21.07.2007: Eine neue 60minütige BBC Dokumentation über Syd Barrett war am 21.7. auf BBC2 zu hören. Neue Interviews mit Rick Wright, David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Syds Schwester Rosemary Barrett und Peter Jenner. David Gilmour erzählte, dass er Floyd im Studio besuchte als sie gerade an See Emily Play arbeiteten. Rick Wright erzählte von einem Urlaub auf Formentera mit Syd, als man versuchte ihn aus London und den Drogen wegzubringen. Peter Jenner: "In Amerika wurde es richtig schlecht. Nach dieser Tour brauchte er psychiatrische Behandlung." Rick Wright: "Die Tour mit Jimi Hendrix, das war das Ende mit Syd. Wir wussten das es nicht mehr ging."

 

Am 6. April 1968 verließ Syd Barrett offiziell Pink Floyd. David Gilmour: "Wir waren auch danach mit ihm Kontakt. Er schlief öfters bei mir in der Wohnung." David Gilmour: "Shine on you crazy Diamond ist ganz spezifisch über Syd und seine Probleme."

 

Listen Again

 

A year on from Syd Barrett’s death this documentary explores the life, music, influence and legacy of one of the lost souls of British rock music. From the early beginnings of Pink Floyd and Barrett’s contribution to their pioneering brand of psychedelic pop to the consequences of his exploration of drugs that set Barrett on a tragic path away from the band to a solo career and eventually life as a virtual recluse. The programme comes up to date with an exploration of Barrett’s passing and the fulsome tributes in the media with comments from editors and journalists about what made Barrett so special when his entire recorded output is just 3 albums. The programme features interviews with members of Pink Floyd, manager Peter Jenner, Phil Alexander editor of Mojo, Allan Jones editor of Uncut and others.

 

MARK RADCLIFFE: Hello, I’m Mark Radcliffe and welcome to a special programme exploring the life and music of Syd Barrett. With comments from writers, family and artists, we’ll reveal 'The Thing About Syd'.

 

Unknown: He represents Britain letting go and, if you have to look at an example of a British musician who let go the most, it’s Syd, and what he did with Pink Floyd.

 

NICK MASON: In some ways, I’d hate to view the, sort of, sixties with too over-rosy glasses, but it was interesting how many different styles were going on at the time. And I think the agenda was entirely set by Syd’s writing. He was a great talent, but he was also bloody difficult.

 

RICHARD WRIGHT: There were two Syds. There’s the pre-acid and the post-acid. And the pre-acid Syd was just the most wonderful, open and flamboyant guy, and clearly we were all hoping he’d get better and all desperately trying as hard as possible to keep him in the band - because we all loved him.

 

DAVID GILMOUR: Syd’s intelligence and wit and humour are the things that don’t necessarily come across. My fond memories of him are not really related to the music.

 

Unknown: Syd has an eternal youth because, in some sense, he died in 1968, you know? In some way. But he didn’t die, and so you couldn’t have that celebration of what he was and what he’d done and what he’d achieved until he finally did die. And then suddenly people realised, my God, how important he was.

 

MARK RADCLIFFE: The passing of Syd Barrett just over a year ago in an average semi-detached house in a quiet Cambridge street not only brought to a close one of the most unusual chapters in British Popular music, but also an end to the speculation surrounding this unique icon of the sixties. Syd Barrett was originally Pink Floyd's front man and composer. He went on to record two intriguing solo albums. But his drug taking shattered his mental faculties and he disappeared into a reclusive existence in the orbit of his loving family in Cambridge for the second half of his life.

On the announcement of Syd’s death, queues of artists too numerous to mention sang Barrett’s praise and genius to a hungry media. In this programme, we check out the surprising press interest, explore his music and strip away the mystery surrounding Syd Barrett with those who knew and loved him. It's a remarkable story which begins on the sixth of January 1946, when Syd was born Roger Barrett, the fourth of five children. He was a musical child, performing piano recitals with sister, Rosemary, around the Cambridge area. As a teenager, he showed promise in art and was getting noticed locally. Cambridge pal, David Gilmour:

DAVID GILMOUR: Syd was the sort of person that people would look at in the street. Even when he was fourteen, people would point him out and say "That's Syd Barrett," or Roger Barrett. But he was already sort of a legend at a very, very early age.

ROSEMARY BARRETT: Very, very charismatic. As a child he was a clown. He was very attractive and he was exceptionally gifted. He always had loads and loads of friends, because he was such fun. He was always laughing and always had huge sparkle in his eyes.

MARK RADCLIFFE: At sixteen, Barrett enrolled at Cambridge Tech to study art. Also there, learning languages, was David Gilmour.

