Maestros #6: Syd Barrett

LISTEN: Syd Barrett

(January 1970)

I met Syd in a plush off-Oxford Street office. His hair is as wild as it used to be, preserving his former image intact. He talked of when he split with the Floyd.

'When we parted I had written everything for the group. My leaving sort of evened things out within the group.'

'Since then I have been doing lots of things - things interesting for me. I've done a lot of traipsing around. I've been back to Ibiza, Spain. I first went there with Rick, three years ago. It's an interesting place to be.'

'I've written quite a lot too.'

Syd, with the Pink Floyd, was the first to emerge from the underground scene centered around UFO in Tottenham Court Road in 1967. 'Everything was so rosy at UFO. It was really nice to go there after slogging around the pubs and so. Everyone had their own thing. It's been interesting to see things turning out the way they have.'

'During the past six months there have been some very good things released. The best things I've bought are the new Taj Mahal album, Captain Beefheart and the Band. I don't think any of them have influenced my writing though. I've been writing in all sorts of funny places.'

Syd's new album is called 'The Madcap Laughs'. He said: 'They're my particular idea of a record. It's very together. There's a lot of speaking on it, but there's not a very recognizable mood. It's mainly acoustic guitar and there are no instruments at all.'

His future plans are quite simple. 'I'm just waiting to see how the records do, what the reactions are, before I decide on anything else.'

And he had a final word about the 'Ummagumma' album by Pink Floyd. 'They've probably done very well. The singing's very good and the drumming is good as well.'

( 1971 )

Britain's art colleges have turned out a disproportionate number of successful musicians - John Lennon, Jimmy Page and Pete Townshend among them. It was while studying fine art at Camberwell School of Art in south London that he started playing with the Pink Floyd, the rest of whom were all at that time potential architects at the Regent Street Polytechnic.

And the influence of avant-garde art world was apparent in the Floyd's stage act, the first to make stroboscopes and oil-slide projections standard equipment for an evening's music. (Remember 1967 and the psychedelic revolution?)

But now Syd has his own solo best selling album 'The Madcap Laughs' which had provided a clear answer to that much asked question 'Whatever happened to Syd Barrett after he left the Floyd?' At present Syd is living quietly in his sparsely furnished London flat among his stereo equipment, piles of paintings and a heap of battered Lps.

He's taking things easily, as he has been doing for the last two years, composing, writing and painting as inspiration comes, and making some plans for the future. He will soon be working on another album and he also plans to get a group together, but beyond that he seems to have no particular intentions.

Syd was pleasantly surprised that the LP had sold well, especially as there was no great hype involved. 'Yes, it's quite nice,' he said in his soft spoken manner that sometimes becomes so soft that he's not talking to anything but his chin. 'But I'd be very surprised if it did anything if I were to drop dead. I don't think it would stand to be accepted as my last statement. I want to record my next LP before I go on to anything else, and I'm writing for that at the moment.'

It was while Syd was at school in Cambridge that he started learning the guitar. He played in a number of groups in that area from the age of 16 onwards, doing Bo Diddley and Jimmy Reed numbers especially. 'Then had to come up to London,' he said, 'I didn't mean to play for ever; it was painting that brought me here to art school. I always enjoyed that much more than school, although it had nothing to do with the music. After three years in London I started playing with the Pink Floyd. Bo Diddley was definitely my greatest influence. Around that time one came across so many unheard of records that one felt one was really discovering something.'

'The Floyd's music arouse out of playing together; we didn't set out to anything new. We worked up to 'See Emily Play' and so on quite naturally from the Rolling Stones numbers we used to play. None of us advocated doing anything more eccentric. We waited until we had got the lights together and then went out.'

The group secured a recording contract with EMI and found chart success with their first two releases 'Arnold Layne' and 'See Emily Play', both of them written by Syd Barrett. And it was, of course, at London's first 'psychedelic dungeon' UFO that the Floyd found their initial following among the early freaks when flower power was something very real to a lot of people.

However, the Floyd moved away from their starting place to tour Britain in the usual rounds of clubs and ballrooms. After their first album, 'Piper At The Gates Of Dawn' and their third single, 'Apples', had been released, the group made the now customary trek around the United States. It was on return from that great country that Syd split from the Floyd.

