Original subtitles

(DISTANT CHURCH BELLS RING)

NARRATOR: 'Fame requires every kind of excess.

I mean, true fame.

A devouring neon.

Long journeys across grey space.

Danger.

The edge of every void.

Understand the man who must inhabit these extreme regions.

Even if half-mad, he is absorbed into the public's total madness.

Even if fully rational, a bureaucrat in Hell,

a secret genius of survival,

he is sure to be destroyed by the public's contempt for survivors.'

MALE INTERVIEWER: What are you working on at the moment

inside yourself?

SYD BARRETT: I can't really say.

Maybe this would be very valuable, this break,

to try painting again after a break of going into pop music.

I don't know.

If I wanted to say nothing,

or if I want to act in an extraordinary way,

then I feel that that, too, is justified.

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

NEWSCASTER: Syd Barrett, one of the founding members of Pink Floyd,

has died at the age of 60.

A statement from the band described him as "a guiding light

who leaves a legacy which continues to inspire".

He left the Pink Floyd in 1968

and lived as a recluse in Cambridge

for three decades.

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

PINK FLOYD: Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Pts. 1-5)

(WISTFUL INSTRUMENTAL INTRO)

MALE INTERVIEWER: How would you describe now,

in your maturity...

(CHUCKLES WRILY) Thank you.

..his contribution to Pink Floyd?

ROGER WATERS: Well, it wouldn't have existed, if it hadn't been for Syd.

We would have been one of those thousands and thousands of bands

who come up and they play blues and Louie Louie.

They might write the odd crappy song

and then they disappear, you know?

They get proper jobs and that's the end of it.

PINK FLOYD: Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Pts. 1-5)

MAN: I discovered Pink Floyd's music

through the music they made in the late '70s.

For people that got into Pink Floyd at that point

and were listening to those records first

and they knew that there had been this guy Syd in the band,

the story was always, "Oh, he went mad and left the group."

That's all we knew about it.

(TRACK CONTINUES)

MAN: There was religious acid-taking at that time.

Syd was one of the sort of saints

of that underground cult.

MAN: Literature - the Bible, for example - is full of people

who deliberately isolated themselves,

the hermits who went into the desert.

People who had visions,

who preferred to be on their own,

and others who, having those experiences,

were determined to preach to the multitude.

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

The romantic ideal is

that a creative person is drawn by something so powerful

that he or she will follow that

regardless of the price that has to be paid.

These people are out there in front.

They're not looking over their shoulder.

They're just gonna do it.

YOUNG MAN: Syd is the ultimate kind of loner.

It's the same a little bit with Brian Jones, or something.

(WISTFUL ELECTRIC-GUITAR SOLO)

(WHOOSH)

MAN: I suppose what is sad is about somebody

who is still extremely relevant

just decides to stop.

It's OK when someone carries on into irrelevance

and then stops. No-one cares.

The last thing he was interested in

was explaining himself

and, consequently, he became a figure

of intense, focused interest,

because there was a mystery there.

MAN: He is the perfect god, you see.

A god must actually be killed and eaten,

but then he must be reborn.

(EMOTIVE ELECTRIC-GUITAR RIFF)

(PERCUSSION BUILDS)

(ORCHESTRATION SWELLS)

'The life of Syd Barrett,

founding member of Pink Floyd,

is full of unanswered questions.

Though he named the group and wrote their first two hit songs,

Barrett was later pushed out of the band by its members,

who were convinced he was having an LSD-induced psychotic breakdown.'

(FILM REEL WHIRS)

'But to examine the complex story of Syd Barrett,

one needs to take a trip.'

(PANTING)

'A trip back to the picturesque and historic

English university town of Cambridge.'

SYD BARRETT: Dominoes (ACOUSTIC-GUITAR INTRO)

It's an idea someday

In my tears, my dreams

Don't you want to see her proof?

Life that comes of no harm

You and I

You and I and dominoes

The day goes by...