DAVID GILMOUR: We spent all our lunchtimes learning songs like 'Come On' by the Rolling Stones and lots of Bo Diddley stuff. We were learning the guitar together and we wanted to go off and do it. I mean, I don’t remember Syd ever saying he was definitely going to be an artist, or he was definitely going to be a musician. He could have been pretty much anything he wanted to be, I suspect.

MARK RADCLIFFE: It was around this time (the early Sixties) that Roger Barrett adopted the name 'Syd' after a local Trad-Jazz drummer he admired - and it stuck - but Cambridge was getting too small for him. He enrolled at Camberwell Art School and moved to London in the summer of '64. By now his Cambridge chums, Roger Waters and Bob Klose, were also in the capital studying architecture at Regent Street Poly. They were also making music with drummer, Nick Mason.

This motley, but intelligent, gang of musicians, architects and friends hung out at Mike Leonard's house in Highgate, North London, where Roger and Nick were living.

NICK MASON: The relationship with Mike Leonard was slightly curious anyway because, yes, he was our landlord, but actually he was our part-time tutor at the Regent Street Poly. He actually played keyboards in the band for a while. So, yes, it was a slightly sort of... unusual relationship. But this was not a sort of psychedelic, mad student flat. It was much more a sort of middle class student flat, I think. I mean it was exquisitely messy.

MARK RADCLIFFE: The benevolent landlord took a keen interest in the Blues-flavoured music Barrett, Waters, Klose and Mason were making in his basement, and, in early 1965, their ranks were swelled by a pianist, Rick Wright.
 

RICHARD WRIGHT: I think Roger came up with the names. 'The Screaming Abdabs', we were once called. 'The Tea Set'... And there was another band also called 'The Tea Set' and it was Syd, of course, who just looked at two album covers and saw Pink Anderson and Floyd Council and he said, "We'll use that name for tonight, Pink Floyd," and it stuck.

MARK RADCLIFFE: Lucky, the band could have been dubbed by the young Barrett 'Anderson Council'. Although there is a Pink Floyd tribute band trading under that name, I’m reliably informed. Meanwhile, in the summer of 1965, the fledgling group took a break from music and studying. Barrett headed to the South of France to rendezvous with his mate, David Gilmour.

DAVID GILMOUR: Busking in St Tropez and got arrested because we didn‘t have a licence. Flung us in a cell for about seven minutes and then we drove up to Paris and we went to The Louvre. Went to see the Mona Lisa. Syd was like an encyclopaedia going through The Louvre, talking about all the stuff. He picked up everything. Very, very sharp. Very, very funny. Laughing all the time.

MARK RADCLIFFE: Barrett returned to Camberwell Art School for his second year. By now Bob Klose had left the group and Syd became the reluctant front man for Pink Floyd. Through the first half of 1966, the band played the more fashionable counter-culture events, like the Spontaneous Underground staged at London’s Marquee Club, and eventually came to the attention of aspiring hippy entrepreneurs, Andrew King and Peter Jenner.

PETER JENNER: I was interested in avant garde music in a slightly pretentious way. Syd was the lead singer, he wrote the vast majority of the songs, he was the lead guitar player. He was absolutely the heart of the band, you know? He was the Lennon and McCartney of the band.

 

NICK MASON: The slightly curious thing is, it’s not as if we were some old blues band from the Delta. I mean, we played absolutely anything we could learn. What we had realised was that, if you had original material, then that set the agenda, and this mix of styles that Syd had, this rather curious, wistful, folky thing - mystical - became the key thing. Then the very radical ‘Interstellar Overdrive’.
 

RICHARD WRIGHT: The riff that starts it off came from Syd. All the rest of it, whichever night you were playing it, would be different.

PETER JENNER: And what I found interesting about them was what they did with, what I suspect, one chord improvisations, which Syd and Rick really mainly led on and the others just kept doodling away. That was what attracted me, that was the avant gardeness. Probably it was an instinctive commercial thing. That playing 'Louie Louie' rather undermined the whole avant gardeness, and their own material would be suited to the whole thing in a much better way.

RICHARD WRIGHT: We were a band that didn’t mind taking risks. We didn’t want to be your average showbiz band. Of course we wanted to be successful and popular. Syd, in particular, wanted to be a pop star, but he wanted to do it in his own way.

MARK RADCLIFFE: In September ‘66, Syd and Pink Floyd signed a management deal with Andrew King and Peter Jenner. The pair secured them gigs like the high-profile launch party at The London Roundhouse for the underground magazine ‘International Times’. 2,000 people stood entranced by the band’s psychedelic sound and light show and soon The Floyd had a residency at the West End nightclub, UFO.

