Pink's Syd Barrett Dead at 60

[sandgk]

Reclusive rock star Syd Barrett died a couple of days ago. He was 60 years old. Damned shame that so little came from his talent.
MSNBC

Pink Floyd co-founder Syd Barrett dies
Troubled musician, 60, lived final years largely as recluse
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The Associated Press[/FONT]

Updated: 10:23 a.m. ET July 11, 2006

<SCRIPT language=javascript> function UpdateTimeStamp(pdt) { var n = document.getElementById("udtD"); if(pdt != '' && n && window.DateTime) { var dt = new DateTime(); pdt = dt.T2D(pdt); if(dt.GetTZ(pdt)) {n.innerHTML = dt.D2S(pdt,(('false'.toLowerCase()=='false')?false:true));} } } UpdateTimeStamp('632882246244100000'); </SCRIPT>[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]LONDON - Syd Barrett, the troubled genius who co-founded Pink Floyd but spent his last years in reclusive anonymity, has died, a spokeswoman for the band said Tuesday. He was 60.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The spokeswoman — who declined to give her name until the band made an official announcement — confirmed media reports that he had died. She said Barrett died several days ago, but she did not disclose the cause of death. Barrett had suffered from diabetes for many years.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Barrett co-founded Pink Floyd in 1965 with David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Rick Wright, and wrote many of the band’s early songs. The group’s jazz-infused rock made them darlings of the London psychedelic scene, and the 1967 album “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” — largely written by Barrett, who also played guitar — was a commercial and critical hit.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]However, Barrett suffered from mental instability, exacerbated by his use of LSD. His behavior grew increasingly erratic, and he left the group in 1968 — five years before the release of Pink Floyd’s most popular album, “Dark Side of the Moon.” He was replaced by David Gilmour.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Barrett released two solo albums — “The Madcap Laughs” and “Barrett” — but soon withdrew from the music business altogether.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]He spent much of the rest of his life living quietly in his hometown of Cambridge, England, where he was a familiar figure, often seen cycling or walking to the corner store.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Despite his brief career, Barrett’s fragile, wistful songs influenced many musicians, from David Bowie — who covered the Barrett track “See Emily Play” — to the other members of Pink Floyd, who recorded the album “Wish You Were Here” as a tribute to their troubled bandmate.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The band spokeswoman said a small, private funeral would be held[/FONT]

 

[BuckeyeRyn]

"I've got a bike, you can ride it if you like, its got a basket, a bell that rings and all sorts of pretty things to make it look good... I'd give it to you if I could but I borrowed it.... You're the kind of girl that fits in to my world..."

 

[BayBuck]

"Piper at the Gates of Dawn" and "The Madcap Laughs" are excellent albums that demonstrate just what a unique vision Syd Barrett had, though he was clearly just too weird to last.

"I want to tell you a story, about a little man, if I can..."

 

[Taosman]

"Above the planet on a wing and a prayer,
My grubby halo, a vapour trail in the empty air,
Across the clouds I see my shadow fly
Out of the corner of my watering eye
A dream unthreatened by the morning light
Could blow this soul right through the roof of the night

Theres no sensation to compare with this
Suspended animation, a state of bliss
Cant keep my eyes from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit, i"

 

[Taosman]

Meddle............


The cult of Pink Floyd is bifurcated between those who still hold that Syd Barrett was English pop music's great post-Beatles genius and those who never heard of the mad Mr. Barrett but find his band's techno-spacey studio wizardry the realization of some cosmic window. In retrospect, the best of the group's music provides an ersatz soundtrack for sound nuts or space toddlers. <CITE>Meddle</CITE> preceded their classic <CITE>Dark Side of the Moon</CITE> by a couple of years, and its title track suggests the atmospherics that were finally fully realized on <CITE>Dark Side,</CITE> but it lacks the cohesiveness and structure that established the 1973 release as a multiyear best seller. The rest of the recording, with the possible exception of "One of These Days," is less than memorable. B- - Bill Shapiro, <CITE>Rock & Roll Review: A Guide to Good Rock on CD,</CITE> 1991.

 

[Dryden]

Meddle............