'Roger Keith Barrett was born in Cambridge

on January 6 1946,

one of five children,

closest to his sister Rosemary.'

He was always wanting the next bit of fun...

..and if it didn't arrive, then he'd make it.

I can remember once, at the dinner table,

when he had a little bit of cabbage

sticking out of his mouth,

and he knew it was there

and he kept it there for the whole meal

and pretended he didn't know.

Of course, everybody was giggling, because it just...

His face was, "I know it's there,

I know you're laughing at me but I'm going to ignore it."

Life that comes... #

'Barrett's father, a pathologist and avid botanist,

encouraged the artistic leanings of his son,

who loved to write and draw.

By the age of 13 or 14,

Roger had acquired the nickname "Syd"

from his friends at school,

as legend has it, after a local jazz bass player, Syd "the Beat" Barrett.

At home, he remained Roger or Rog.'

PINK FLOYD: Butterfly

I'm speaking at this level. I'm speaking at this level.

MAN: OK. This is er...Slate 3.

I believe Storm's interview is at 8:10.Big clap.

My name is Storm.

I knew Syd in the early '60s.

We were both at the same school

as Roger and Dave, who became Pink Floyd, obviously.

The peer group in Cambridge that Syd was part of

was full of aspiring artists.

Not businessmen, not medical,

not lawyers.

Syd was not unusual and seemed to be, as it were, one of the gang.

The group evolved by itself.

Nobody was really the leader.

The centres of Seamus and Storm

was simply because their mothers were very indulgent

towards teenage boys.

STORM: The start came at Cherry Hinton Road

and your mother's house.

I tended to be into...

beer and jazz and students

and your lot were more into drugs and rock music and cool people.

I deny it totally!

I went to the county high school,

Cambridgeshire High School for Boys,

and was in the same year as Syd.

We had to choose between woodwork, metalwork and art,

so I went into the art class

and there discovered a bunch of people who were useless,

a teacher who was equally useless,

but one student, by the name of Roger Barrett,

had a flair way beyond his years.

'The Christmas holiday of 1961

was overshadowed by his father's death from cancer

just a month before Syd's 16th birthday.

Syd's family moves to 183 Hills Road.

Libby Gausden lives several houses up the street.'

I met Syd I think in 1961.

We'd have both been 15.

STORM: Where did you meet?

I met him at Jesus Green,

which is a wonderful place in Cambridge.

I'd been swimming and diving, actually, with Dave Gilmour,

and after the swimming, I came out with some friends

and we were messing about

on the see-saw outside, and I met Syd there.

He was kind, he was gentle, he was generous.

He liked buying presents.

He wrote to me all the time.

STORM: I had always thought of you as Syd's first major girlfriend.

We were always together.When you went out with him, how was he?

It always looked like he was full of the joys of spring,

which he was.

(ELECTRIC GUITAR PLAYS)

STORM: Let's go back, way back

to the early '60s.

What is your sort of abiding memory of Syd?

Erm, just a guy who was fiercely intelligent

and loads of fun.

Life was just too easy for him, really, in a way.

He had huge gifts

which were natural to him, so he didn't see them as huge.

Everything he turned his hand to worked.

The girls worked, the painting worked, the music worked,

the friendships worked.

STORM: I always remember Syd's hair. MAN: Do you?Yeah.

Curly, black... Yeah.

Lovely - and I also remember his walk.

He smelt nice.

Sorry? He smelt nice. (CHUCKLES)

You could see this extraordinary buoyancy,

which was most clearly evidenced in the way he walked.

He walked with a bounce. He walked on the front of his feet

with his heels off the ground all the time.

You could spot him several hundred yards away in Cambridge

wandering up the street.

We used to go on my Vespa

down to Hills Road

for Sunday-afternoon jam sessions,

where I saw Syd playing guitar

for the first time.

PINK FLOYD: Butterfly (Intro guitar chords)

The music side of the story really begins

with Geoff Mott And The Mottoes,

of which Syd was an august member.