PETER JENNER: Driving to the gig at UFO, which was the old Blarney Dance Hall, an old Irish dance hall in Tottenham Court Road. It was so noticeable that there were suddenly all these young people with lots of long hair and they all had bells on and the afghan coats... all the sort of hippyrama. I was probably stoned at the time, but I remember going "My goodness me, what’s going on here?"

MARK RADCLIFFE: It was at UFO that Jenner introduced Pink Floyd to producer, Joe Boyd, and in late January ‘67, the band strolled into Boyd’s Sound Techniques studios to record the Barrett song, ‘Arnold Layne’.

PETER JENNER: The key person there would be Syd, but he wasn’t bossy. He was very laissez-faire. It was his song, he was doing the vocal. He would usually have some sort of solo thing so, I mean, in that sense, he would do it and it was clearly down to the band as to whether they liked the thing at the end.

I just loved that song, I thought that could be a hit. Syd just flowered writing the songs: a) he dug out his book of songs that he already had, but b) he just went into a writing frenzy, which was extraordinary.

MARK RADCLIFFE: The Barrett song, ‘Arnold Layne’, secured the group a record deal with EMI, and a top 20 hit in March ‘67. That month, the band settled into recording their debut album at Studio Three in Abbey Road. In Studio Two, The Beatles were working on Sgt Pepper’s. Syd, as front man, writer and singer, was in demand. He also had a new crowd of dubious friends taking large amounts of psychedelic drugs at his Cromwell Road flat. Even at this early stage of his career Syd was beginning to show signs of wear and tear mentally.

RICHARD WRIGHT: I think Syd was with a group of people who firmly believed 'take loads of acid and you’ll see the truth', and all that stuff. I believe they were basically spiking him, and I think that’s the main reason for his mental instability.

DAVID GILMOUR: Syd’s sort of magnetic character did attract a lot of people to him, who were frankly not his equal in any way at all and did rather provide him with lots of drugs.

PETER JENNER: So he was absolutely out there in Space City, trying to deal with the demands of becoming a very hot, successful new band. So there was an enormous pressure, if you like, for interviews and people recognising him in the street and people would come up to him, out of their skull, and say "Syd, what‘s it all about? What does it all mean?" He was just overwhelmed by it.

MARK RADCLIFFE: The Pink Floyd recorded their debut album around their heavy gig schedule. Producing was former Beatles engineer, Norman Smith.

NICK MASON: Norman probably felt that he didn’t really communicate with Syd that well. But I think, at times, Syd took very kindly to some of Norman’s ideas. I mean, Norman was a very good musician in his own right and perfectly capable of, sort of, bringing in other sounds and other ideas.

PETER JENNER: The album was the existing songs that we had around, plus songs that he was writing as we were going along.

RICHARD WRIGHT: Syd was a unique writer, as everyone knows. A lot of his songs didn’t actually get on to any albums, were very like fairytales, very whimsical. I mean, he was brilliant. He would come up with a song in ten minutes.

PETER JENNER: And he was very like that. ‘Chapter 24‘, he wrote with a book of The I Ching and he opened it up an there was chapter 24, you know, and taking lines out of the book.

RICHARD WRIGHT: And the other thing about Syd was, when he wrote a song, he’d be writing to the rhythms of the words, rather than saying "I’ve got four beats to the bar," but we had to work that out for him. He couldn’t work it out either, each time he did it, he changed it, so he would write rhythms to the words. Then his guitar would go with the rhythm of the words and the timing of the chord changes didn’t matter to him at all.

MARK RADCLIFFE: ‘Bike’ - a quirky Barrett song that would feature on the Pink Floyd debut album ’Piper At The Gates of Dawn’. The Floyd had become the musical darlings of the flowering counter culture. The group continued their residency at UFO, performed at happening night spots, like the London Round House, and headlied the all-night benefit event, The Fourteen Hour Technicolor Dream, at Alexandra Palace.

NICK MASON: For us, it was not a particularly great evening. By the time we got to The Technicolor Dream, we actually had done another show in Holland that same night, so we were not entirely on our very best, sharpest form - and Syd was by this time beginning to show signs of wear and tear.

RICHARD WRIGHT: By this time, Syd had lost it. He had definitely lost it in Holland and then I don’t think he even realised where he was.

PETER JENNER: And it was trying to find different ways of coping with what was clearly becoming a very difficult position for them, because it would be things like: Is he going to turn up to go to the gig? What songs is he going to sing?

MARK RADCLIFFE: Concerned by his erratic behaviour, Syd was moved from his Cromwell Road circle of friends and into a Richmond flat with Rick Wright.

RICHARD WRIGHT: All of us loved Syd and were clearly all hoping that he would get better and all desperately trying as hard as possible to keep him in the band.

