Pink Floyd With Syd Barrets

Introduction

Syd Barrett was the youngest of five children of a well renowned Cambridge physician and his wife, both of who who encouraged his interest in music. The sudden death of his father when Barrett was 11 is accepted to have been at least partly responsible for initiating the mental problems that plagued him as an adult. (Denyer, 23)

In 1965, he conveyed a flair for musical innovation -- and the name Pink Floyd -- to a assembly whose stock-in-trade had been playing covers of Rhythm & Blues songs. Under Barrett's leverage, Pink Floyd began to trial with a jazz-based psychedilic sound. He used "low tech" techniques like sliding a cigarette lighter up and down his guitar's fret board to give Pink Floyd a distinctive sound distinct from any other bands.

Barrett was a exclusive talent and an erratic brain on the for demonstration of a distinct kind of existence - as well as a man who indelibly affected those who came into contact with him. Several persons close to Syd at various times in his life offer their perspectives in this article, and the resulting portrait is Picasso-like: a profile examined simultaneously in distinct dimensions of seeing.

Ten years since the release of Pink Floyd's first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, it's tough for those unfamiliar with Pink Floyd's music or the burgeoning British music scene of the 60's to attribute great importance to Syd Barrett. All it takes to be assured of Barrett's significance, although, is a careful listen to Piper, A Saucerful Of Secrets (the second LP), and the singles he composed for the assembly (on Relics and Masters Of Rock, a Dutch collection). Whead covering Syd conceived in sound and imagery was emblem new: at that time America hadn't even perceived of Hendrixian feedback and distortion as part of a guitar's capabilities, and the Beatles were just notes Sergeant Pepper (at the same time and in the identical studios) as Pink Floyd were chopping Piper. Barrett's music was as experimental as you could get without crossing over solely into freeform jazz; there simply were no other bands expanding the boundaries of rock after the basic 4/4 sex-and-love themes.(Denyer, 23)

Syd certainly listened to American jazz, blues, jug band music and rock, as did most juvenile British rock 'n' rollers of the time. He used to cite Bo Diddley as his major leverage, yet these inputs are nothing less than alluded to in his music, which contains every style of guitar playing imaginable: funky tempo churns up speeding riffs that distort into jazzy improvisation. At times an Eastern leverage surfaces, combining vocal chants, jangling guitar and devotional hum in tunes like "Matilda Mother" and the beautiful "Chapter 24," based on the I Ching.

Barrett's guitar work maintained a psychedelic, dramatic ambience of incongruous contrasts, brutal changes and inspired psychosis. No technician a la Eric Clapton, Barrett easily knew his own specific equipment well and shoved it to its limits. Compared by critics to Jeff Beck, Lou ...