I remember when Syd bought his first Futurama.

It was bright red, as I recall,

and he used to learn Duane Eddy things on it,

like Walk Don't Run.

PINK FLOYD: Double O Bo

WATERS: We'd started to go to shows in London

and I remember sitting on the train

having seen Gene Vincent.

We sat there with a piece of paper

and figured out the amplification

for the band that we were gonna be,

and it had, like, two Vox AC30s drawn on it

and we were going,

"Well, the vocals and the bass,

and then this can go through this one.

The rhythm guitar... Will we have a keyboard?"

"Mm... Don't know - maybe."

SYD BARRETT: Effervescing Elephant He used to appear at parties,

of which we had quite a lot of in Cambridge at that time...

(INSECTS CHIRRUP) An effervescing elephant

With tiny eyes and great big trunk

Once whispered to the tiny ear

The ear of one inferior

That by next June he'd die Oh yeah

Because the tiger would...

..and he used to play a lot of the songs

that later became songs on his album,

but because he was just, as it were, one of the gang,

I don't think anybody thought anything about him.

..one of you

I much prefer something to chew

And you're all too scant Oh yeah

He ate the elephant #

(INSECTS CHIRRUP)

He had this grin that you could mistake for a smirk,

but it wasn't - it was almost

like he knew something you didn't know.

He was one of those people

that was part of the crowd, very much so,

and then, the next minute, he'd slipped away from a room

and it'd be, "Where's Syd?" Nobody knows.

(HUM OF CONVERSATION)

PINK FLOYD: Remember Me (Punchy opening chords)

'Syd's enthusiasm for painting

sees him enrol at the Cambridge School of Art in 1962.

Simultaneously, he discovers Beat poetry,

Kerouac and rhythm and blues.

He gets into The Beatles and sees the Rolling Stones in concert.'

He drew very often

with a lovely kind of whirly, twirly drawing quality.

Very refined line, I would say.

He seemed to me a born painter

and to have, really, the temperament of a born painter -

slightly recessive and contemplative.

I'd taken up painting.

David Gale suggested that we have an exhibition together.

It is our first venture into commercial art.

A total failure - STORM: Did you sell anything?

No, we sold nothing.

We used to have jam sessions with the guitar

in the art school

and later, joined by Dave,

in the common room to the whole technical college.

GILMOUR: We loved Beatles and Stones

and the blues stuff - Chuck and Bo.

I can remember learning Come On... STORM: Stones?

..by the Stones, and Off The Hook.

I can see in my mind the back bench

against one of the walls

and people sitting there at, probably, ten the morning

and just strumming away.

Remember me (FAST-PACED BLUES GUITAR)

STORM: Do you remember whether you were impressed by his paintings

or by his personality?I was more impressed by his personality.

He just looked like somebody who was going places.

He was quite a star in our small firmament, as it was at the time.

Don't go away now

Come and stick around some more #

He was very unusual, very interesting.

STORM: "The complete package", I believe you'd say?

The complete package.

STORM: Jenny, dear,

when did you first meet Syd

and how was he?

I met him in the Cambridge Student Union Cellars

and he was playing with a band called Those Without.

He came up and said hello,

introduced himself.When did you start going steady, as it were?

Well, a week later, a week after that,

he phoned me and said

he would like to meet up and have coffee,

so I met him in the Guild,

and he wrote to me and said

that he'd drawn a picture of me leaning against the bar

and he sent this picture

with a beautiful piece of pink tissue paper written on it,

"I love you, I love you, I love you.

I can't stop thinking about you."

SYD BARRETT: Feel

How I love you to be by my side

They wail #

(ACOUSTIC-GUITAR CHORDS)

STORM: And how long did you go out with him?

GAUSDEN: I probably saw him nearly every day

from '61 to '63.

I think he went to art school in London...'64,

so that was a bit of a messy year.