The cult of Pink Floyd is bifurcated between those who still hold that Syd Barrett was English pop music's great post-Beatles genius and those who never heard of the mad Mr. Barrett but find his band's techno-spacey studio wizardry the realization of some cosmic window. In retrospect, the best of the group's music provides an ersatz soundtrack for sound nuts or space toddlers. <CITE>Meddle</CITE> preceded their classic <CITE>Dark Side of the Moon</CITE> by a couple of years, and its title track suggests the atmospherics that were finally fully realized on <CITE>Dark Side,</CITE> but it lacks the cohesiveness and structure that established the 1973 release as a multiyear best seller. The rest of the recording, with the possible exception of "One of These Days," is less than memorable. B- - Bill Shapiro, <CITE>Rock & Roll Review: A Guide to Good Rock on CD,</CITE> 1991.

You do realize that Meddle was released in '71, and Barrett had already left the band in '68?

Gilmour, Waters, Mason and Wright had already done Saucerful of Secrets, the 'More' Soundtrack, Ummagumma, Atom Heart Mother, and the new original material for Relics, between the time Barrett left and Meddle was released.

 

[tibor75]

I wish he was still here.

 

[Taosman]

You do realize that Meddle was released in '71, and Barrett had already left the band in '68?

Gilmour, Waters, Mason and Wright had already done Saucerful of Secrets, the 'More' Soundtrack, Ummagumma, Atom Heart Mother, and the new original material for Relics, between the time Barrett left and Meddle was released.

You are correct, sir!
I do think most of the better songs came post 1970!
Guess what year I got out of high school?

 

[BB73]

You are correct, sir!
I do think most of the better songs came post 1970!
Guess what year I got out of high school?

2009?
.
.
.
.
.
.
j/k

 

[NightmaresDad]

I just KNEW the word "genius" would be used in the article!
Gimme a break.
WAY overrated in musical terms, but still innovative and unique, for sure.
Genius - not.
Troubled? - sure, I'll go along with that one.

 

[matz2]

Fuck, I thought he died years ago....

 

[sandgk]

Nick Kent's Tribute to Barrett

Glad Nick Kent wrote this tribute, he was always a pretty good writer. Notably, the word genius does not once appear in this well crafted piece.
LINK

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]
Shine on you crazy diamond[/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]