'I spent a year relaxing,' he says, 'and another getting the LP together. It's been very slow, like looking back over a long time and playing very little. When I went I felt the progress the group could have made. But it made none, none at all, except in the sense that it was continuing. To make my album was a challenge as I didn't have anything to follow.'

Now Syd is looking to form his own band, which he hoped he will have going within a year. 'This is the most interesting thing to do now, to see whether it would have been possible to retain the 'Emily' sort of things that were there and on maybe two tracks of the first album.'

'I've been writing consistently for two years now and I have lots of undeveloped things lying around. I'm still basically like I've always been, sitting round with an acoustic getting it done. I never get worried about my writing.'

And so Syd Barrett, now back in the public eye after two years, carries on in his own way - doing what he wants as he wants to.

 ( March 1971 )

 There is a formidable and sometimes rather tasteless mystique surrounding Syd Barrett, not very different to that which until recently went hand in hand with the name of Arthur Lee. What little has been written has only added weight to the myth of a modern day Nietzsche/Nijinksy figure who mumbles inanities and vague things about 'getting it together'.

Strangely enough Syd turns out to be as normal, unkempt and emaciated as most of us. Talkative, unpretentious and above all, very human....

Q: Piper at the Gates of Dawn?

Syd: 'Wind in the Willows.' That was very difficult in some ways, getting used to the studios and everything. But it was fun, we freaked about a lot. I was working very hard then; there's still lots of stuff lying around from then, even some of the stuff on 'Madcap'.

Q: Some of your songs seem rather obscure, like Chapter 24 on Piper.

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

Q: How important are lyrics to you?

Syd: Very important. I think it's good if a song has more than one meaning. Maybe that kind of song can reach far more people, that's nice. On the other hand, I like songs that are simple. I liked Arnold Layne because to me it was a very clear song.

Q: Some of your words don't come over too clearly, like on 'Octopus' there's 'little Minnie Conn coughs and clears his throat'. Have you thought about printing the words on the sleeve next time?

Syd: Yeah that would be nice (laughing). That was 'little minute gong.'

Q: What about Octopus, that was my personal favourite.

Syd: I carried that about in my head for about six months before I actually wrote it so maybe that's why it came out so well. The idea was like those number songs like 'Green Grow the Rushes Ho' where you have, say, twelve lines each related to the next and an overall theme. It's like a fool-proof combination of lyrics, really, and then the chorus comes in and changes the tempo but holds the whole thing together.

Q: There's a strong childhood feel to a lot of your songs with lots of fairy-tale and nursery rhyme elements. Have you ever thought of writing for kids?

Syd: Fairy-tales are nice...I think a lot of it has to do with living in Cambridge, with nature and everything, it's so clean, and I still drive back a lot. Maybe if I'd stayed at college, I would have become a teacher. Leaving school and suddenly being without that structure around you and nothing to relate to...maybe that's a part of it, too.

Q: There was a strong science-fiction thing in the early Floyd. Were you ever into that?

Syd: Not really, except 'Journey into Space' and 'Quatermass', which was when I was about fifteen, so that could be where it came from.

Q: Your lyrics could be described as surrealistic collages. Did your art training affect your writing?

Syd: Only the rate of work, learning to work hard. I do tend to take lines from other things, lines I like, and then write around them but I don't consciously relate to painting. It's just writing good songs that matters, really.

Q: Do you still paint?

Syd: Not much. The guy who lives next door to me paints, and he's doing it well, so I don't really feel the need.

Q: Do you want to do other things?

Syd: A lot of people want to make films and do photography and things, but I'm quite happy doing what I'm doing.

Q: Are you into other people's music?

Syd: I don't really buy many records, there's so much around that you don't know what to listen to. All I've got at home is Bo Diddley, some Stones and Beatles stuff and old jazz records. I like Family, they do some nice things.

Q: What about the Underground?

Syd: I haven't been to the Arts Lab or anything, so I don't really know what's happening. There are just so many people running around doing different things and no kind of unity. It doesn't really bother me.

Q: Do you read poetry?

Syd: I've got Penguins lying around at home. Shakespeare and Chaucer, you know? But I don't really read a lot. Maybe I should.

