albums of the original psychedelic era. Syd's songs on that record are very imaginative and represent a continuation of the British tradition of "nonsense poetry" (see also: Strawberry Fields, ...Mr. Kite, and I Am The Walrus for further examples). And the two instrumentals are fantastic songs. It's the Roger Waters composition, Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk, that things fall short (but why should be any surprise? Roger was always the weakest songwriter in the band, even if he was the best at writing "conventional" lyrics).

As for his guitar playing, well, as has been said, he was never gonna make Beck, Page or Clapton lose any sleep, but he had a very "outside the box" approach to the guitar that was unique. As Kavus mentioned, he inspired Daevid Allen to experiment with what we now called "glissando guitar", and he was also one of the first I'm aware of to make use of delay units in unconventional ways (e.g. using the "sound on sound" feature, as you hear in the album version of Interstellar Overdrive, and doing things like cranking up the regeneration control so that you got the spacey "runaway" effect), years before Tommy Bolin and Tom Scholz swept the repeat rate control back and forth on their Echoplexes.


And I think part of the fascination with Syd hinges on the fact that he made such brilliant work with Pink Floyd, then sort of crashed and burned, as it were. I've heard it suggested that a big part of why a lot of people think his two solo albums are so amazing is because they, perhaps unintentionally, document a brilliant musician losing control of his creative faculties, as it were. Another such example would be Skip Spence's Oar, which one critic described as documenting the disintegration of a human mind".

And with such a small body of work (something like three singles, three albums, and a gaggle of miscellaneous stuff that was released much later, and his apparent refusal to do anything involving music after the early 70's (he reportedly was offered a million in the 90's to "record anything"), there's a lot of "what if" or "if only" scenarios in a lot of people's minds. In short, a big part of the mythos is that Syd "went doo-lally", as they say in the UK.

But none of that takes anything away from how great those early Floyd recordings were. I'm not as crazy about the solo records, most of which strike me as as massively mediocre, but on a car trip, a friend made me listen to some of it, I forget if it was the first or second one, or the late 80's Opal release, but I remember there being a few things in there that were "not bad", even if I can't remember the titles. But I am inclined to agree with whichever wag at Rolling Stone it was who suggested that the Crazy Diamond set (a three CD set that gather both solo records and Opal) should have been called "Crazy Zircon".

BTW, in my opinion, one of the best examples of Syd's guitar work, actually, are the two tracks that appeared on the expanded version of the Tonight Let's All Make Love In London soundtrack. There's two extended instrumentals, one a long version of Interstellar Overdrive and something called Nick's Boogie, which both show the band's expertise at improvisation, and also show off Syd's unconventional approach to the guitar. If I remember correctly, this was one of the first times the band had ever been in a recording studio. There's actually film footage of the session floating around someplace (it's the footage with Syd playing a black Danelectro, same model as Page sometimes used, and both Syd and Rick are both already using those Binson Echorec delay units that figured heavily in the band's sound for the next few years).

[Steve F.]

^^^^^^

I’m of mixed mind about Syd’s post Floyd work, but as Chris says above, if ONLY Piper and the singles had come out, people would still remember ‘Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd’ for that very small body of 1967 psychedelic perfection. IMO.

And as Kavus stated, a wonderful lyricist too.

I don't understand the whole fascination with Syd Barrett, he seemed to have limited talent and if he hadn't OD'd and left (and Gilmour joined) we would likely have never heard of an obscure band called Pink Floyd who split up in the late 60's.

He wasn’t a guitaring chopsmeister, but he had extremely advanced ‘ideas’ and made the music move beyond obvious aping of African American song forms of the more obvious suspects in the ‘great guitarists’ lists of 1966-67

In the words of Radio Massacre International 40 years after he left Floyd and shortly after Syd died

“This album is our way of saying goodbye and thanks to a genuine one-off. His passing had an unexpectedly profound effect, despite the fact that he hadn't been near a guitar in more than 30 years. It forced us to consider what an enormous influence he was, despite his space-age ascendancy and equally rapid burnout. He picked up a zippo lighter, invented glissando guitar and incorporated non-musical sounds into the context of the new psychedelic movement that had hardly had time to leave the conformity of Rhythm & Blues behind. His creation was a particularly English take on what we now call 'rock'...and for those of us engaged in experimental or space rock, the debt is enormous." - R.M.I

[NogbadTheBad]

That pretty much nails it.