Syd Barrett, the most famous recluse in rock, is dead. It would be easy to mourn the founder of Pink Floyd as a casualty of drugs and mental illness, says Nick Kent - but his songs will inspire musicians for generations
[/FONT][FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Nick Kent
[/FONT][FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Wednesday July 12, 2006
[/FONT][FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Guardian
[/FONT][FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Syd Barrett's musical career lasted barely seven years - from 1965 to early '72 - and the past 32 years saw him resolutely refusing to record new music or venture near a concert stage. But Barrett, who died of cancer last Friday at the age of 60, will go down in history as one of the most uniquely inspired creative talents to have sprung up from the pop revolution that gripped Britain in the late 20th century. More specifically, he was the golden boy of the mind-melting late-60s psychedelic era, its brightest star and ultimately its most tragic victim.[/FONT][FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Like many other questing spirits who came to age in the mid-60s, he was inspired by taking LSD to create truly daring, other-wordly music - first for the original incarnation of Pink Floyd, then as a solo singer/songwriter - but the drug ended up fatally fracturing his psyche and turning him into a solitary recluse unable to function within the music industry and society in general. The story of his personal meltdown has been told and retold as a cautionary tale for indiscriminate druggies to the point where Barrett's status as rock's most illustrious casualty often threatens to outweigh his actual creative contributions to the form. This is not as it should be.[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Barrett started making music in his early teens, not long after the death of his father, an esteemed doctor. He became a regular fixture at Cambridge folk clubs but was generally more attracted by music involving electric instruments. He played in several amateurish blues bands around Cambridge until he won a scholarship to a prestigious London art school in 1964. The following year Barrett started playing with a former Cambridge schoolfriend, Roger Waters, who was studying architecture at London's Regent Street polytechnic, and two of Waters' fellow students, Richard Wright and Nick Mason. Although he was the youngest member of the group, Barrett quickly became its leader and key driving force. He wrote the songs. He sang them, too - as well as playing guitar. He even came up with the name: Pink Floyd, taken from a blues album he owned involving two obscure musicians known as Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Live, Barrett's Floyd quickly earned a reputation as London's most radical musical experience. The four-piece invented a new way for a rock band to express themselves, with eccentric pop songs suddenly melting into long, spaced-out improvisations that would directly open the door first to the UK psychedelia movement and later to the oft-derided form we now call prog-rock. Barrett's guitar-playing was singular enough, always opting for spine-tingling "eerie noise" over virtuoso string-bending, but he was most gifted as a songwriter.[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]This became abundantly clear when the group released their first single at the outset of 1967. Arnold Layne was a Barrett composition that was both light-heartedly mischievous and creepingly sinister, evoking a figure from his Cambridge past, a disturbed individual who often stole women's underclothing from local washing lines. David Bowie - then a struggling singer/songwriter - was just one among many who found Barrett's groundbreaking blending of "light" and "dark" subject matter in popular song lyrics deeply liberating for his own personal muse. Last May, Bowie took the stage with David Gilmour, Barrett's Floyd replacement, to perform Arnold Layne as a homage to Syd -and also a personal thank-you for the considerable influence Barrett's music has had on him.[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Barrett continued his masterful marriage of light and dark emotions on the group's next single, See Emily Play, and also alchemised the whimsical new bohemian spirit of the summer of love into an entire album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. But the dark aspects of his art soon eclipsed the light and euphoric side of his vision. In the late summer of '67 he wrote several disturbing new songs, one of which, Jugband Blues, appeared to be a stark autobiographical cry for help from a man desperately struggling with schizophrenia. The rest of the Floyd refused to release the other compositions and stood on horrified as they watched their guiding light turn int a catatonic human train-wreck. In early 1968, they booted him out of his own group.[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]This should have been a wake-up call for Barrett, but instead he sank even further into a world of drug-induced dislocation. Yet he continued to write songs that more and more sounded like open psychic sores, as this illuminated but desperately isolated soul struggled to make sense of his condition. He made two albums from this material - The Madcap Laughs (1970) and Barrett (1971) - with considerable assistance in the studio from his ex-Floyd cohorts Waters, Wright and Gilmour. But neither record sold many copies when released and Barrett returned to his mother's house in Cambridge to live like a hermit. He briefly played concerts with a local band called Stars in early 1972 but a negative review of one show caused him to jettison any further musical ambitions and become a full-time social recluse.[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Yet his ghost has continued to exert an ever-more potent fascination over rock musicians of all generations. That Pink Floyd themselves were haunted by the tortured spectre is confirmed by Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall, their three most momentous post-Syd recordings. David Bowie re-channelled Barrett's dislocated, quintessential English style of vocal projection into songs such as The Bewlay Brothers. In early 1976, just before John Lydon joined the Sex Pistols, Malcolm McLaren tried (unsuccessfully) to convince the band to perform a couple of Syd's songs in their repertoire. The Damned, meanwhile, attempted - in vain - to get Barrett to produce their second album. Then came the new-wave bands such as the Soft Boys who feverishly appropriated the Madcap's surreal take on the modern pop-song aesthetic. He became a spiritual pied piper of 80s indie rock and by the 90s his madly spellbinding music was being referenced by everyone from Blur to the Brian Jonestown Massacre. In the new millennium, one needs to look no further than the recorded works of the Libertines and Babyshambles to hear that Syd's crazy diamond music is still bewitching and informing the creative choices of rock's latest generation of bohemian spirits.[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]A private funeral is apparently being planned that will pointedly exclude all Barrett's past musical compadres. No matter. All of us who were ever deeply touched by his unique gifts and his tragic life story should bow our heads and offer up a minute's silence to this remarkable individual for the way he enriched our lives. And pray that he is finally fully at peace.[/FONT]

 

[Taosman]

Pink Floyd DVD "Pulse" has just been released and reviews say it's "spectacular"! f you have a "universal" player go get it! <TABLE class=productImageGrid cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=240 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top width="100%"><TABLE style="TEXT-ALIGN: center" cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD id=prodImageCell width=240 height=240></TD></TR><TR><TD class=tiny>
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Pink Floyd - Pulse (2006)
Starring: David Gilmour, Nick Mason Director: David Mallet Rating

(347 customer reviews)
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