MARK RADCLIFFE: Word had reached the Barrett family in Cambridge. Sister Rosemary again:

ROSEMARY BARRETT: It was accepted, in his world, to be involved in drugs, and therefore he withdrew much more from Cambridge and from the family because he knew we didn’t understand.

MARK RADCLIFFE: There were new pressures on Syd as Floyd’s EMI record label wanted a follow-up single to ‘Arnold Layne’.

PETER JENNER: Up to and including recording ‘See Emily Play’, I think he may have been different, but it was still... One was working with him in a way that was still reasonably coherent. I think it became - through that next summer, ‘67 - it became harder.

MARK RADCLIFFE: David Gilmour dropped by the ‘Emily Play’ sessions.

DAVID GILMOUR: He had a very strange look on his face. When I got there, they were all working away and we did talk, but he did have this very strange starey-eyed look, which was not friendly. There was something troubling him. He didn‘t look like the same person. On that particular day, I saw a sign of what was going to come.

PETER JENNER: In the same way you don’t notice when your children are growing up, it was very hard to see that day-to-day change and I think Dave hadn’t seen them and it’s a bit different. I’m sure his observation is absolutely correct.

DAVID GILMOUR: He was tipping at that point, definitely in a strange mental place and was struggling, Maybe this was something that came in waves and that was a particularly bad moment but, hey, we were making ‘See Emily Play’. Doesn’t sound like there’s too much of a problem!

RICHARD WRIGHT: He’d present the song with the lyrics, strum away, sing it with wonderful words and then the band would say "Right, well, let’s try and put this together in some sense of order or in shape." My memory of Syd is that it was a very sudden thing when he went over the edge, and I can’t remember exactly when. But clearly, when we were doing 'Piper', he was coming up with brilliant songs and he was together and he was vibrant. He gave the band a bit of glamour, if you like, as well. He was the charismatic person of the band out of all of us. He was the star.

MARK RADCLIFFE: “See Emily Play” a major top 10 hit in July ‘67. That month Pink Floyd would make three appearances on Top Of The Pops but on one occasion Syd failed to appear at the TV studio.

RICHARD WRIGHT: We turned up to the BBC and they couldn’t find Syd. We eventually found him and came back and said “ Something terrible has happened, he’s like a zombie”. The shock of seeing him, such a change.

NICK MASON: He stopped enjoying it, he just had lost interest in it. I think it was an ever declining interest and enthusiasm that’s the unravelling, you know, the rest of us were still absolutely hot to do it.

MARK RADCLIFFE: With 'See Emily Play' at Number Six, and the debut album, 'Piper At The Gates Of Dawn', in the album charts, Pink Floyd were hot. Despite their ailing front man, they continued to perform and promote their material. But, by the end of August ‘67, all gigs were pulled as Syd’s ability to play and function gave further cause for concern.

NICK MASON: Syd actually underwent a conscience crisis that this wasn’t art. It was becoming so commercial with television and record sales, promotions and so on and he had been an artist. He still painted and had a fairly rigorous view of how one should behave as an artist, and I think that just meant this was just not really what he wanted to do.

MARK RADCLIFFE: Barrett was sent on a fortnight's holiday to the island of Formentera with Rick Wright.

RICHARD WRIGHT: The idea was to get Syd out of London, away from acid, away from all his friends who treated him like a God. I mean, they worshipped him. It was clearly much more serious than we thought it was, because he couldn’t respond, he couldn’t communicate. He couldn’t do anything in Formentera. I think he had nightmares - I mean, real living nightmares, trying to climb up walls - and the biggest change for me, his eyes, used to have so much life in him and then his eyes just went dead. I mean, we were all hoping that he was just basically burnt out and needed a complete break, but it clearly was much more serious than that. It was very scary, very upsetting.

MARK RADCLIFFE: Rick, Syd and their respective girlfriends returned to the UK. With Barrett’s failing mental abilities, he still managed to front the band as it criss-crossed Britain and Scandinavia on another round of dates through September and October. The group also managed to record a couple of Waters and Wright songs for their next album, 'Saucerful Of Secrets'. Then, in November, Pink Floyd boarded a plane and headed off for their first in America.

NICK MASON: We were so determined to carry on that we probably all pretended that he was a bit better. We just did not want to recognise that there was a problem, because Syd was the writer, the front man. The last thing we needed was to lose Syd.

PETER JENNER: In a sense, his behaviour before the American tour was getting a bit tricky, but it got really bad in America.

MARK RADCILFFE: Pink Floyd played six West Coast dates, further planned American performances and TV appearances on the East Coast were cancelled. As the band returned home, management realised that they needed to take some kind of action.