Listen all you girlies

Even though I haven't met you

Gonna catch you...

'In September 1964, Syd moves to London.'

You'd better watch out #

In 1960-whatever it was,

he duly arrived and he moved into the apartment

that I was already sharing

with Nick Mason and Rick Wright.

STORM: Mike Leonard's place? Mike Leonard's place.

We were Leonard's Lodgers.

PINK FLOYD: Lucy Leave

WATERS: Bob Klose was in the band.

As soon as Syd arrived, things changed,

because Syd had other aspirations.

Syd tuned into that whole West Coast thing.

If you asked me, "What did Love do?"

I'd go, "I've no fuckin' idea," but I know Syd did.

He was one of the most emotionally and intellectually curious people

that I've ever met.

'Gigging under various names

- the Architectural Abdabs and The Tea Set -

Syd renames their band The Pink Floyd Sound

by combining the names of two obscure bluesmen,

Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.

Bob Klose leaves the band

as they start moving towards more improvised music,

largely as backing tracks to their increasingly elaborate light shows.'

(HAUNTING PERCUSSION)

'Syd starts to write songs

including Let's Roll Another One,

which later becomes Candy And A Currant Bun

and Bob Dylan Blues.

The band becomes solidified

with Syd on guitar, Roger Waters on bass,

Rick Wright on keyboards

and Nick Mason on drums.'

PINK FLOYD: Nick's Boogie

STORM: When you were at Camberwell with Syd,

what kind of guy was he?

The thing that I really remember

is his innocence -

all this very glamorous dark, curly hair,

very alive eyes

and a general air of glamour about him,

but he had this innocence, almost like a child.

He painted with great energy,

terrific sense of colour

and what I remember is big, very painterly abstract paintings.

Towards the end of that first year,

he went to Robert Medley, who was head of painting,

and he said to Robert,

"At the moment, with my group I'm getting £200 a week."

A lot of money. STORM: A fortune, really.

He said, "Could I possibly have the year off, have a sabbatical?"

PINK FLOYD: Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Pts. 1-5)

His college work was important and he'd write to me and say,

"Oh, I've got to do a painting this size so I can stay on next year,

but I wrote this really nice song."

STORM: So did Syd then leave for a year?

He left and he didn't come back.

PINK FLOYD: Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Pts. 1-5)

(DOOR CREAKS)

(NO AUDIBLE SPEECH)

(EXPRESSIVE ELECTRIC-GUITAR CADENCE)

SYD BARRETT: Having left art school,

there are a lot of things that I could do,

a lot of things I see now, a lot of things that went into me...

(EXPRESSIVE GUITAR CADENCE)

..thinking that these were, perhaps, changing

and altering things.

(SEDUCTIVE CALLS) (PERCUSSION BUILDS)

(EXPRESSIVE GUITAR CADENCE)

(ELECTRIC GUITAR AND PERCUSSION INTENSIFY)

(BLUESY, WISTFUL MELODY)

'Roger Keith Barrett, aspiring painter,

drops out of art school

so that Syd Barrett, pop star, may be born.

Before long, Barrett would find himself at the epicentre

of the biggest underground movement ever to hit Britain.'

PINK FLOYD: Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Instrumental break)

(HUM OF CONVERSATION)

MAN: You've got a bright future.

(MUSIC FADES AWAY)

There's a general sea change goes on

in English music anyway, during 1965-'66.

You get a band like The Paramounts turning to Procol Harum

and stop doing cover versions of Poison Ivy

and, within two years, they're doing A Whiter Shade Of Pale

and I think Syd is at the very cutting edge of that movement.

I think Syd's one of the first ones who transforms

from just copying R&B

to actually doing something utterly new.

PINK FLOYD: Candy And A Currant Bun

RAWLINSON: We were reading Alan Watts, Marvel comics,

Kerouac and Cybernetics - all at the same time.

Syd was an extraordinarily quick absorber.