Q: Were you satisfied with Madcap Laughs?

Syd: Yes, I liked what came out, only it was released far too long after it was done. I wanted it to be a whole thing that people would listen to all the way through with everything related and balanced, the tempos and moods offsetting each other, and I hope that's what it sounds like, I've got it at home, but I don't listen to it much now.

Q: Madcap is rather gentle compared with your Floyd stuff. What about the new album?

Syd: There'll be all kinds of things. It just depends what I feel like doing at the time. The important thing is that it will be better than the last.

Q: In 'No Man's Land' on Madcap there's a long spoken part which is barely audible, like the 'faded' lyrics of Astronomy Domine. Was the intention to abstract the words into just background noise?

Syd: Originally the words were meant to be heard clearly, but we went and actually did it, that's how it came out, which wasn't really how I'd planned it.

Q: How's the guitar playing?

Syd: I always write with guitar. I've got this big room and I just go in and do the work. I like to do the words and music simultaneously, so when I go into the studio I've got the words on one side and my music on the other. I suppose I could do with some practice.

Q: What about the future? Are you looking forward to singing and playing again?

Syd: Yes, that would be nice. I used to enjoy it, it was a gas. But so's doing nothing. It's art school laziness, really, I've got this Wembley gig and then another thing in summer.

Q: What about forming a band?

Syd: I'll be getting something together for the Wembley thing and then just see what happens.

Q: And now?

A: I'm working on the album. There's four tracks in the can already, and it should be out about September. There are no set musicians, just people helping out, like on 'Madcap', which gives me far more freedom in what I want to do...I feel as if I've got lots of things, much better things to do still, that's why there isn't really a lot to say, I just want to get it all done.

(1971 )

Syd Barrett came up to London last week and talked in the office of his music publisher--his first press interview for about a year. His hair is cut very short now, almost like a skinhead. Symbolic? Of what, then? He is very aware of what is going on around him, but his conversation is often obscure; it doesn't always progress in linear fashion. He is painfully conscious of his indeterminate role in the music world--"I've never really proved myself wrong. I really need to prove myself right," he says.

Maybe he has it all figured. As he says in "Octopus," "the madcap laughed at the man on the water [sic]."

M.W.: What have you been doing since you left The Floyd, apart from making your two albums?

S.B.: Well, I'm a painter, I was trained as a painter...I seem to have spent a little less time painting than I might've done...you know, it might have been a tremendous release getting absorbed in painting. Anyway, I've been sitting about and writing. The fine arts thing at college was always too much for me to think about. What I was more involved in was being successful at arts school. But it didn't transcend the feeling of playing at UFO and those sort of places with the lights and that, the fact that the group was getting bigger and bigger.

I've been at home in Cambridge with my mother. I've got lots of, well, children in a sense. My uncle...I've been getting used to a family existence, generally. Pretty unexciting. I work in a cellar, down in a cellar.

M.W.: What would you sooner be--a painter or a musician?

S.B.: Well, I think of me being a painter eventually.

M.W.: Do you see the last two years as a process of getting yourself together again?

S.B.: No. Perhaps it has something to do with what I felt could be better as regards music, as far as my job goes generally, because I did find I needed a job. I wanted to do a job. I never admitted it because I'm a person who doesn't admit it.

M.W.: There were stories you were going to go back to college, or get a job in a factory.

S.B.: Well, of course, living in Cambridge I have to find something to do. I suppose I could've done a job. I haven't been doing any work. I'm not really used to doing quick jobs and then stopping, but I'm sure it would be possible.

M.W.: Tell me about The Floyd--how did they start?

S.B.: Roger Waters is older than I am. He was at the architecture school in London. I was studying at Cambridge--I think it was before I had set up at Camberwell (art college). I was really moving backwards and forwards to London. I was living in Highgate with him, we shared a place there, and got a van and spent a lot of our grant on pubs and that sort of thing. We were playing Stones numbers. I suppose we were interested in playing guitars--I picked up playing guitar quite quickly...I didn't play much in Cambridge because I was from the art school, you know. But I was soon playing on the professional scene and began to write from there.

M.W.: Your writing has always been concerned purely with songs rather than long instrumental pieces like the rest of The Floyd, hasn't it?