PETER JENNER: When he came back from America, that was a real shocking effect. It was after that that we started worrying about his mental health, but before they could sort their crumbling front man, Pink Floyd joined a three week UK package tour alongside Amen Corner, The Nice and The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

NICK MASON: The tour was relatively simple. It was a very, sort of, rehearsed piece there was no room for playing other than the three songs, then going off again. When he didn’t turn up, that was one big problem.

PETER JENNER: On one or two gigs, we had David O'List from The Nice do the guitar playing, because Syd just didn’t turn up.

RICHARD WRIGHT: There were times when it was impossible for him to play, and there were other times when "Mmm, yes, he's singing, he’s playing," and the hope came back

PETER JENNER: There came a point where what was avant garde became a bit disturbing. When it was, like, playing the same note all the way through, it became clearly a bit weird. None of us had any experience of what was going on. It was... You know, we had no idea how to cope with it.

RICHARD WRIGHT: Virtually every night, all of us standing backstage waiting for Hendrix to come on, because he was extraordinary. That was an amazing tour, actually, but this was clearly... That was the end, this tour, when we just knew that Syd just couldn’t do it.

MARK RADCILFFE: It was decided to cut Syd some much needed slack. Another guitarist would be recruited, freeing Barrett to do whatever he liked. Step forward David Gilmour.

DAVID GILMOUR: The idea became that I would be there as well, sing and play, and Syd would be there to sing and play when he felt like.

NICK MASON: Very hard to know now how Syd perceived it, or even how well thought out it was from our point of view. It’s quite a sophisticated route to take, leaving the writer behind. He perhaps saw it even more clearly than we did and realised that he would eventually be pushed out.

DAVID GILMOUR: As the days went on, these ideas got modified to the point where Syd just stood there for a couple of gigs and didn’t really do anything and then...

RICHARD WRIGHT: One day, we had a gig to do. It was all decided by the band, with David now in the band, and we’ll go without Syd. I was living with Syd in Richmond, trying to take care of him. I had the horrible thing of having to say "Syd, I’m just going out to get some cigarettes," because if I’d said "We’re off to do a gig," whatever state he was in, he would have come. So I had to lie to him, if you like, then went off and did the gig and came back and he said "Have you got the cigarettes yet?" - and this was four hours later. It was a bit strange and I feel a bit bad about that.

DAVID GILMOUR: We didn’t pick Syd up and he didn’t come to gigs anymore, and we kind of hoped that he would stay home and give us lots more great songs and then everyone would be happy.

MARK RADCILFFE: 'Jugband Blues', from the album 'Saucerful Of Secrets', and the last Barrett song to feature on a Pink Floyd album. On April 6th 1968 Syd Barrett officially left The Pink Floyd and, despite the trials he had put his management through, he retained the services of Andrew King and Pete Jenner.

PETER JENNER: I couldn’t believe that we couldn’t get him back. He was so important to me as a person in the band. That, in a sense, I just backed the wrong horse, if you want to be really cynical.

MARK RADCILFFE: Now out of Pink Floyd, Syd slept on friend's floors throughout the autumn of ’68. David Gilmour...

DAVID GILMOUR: We were in touch all the time. He was sleeping in my flat, we were still spending a fair bit of time together. He would come 'round and doss, as he didn’t have anywhere. He then moved in with Dougie Fields in Earl’s Court Square, and I got a flat in Old Brompton Road at some point in ’69, I guess was. I think it was complete coincidence that we happened to live where I could look out of my kitchen in to his kitchen. Very strange really.

MARK RADCILFFE: As David and Syd waved to each other from their respective kitchen tables, Barrett decided to record again. In April ‘69, he returned to Abbey Road studios, with Malcolm Jones producing. Pete Jenner was also at the studio controls.

PETER JENNER: There were a lot of tapes running, trying to make something from what was there. He’d come up with something and maybe we could go back and work on it, but that sort of rationality "Well, that was good, why don’t we do that again?" - that all didn’t work. That was the problem: we tried with some musicians with him, we tried with him on his own. "Just go and do what you want to do Syd. Go on, let’s hear it." To me, it was all about creativity. Every now and then, some lyrics would come out; a bit of a tune would come out and you’d try and capture it before it just disappeared back into the fog.

I have to say, one of the most frustrating things in my life, because you could see that genius of his would come through in little bits and pieces, but I couldn’t get him to get it together into a coherent form. And most of the songs that ended up on the record were really worked over a lot by Roger and Dave.

MARK RADCILFFE: Roger Waters and David Gilmour were drafted in to salvage the recordings, as the record company was losing patience.