It was just a series of,

"Look at this! Listen to this! What about this?"

And it was just going on and on and on and on.

All of the arts, all simultaneously

and then we can just throw LSD into the mix, if you feel like it.

SYD BARRETT: Milky Way

What'd you ever say today

When you're in the milky way

Oh, tell me please

Just to give you a squeeze

(ACOUSTIC GUITAR STRUMS)

If I met you

I told you

What to do

Seems a while

Since I could smile

The way you do #

(GUITAR CHORDS)

There was a lot of rumours going around, you know,

that acid can damage your brain

and hippies would say, "Ah, it's just the CIA, man,

saying that to stop you taking acid, stop you eating live kittens."

(LOWING)

According to the accounts that I've read,

everybody was on acid in my parents' back garden.

This is not true.

I think the only person there who was on acid - maybe two people -

were Paul Charrier and Sunny Syd.

I believe there was a water fight.

The bathroom window on the top floor banged open...

and there were shouts of joy

and we saw water coming out of the window,

Paul Charrier wielding the rose of the shower, spraying Syd

and they were just mucking about like six-year-olds.

People were sort of hanging around in the garden.

Syd went into the kitchen of the house,

found a box of matches, an orange and a plum

and sat down and looked at them.

Most of the time, what I remember

is Syd sitting quietly in the back garden of David Gale's house,

holding and examining these objects.

RAWLINSON: At that time, everybody was dropping acid in London.

STORM: But not everybody's dropping acid like he was!

But he wasn't the only one

and there was a lot of discussion about how to take it.

Is there a big difference between 50 milligrams a day

or 100 or 250?

How many times a day? Once, twice or three times?

Is there a real difference between 250 milligrams

and 500 milligrams?

Acid was the drug of the time:

it's self-realisation,

speaking to God through acid,

it's the danger of opening doors

before you've spent 30 years in solitude

and preparing your soul and your spirit ready

for the big meeting with Big G.

That was one of the problems with acid.

It whooshed you right through that 30 years of preparation,

opened the door and bang!

There you are, at the centre of the celestial universe.

Deal with it, my son!

Two hours before, you were eating fish and chips down the corner!

Yaaaa! (GUITAR STRUMS)

SYD BARRETT: Two Of A Kind

Open your eyes and don't be blind

He really did feel

that the psychedelic revolution

was flowing right through his body.

He did feel he was almost possessed against his will.

You know that story:

"If you can remember the '60s, you weren't there."

It was the destruction

of the rational, predictable material world.

(MAN SCREAMING)

So-called "reality" was only one of many.

PINK FLOYD: Nick's Boogie

(HAUNTING PERCUSSION RHYTHM)

(PSYCHEDELIC GUITAR EFFECTS)

(INDISTINCT CHANTING)

'1966 is the year the doors come off the hinges.

Fuelled by experimentation with mind-expanding drugs

flowing through the counterculture,

the seismic upheaval of postwar British society

spreads from politics and art

to fashion and music.'

You know, everybody was taking lots of drugs

and people liked these long things that you could really get into,

which really strung you out

and took you very slowly through various climactic trajectories.

LOVE: My Little Red Book

We all liked Love's album, which was really good.

I was just saying to him, "I really love that song

which goes..." (MIMICS SONG)

Little Red Book, or something like that.

I can't sing in tune to save my life. Syd said,

"Oh, you mean like this?" And he played it,

and that's what became Interstellar Overdrive.

It was that riff

as sort of...mangled by me

and then reinterpreted by Syd.

PINK FLOYD: Interstellar Overdrive

(FAST-PACED BASS RHYTHM)

(ELECTRIC-GUITAR RIFF)

(FAST-PACED BASS RHYTHM)

The big thing in those days was Friday night

at the UFO Club.

Not only did you have Pink Floyd,

you had The Soft Machine

and The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown. (AS ARTHUR BROWN) Fire! #

(HUMS TUNE)

Pete would have been supplying

psychedelic apparatus...

projection apparatus to the increasingly gigging Pink Floyd.