S.B.: Their choice of material was always very much to do with what they were thinking as architecture students. Rather unexciting people, I would've thought, primarily. I mean, anybody walking into an art school like that would've been tricked--maybe they were working their entry into an art school.

But the choice of material was restricted, I suppose, by the fact that both Roger and I wrote different things. We wrote our own songs, played our own music. They were older, by about two years, I think. I was 18 or 19. I don't know that there was really much conflict, except that perhaps the way we started to play wasn't as impressive as it was to us, even, wasn't as full of impact as it might've been. I mean, it was done very well, rather than considerably exciting. One thinks of it all as a dream.

M.W.: Did you like what they were doing--the fact that the music was gradually moving away from songs like "See Emily Play"?

S.B.: Singles are always simple...all the equipment was battered and worn--all the stuff we started out with was our own, the guitars were our own property. The electronic noises were probably necessary. They were very exciting. That's all really. The whole thing at the time was playing on stage.

M.W.: Was it only you who wanted to make singles?

S.B.: It was probably me alone, I think. Obviously, being a pop group one wanted to have singles. I think "Emily" was fourth in the hits.

M.W.: Why did you leave them?

S.B.: It wasn't really a war. I suppose it was really just a matter of being a little offhand about things. We didn't feel there was one thing which was gonna make the decision at the minute. I mean, we did split up, and there was a lot of trouble. I don't think The Pink Floyd had any trouble, but I had an awful scene, probably self-inflicted, having a mini and going all over England and things. Still...

M.W.: Do you think the glamour went to your head at all?

S.B.: I dunno. Perhaps you could see it as something went to one's head, but I don't know that it was relevant.

M.W.: There were stories you had left because you had been freaked out by acid trips.

S.B.: Well, I dunno, it don'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 dunno 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. I only read last week that it's not 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.

M.W.: Were you not at all involved in acid, then, during its heyday among rock bands?

S.B.: No. 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. I thought The Soft Machine were good fun. They were playing on "Madcap," except for Kevin Ayers.

M.W.: Are you trying to create a mood in your songs, rather than tell a story?

S.B.: Yes, very much. It would be terrific to do much more mood stuff. They're very pure, you know, the words...I feel I'm jabbering. I really think the whole thing is based on me being a guitarist and having done the last thing about two or three years ago in a group around England and Europe and The States, and then coming back and hardly having done anything, so I don't really know what to say. I feel, perhaps, I could be claimed as being redundant almost. I don't feel active, and that my public conscience is fully satisfied.

M.W.: Don't you think that people still remember you?

S.B.: Yes, I should think so.

M.W.: Then why don't you get some musicians, go on the road and do some gigs?

S.B.: I feel though the record would still be the thing to do. And touring and playing might make that impossible to do.

M.W.: Don't you fancy playing live again after two years?

S.B.: Yes, very much.

M.W.: What's the hang-up then? Is it getting the right musicians around you?

S.B.: Yeah.

M.W.: What would be of primary importance--whether they were brilliant musicians or whether you could get on with them?

S.B.: I'm afraid I think I'd have to get on with them. They'd have to be good musicians. I think they'd be difficult to find. They'd have to be lively.

M.W.: Would you say, therefore, you were a difficult person to get on with?

S.B.: No. Probably my own impatience is the only thing, because it has to be very easy. You can play guitar in your canteen, you know, your hair might be longer, but there's a lot more to playing than travelling around universities and things.

M.W.: Why don't you go out on your own playing acoustic? I think you might be very successful.

S.B.: Yeah...that's nice. Well, I've only got an electric. I've got a black Fender which needs replacing. I haven't got any blue jeans...I really prefer electric music.

M.W.: What records do you listen to?

S.B.: Well, I haven't bought a lot. I've got things like Ma Rainey recently. Terrific, really fantastic.

M.W.: Are you going into the blues, then, in your writing?

S.B.: I suppose so. Different groups do different things...one feels that Slade would be an interesting thing to hear, you know.

M.W.: Will there be a third solo album?

S.B.: Yeah. I've got some songs in the studio, still. And I've got a couple of tapes. It should be 12 singles, and jolly good singles. I think I shall be able to produce this one myself. I think it was always easier to do that.