DAVID GILMOUR: That they were going to shut the album down and can it. Then we said "We’ll finish it." I think we only had two-and-a-half days, or something. Syd was not really taking much part in this process, you know? I would pick him up from his flat and we would go to Abbey Road and do stuff, but he was not really taking control of what was going on. It was extremely hard, because he would never do the same thing twice.

PETER JENNER: There is some real pain, some real genius, some real flashes. In a way, I think it’s really great what Dave and Roger did to try and bring out what was there. It was a work of great love.

DAVID GILMOUR: There was some great stuff. I mean, there was some great playing by The Soft Machine on it. 'Octopus' is good. I mean, 'Octopus' he did well and consistently enough for me to then go and play some horrible drums and bass and other instruments on and turn it, sort of, into a pop song.

MARK RADCILFFE: Lifting a line from the track 'Octopus', David Gilmour titled the album 'The Madcap Laughs'.

DAVID GILMOUR: I pulled that phrase out of lyrics, really. Said "Let’s call it this." We didn’t have a title for the album. I liked the sound of the word 'Madcap', because it sounds mad only in a nice way. It doesn’t sound like it means actual mental-incapacity-madness. It means a joyful sort of lunacy, if you like. I can’t remember what he said to that. He certainly didn’t argue.

It is a document of the moment. The state he was in at that moment is partially temporary, because it is made far worse by him actually having been on drugs in the studio when he was doing this stuff. He was fairly certainly on Mandrax for some of those recordings, which are just downers. It’s one of these completely useless things. I mean, the album - I mean not all of it - the core moments on it are due to his permanent incapacity. Some are his temporary incapacities, too. It’s one of those funny things. I mean, one tries to explain what went on with the poor boy, that there were days when things worked.

MARK RADCILFFE: On the track 'Golden Hair', Barrett puts the words of poet James Joyce to music.

DAVID GILMOUR: 'Golden Hair' is one of the ones that he did before we came on board. Not one of the ones that many people would think of doing these days. It's lovely.

MARK RADCLIFFE: Words by James Joyce, music by Syd Barrett. 'Golden Hair',” released January 1970 on 'The Madcap Laughs' album. The record got no radio air time, although Barrett did play a Top Gear session for John Peel. Despite Syd's erratic behaviour and drug taking, he was keen and showed up on time. David Gilmour also played at the session.

DAVID GILMOUR: The urgency of doing a radio session where you’re going to do it now and you’re going to get it done in that one-three hour thing. He seemed to respond better to that, and it did seem that we could do things that sounded more cohesive and that he was more into it. He would gather his wits together and would go for things in a better way.

MARK RADCILFFE: Recorded for John Peel’s Top Gear in February 1970, 'Gigolo Aunt'. That song would feature on Syd’s second album, simply called 'Barrett'. This time, it was produced by Rick Wright and David Gilmour.

DAVID GILMOUR: Well, the thing with the second one was we did have more time, because we had the time to start it from scratch. It meant that we could get some musicians in, try and put some songs down.

RICHARD WRIGHT: Jerry Shirley was on drums, Dave playing guitars and bass, I think, as well. It was a lot of hard work getting it all in to time, and everything. He had all these songs, some which he’d already recorded, which we’d never done. He was still writing 'though he could not basically communicate. He’d definitely lost it. Inside his head, he was still thinking these great lyrics. I could never understand it; the fact that he could come up with these great lyrics still, but everyday life was impossible for him.

David: Some of the songs, we have Syd recording the song first and then we have people struggling to play along to it afterwards. But if we played a track with Syd playing along and singing, he would go in to changes and choruses in all different places, and we were not sharp enough to stick with him all the time. So you would kind of be persuading Syd to go and do something, or getting him to come down and play with the bunch of musicians, whoever I could cobble together on the day. 'Dominoes' is the track that stands out for me.

MARK RADCILFFE: 'Dominoes' from the second, and last, Barrett studio album - released November 1970.

PETER JENNER: I could never listen to 'The Madcap Laughs' or the other one, 'Barrett', because it was like a shadow of what I’d known. It brought back the sessions to me and I sort of worry about people who get excited by how great those albums are. Not worried, I just think that’s not the real Syd. But then, who am I to say that? Maybe that’s my problem, not theirs. What he did is he articulated his vision, his genius, in a fantastic way. They’re trying to find the bits of gold dust that’s in the pan that they are washing out, to stick them together and make them into a nugget. Whereas what he was doing back with the Floyd, 'Piper At The Gates Of Dawn', he was making the nuggets.

MARK RADCILFFE: By the end of 1970, Barrett turned his back on London. Six years after leaving Cambridge for Camberwell Art College, he returned to his mother, Winifred’s, house.