STORM: Were you as excited by this as were the audience?

Oh, I don't know about the audience. I never gave them a thought.

STORM: I remember being in the audience, thinking...

this was probably the centre of the universe.

Yes, it was, indeed.

PINK FLOYD: Interstellar Overdrive

The only time I've ever deliberately missed a gig with The Who

was I heard that Pink Floyd were doing a concert

and didn't tell the band, so the band went

and I went to the UFO Club with Eric

and took some acid and...

danced like a hippie. (LAUGHS)

(PSYCHEDELIC KEYBOARD SOLO)

TOWNSHEND: The band come out with this interesting rig,

which was...

two Binson Echorec units.

They were considered to be an echo box from the era of...

(MIMICS TWANGY GUITAR)

Nobody used them, you know?

Certainly Jimi Hendrix did not use an echo box

and neither did I

and neither did...Eric Clapton, you know, or Jimmy Page.

Nobody used them, but Syd had not just one but two.

He came out. He had a shock of black hair,

black makeup on his eyes

and the clothes that he were wearing were proper psychedelic outfits

and he was beautiful!

He plays a chord and it just goes, "Jang!"

And then nothing happens, so he pushes some buttons on this machine.

Plays another chord, "Jang!" Nothing happens.

Pushes another couple of buttons on the machine and suddenly it goes...

(MIMICS ECHOING GUITAR EFFECT)

TOWNSHEND: Wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah...

(REVERBERATING GUITAR ECHO)

..you know, as analogue echo degrades.

Pushes another button on the other machine

and it goes into what we call in the music business "syncopated echo".

It goes, "Pow-pow-pow-pow, pa-pa-pa-pa, pow, pa-pa-pa-pa, pow!

Pa-pa-pa-pa, pow, pa-pa-pa-pa, pow!"

And Nick Mason starts to play

and then Roger Waters starts to play

and it just turns into this... what can only be described

as spectacular psychedelic heavy metal!

(SPACEY, FAST-PACED IMPROVISATIONS)

(DISTORTED, REVERBERATING ECHOES)

(CLIMACTIC SWIRLING MELODIES)

(PSYCHEDELIC KEYBOARD SOLO AND CHIRPING SOUND EFFECTS)

(HYPNOTIC DRUM RHYTHM)

CHAPMAN: Something suddenly kicks in. I don't think it's even gradual.

(HAUNTING BASSLINE) Yes, you can say it's LSD.

Yes, you can say it's the Echoplex, it's the light shows...

There's all these interesting environmental things going on

in and around the music, but really, it's Syd.

The way the act's developed in the last six months

has been influenced rather a lot

by the fact we've played in ballrooms.

I think concerts have given us a chance to realise

that maybe the music we play isn't directed at dancing, necessarily,

like normal pop groups.

PINK FLOYD: Astronomy Domine

(RAPID BEEPING)

Lime and limpid green A second scene

A fight between the blue you once knew

Floating down the sound resounds

Around the icy waters underground

Syd defined...

the whole of that moment in the '60s -

the colour, the vivacity of it,

the psychedelic freedom...

Without Syd,

something might have happened, eventually.

You couldn't overemphasise his importance,

because he was the creative genius.

Woo

(RAPID INSTRUMENTATION)

(SILENCE)

(PSYCHEDELIC KEYBOARD CHORDS)

Blinding signs flap

Flicker, flicker, flicker, blam

Pow, pow!

JENNER: I remember sitting with him

while he was looking into the stars book

and getting Astronomy Domine, which I had to read in the studio,

which he just took out of a book, and I love that.

(ETHEREAL VOCALS) WHITEHEAD: They were so totally and unbelievably original.

You could say that the various technologies were available,

like Hammond organs, this, that and the other,

which gave them the opportunity of mixing popular music

with metaphysical ideas and science-fiction ideas.