ROSEMARY BARRETT: To me, he was somebody who I’d lost at that time. It was a very bad time for him. He did some artwork. He did a huge canvas about six-seven foot in width, and it was all black, and in the bottom corner, about an inch by an inch, there was a little red square. Ad I remember looking at that and thinking, you know, he’s in trouble. So he came home to stay with Mum and it was a bad time. He was quite distressed for a long time.

MARK RADCILFFE: Syd spent 1971 in seclusion. The following year, he ventured on stage with his band called Stars. They managed five gigs, the last on February 22nd, 1972 - the last time Syd Barrett was seen by an audience. Meanwhile, in London, Pink Floyd performed at the Rainbow, showcasing their new project 'The Dark Side Of The Moon', which would lift them into super-stardom.

DAVID GILMOUR: 'Dark Side Of The Moon' is about the tendency that is brought upon one by the pressures of life and, obviously, to me, 'Dark Side Of The Moon' is definitely very, very influenced by Syd’s condition.

MARK RADCILFFE: Syd returned to London. He enjoyed being anonymous in the capital, but he still cast a shadow over his former band mates. In the summer of 1975, as they worked on their follow up to 'Dark Side Of The Moon', one particular track became significant.

DAVID GILMOUR: 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond' was written about Syd. It all came out of a haunting little guitar phrase that fell out of my guitar one day, and that did something to Roger. It moved something in Roger and it started this whole process off that became 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond', which was specifically about Syd and his problems.

MARK RADCILFFE: Strange that, after such a considerable absence, Barrett should turn up at Abbey Road studios to pay a visit to his former band mates.

RICHARD WRIGHT: Roger was already in the studio and I came in. As I walked in, I saw this extraordinary person sitting on the sofa.

DAVID GILMOUR: Syd turned up at Abbey Road as we were recording in number three and, I think, he wandered in and wandered into the actual recording room - the large recording room there - and I think we were all working, doing stuff in the control room, and we saw some chap wandering around out there. And he came out of the blue…

NICK MASON: I’ve never heard anyone say "Oh, I said to Syd, why don’t you drop in?" I don’t think anyone had seen him for a while. I think it was variable as to whether people knew who he was, him or not. I certainly didn’t recognise him straight away, but my memory is of him being in the studio when I came back into the control room after doing a drum track, or something.

RICHARD WRIGHT: I didn’t recognise him, so I sat down next to Roger and I said "Iis that one of your friends?" He said no and he wouldn’t tell me and I didn’t get it for about ten minutes. And then he said "That’s Syd!" and I was just so shocked.

DAVID GILMOUR: It’s a strange thing but, yeah, he was there. It did take a while before one of us said "Bloody hell, that’s Syd." None of us remembers it that clearly, I don’t think, but it’s spooky.

RICHARD WRIGHT: Because, by this time, he was about 18 stone, because I think he was on Cortisone. Shaved off all his body hair, including his eyebrows, although he did jump up and sit down again. Then he did say "When do you want me to put guitar on?"

NICK MASON: It has become a slightly odd story because there seem to be two or three different versions of how long he was there and how long he stayed.

RICHARD WRIGHT: It was about seven years since he’d left the band. Very, very shocked and shaken by it, I have to say. But it was unique, because we were actually recording the song dedicated to him - 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond' - when he came in. There’s no way he would have known we were doing that. So I was in a state of shock, but none of us knew who he was until we were told, and we couldn’t do anything after that. We couldn’t record or play music. We just went down to the café, had a cup of tea with him and were trying to have a conversation with him. But God knows what we talked about. Then he just stood up and said "I’ve got to go now." "Where are you going?" "I’m going back to Cambridge." And he went back to Cambridge and that was it.

MARK RADCILFFE: Summer ‘75 was the last time the Pink Floyd members saw Syd Barrett. He left London for good after a period of eight years.

ROSEMARY BARRETT: He lived in Chelsea Cloisters for some years, but it was a bad time. He was very lonely and eventually money became a problem, because brown envelopes went straight into the bin. So he came home to stay with Mum. He was quite distressed for a long time, but then we’re talking years and years and years - probably ten years plus of chaos. He eventually, after some years, sorted himself out and he got himself a life with me and my mother.

MARK RADCILFFE: Throughout the Eighties, Syd became a recluse; occasionally photographed looking portly, wandering through Cambridge. He continued to paint and draw, but never pursued music again. Things changed for him in 1991, when his mother passed away, and Syd became the responsibility of his sister.

ROSEMARY BARRETT: I didn’t see him every day. I’d see him two or three times a week. He needed a lot of support in lots of ways, to learn how to live in many different ways. I had to teach him how to live. He had forgotten you get up, you have breakfast, you go shopping, you come back, you have lunch. The normal routine of a day. It had never really featured in his life. It was a worry. It was a worry I did perhaps take too seriously, but I did love him - perhaps too much - so he learnt slowly, but he was content. And that was what I strived for, for him: contentment. I think... I think he achieved it.

MARK RADCILFFE: Syd Barrett died on July 7th due to complications relating to diabetes. He was 60. His stare would beam down from magazines, newspapers and television news reports as the media relived his myth.

Syd scored an obituary in The Sun. A front cover of the NME declared him "The original punk rocker.". For a man who recorded just three albums, two of them difficult ones, the coverage seemed to outweigh his contribution to popular music. There seemed to be a rush by the media to romanticise this particular pop icon. Editor of Uncut magazine, Alan Jones:

ALAN JONES: This "Hold the front page"... We really didn’t even sit down and discuss what we should do. We had a feeling amongst ourselves that none of us would be here if it wasn’t for people like Syd, and we immediately took a decision to pull the cover story that we had just finished and replace it with a tribute to Syd.

MARK RADCILFFE: Andrew Mail, Assistant Editor at Mojo Magazine:

ANDREW MAIL: It was press day. We were closing the magazine and I think, if it hadn’t have been Syd Barrett, if the there hadn’t been that warmth of feeling out there, if there hadn’t have been that need to sort of, come together and talk about this guy... We wouldn’t have got it done. It was astonishing, the degree of… love, yes, but also that need to, as people say, put the record straight.

DAVID GILMOUR: The media do like a good yarn about mythical lost things that disappeared in the sixties, or whatever. Syd’s one, I think. He was worth it.

ANDREW MAIL: We romanticise that period in the late sixties because it will always seem to be a creative peak and Syd will always be one of the representative figures for that creative peak.

DAVID GILMOUR: But his influence obviously is great and his particular one tragedy that has affected me and thousands and thousands of people.

RICHARD WRIGHT: If you want to call someone a kind of genius in terms of pop music, there are not that many around. But possibly put Syd there. But then, I’m a bit biased.

NICK MASON: There is a story, of course, about the creative genius that burns out long before he should have done. I was quite astonished by the ubiquity of the coverage. Obviously there is an allure, because he had become a bit of a mystery. He’d retired from music when he was still very young. So he was as famous for his absence as what he’d done... Mysterious, chubby little man who cycled around Cambridge... So he was tabloid, as well.

ROSEMARY BARRETT: Why did these people want to talk to him? Why did they come to his door? The reason he hated all the attention was because he didn’t ever understand what he’d done that everybody wanted a bit of him.

RICHARD WRIGHT: And I suspect a lot of these people who are now writing for newspapers and working for radio were all part of that period - period around ‘67, when Syd was a huge part of it. They certainly did make Syd’s life romantic.

MARK RADCILFFE: And how did the Barrett family react to the unexpected media frenzy?

ROSEMARY BARRETT: Very surprised. After 30 years of being out of the limelight, I thought there’d probably be no reaction. I’ve just been amazed. Pleased, really. Pleased for him, although he would hate it. He wanted to make his mark in life, and he did in a very unusual way, and I think that would suit him. I don’t know, he was just such an amazingly unusual person. He was just so different and so original. I mean, we need people like him.

MARK RADCILFFE: A year on from his passing, the press coverage of Syd’s Barrett’s death reveals a great deal about how alternative culture has been embraced by the musical mainstream. Syd Barrett was not well known, but the fulsome praise lavishes on his songs and his subsequent departure reveals that the influence of this hero of the Sixties is more important than his musical output - and that is what will be revealed as his legacy. Let's leave the final words to his former band mates: Rick Wright, David Gilmour, and Nick Mason.

NICK MASON: Syd was the catalyst that produced Pink Floyd. So however talented Roger, David or Rick are, Syd deserves to take some of the credit for some of the best things that we’ve done since. I think, without Syd, there probably would not have been a 'Dark Side Of The Moon' and probably not have been 'The Wall'. And things that people still look fondly on today, like 'Bike', 'Arnold Layne' and things like that.

DAVID GILMOUR: Syd occupied the nether regions of all our mind at various times, and he was a brilliant, funny, intelligent, lovely chap. Just to see that whole thing disappear... It was a very troubling, very sad, thing. Not only for people like me, who knew him fairly well, but it obviously has that same thing for thousands of people who loved his work.

RICHARD WRIGHT: He was more than a product of his time. Syd was unique, and someone who is unique will write what they want, and won’t write what they feel they should write, because he had a very, sort of, individualistic way of living - of looking at life. And I sadly miss him, even now.