The Floyd were never doing 19th Nervous Breakdown

or I Can't Get No Satisfaction.

The icy

Waters underground #

Why has it all got to be so terribly loud?

For me, frankly, it's too loud. I just can't bear it.

I happen to have grown up in the string quartet,

which is a bit softer.

If one gets immune to this kind of sound,

one may find it difficult to appreciate softer types of sound.

Syd - yes, no?

I don't think that's so. No?

I mean, everybody listens.

We don't need it very loud to be able to hear it

and with some of it, it is very quiet, in fact.

Do you, in your turn, feel aggressive towards your audiences?

WATERS: No, not at all.In spite of all the loudness, you don't?

No, not at all. There's -Sorry?

There's not many young people who sort of cause...

..who dislike it, particularly. No shock treatment intended?

No, certainly not.

PINK FLOYD: The Scarecrow (Rustic-style percussion intro)

The black and green scarecrow

As everyone knows

Stood with a bird on his hat

And straw everywhere

He didn't care

He stood in a field

Where barley grows...

When Syd Barrett started writing for Pink Floyd,

he seemed to give it this very English voice,

which was unusual at the time. The Kinks were doing that, I guess, too.

His head did no thinking

His arms didn't move

He had a big attachment to more intellectual realms,

to the whole Hilaire Belloc thing and to Lewis Carroll.

He has a strange bridge between...

..Edwardian musical,

Vaudeville

and his own particular brand of English psychedelia.

When you heard that music, it was in colour.

Everything else was in black and white.

(UPBEAT MELODY ON ORGAN AND PERCUSSION)

WHITEHEAD: He's the Lake Poets.

He's an English Romantic of the 19th century.

He was not London 1966.

STORM: But he was London 1966. He happened to be,

but that was a cloak he wore.

The black-and-green scarecrow

Is sadder than me

But now he's resigned... #

In his lyrics, there's many animal references:

there's a mouse called Gerald, there's the elephant,

there's fairies, scarecrows, cats...

It's a world

that I was always fascinated with.

MAN: In his songs, we have a painterly vision.

He evokes very strongly

references to sun, to shining,

to sea, to sparkles, to water...

All these things run through his songs

like a perpetual continuous thread.

Syd is a nature poet.

I heard, at one point, that his whole diet

consisted of hash and poetry.

I think I tried to do that

at some point in my 20s. (LAUGHS)

He's the original punk-rock icon

in what punk rock meant to me,

which was sort of breaking all the rules and having fun with it

and the spirit of play.

Stained, glaucous, glycerine

Gold, goat... #

To look good, to be able to play guitar,

to invent good melodies

and also to produce lyrics that...

..made you think.

It's a very powerful set of tools to have at your disposal.

Syd had all this

churning around in his mind,

like the rest of us did,

but he makes connections that are so unexpected and strange

that no-one else in the world

could have made those connections.

Even early songs like Bike, for instance.

He'd written about a bike,

which, of course, is not a subject that most lyricists write about.

They write about "lurve" or death or illness or loss.

(BICYCLE BELL RINGS) "I've got a bike,

you can ride it if you like."

"It's got a basket, a bell that rings

and things that make it look good."

"I'd give it to you if I could, but I borrowed it."

I mean, where does this come from?

Every verse is like that, I think!

PINK FLOYD: Bike

(SYD BARRETT SINGS)

You're the kind of girl... #

I suppose, things like Bike was more of a structured thing happening,

but sonically, towards the end,

I'd never really heard anything like that:

an oversaturation of sounds, clocks... (CLOCKS CHIME)

..and then this kind of repetitive...

(FRANTIC HONKING) ..sound

that sounded like a goose attacking you, you know?

STORM: Like a what? Like a goose attacking,

going into attack mode. Quite disturbing.

(AGGRESSIVE HONKING AND SQUAWKING)

The way LSD works, we now know, is,

it stimulates receptors in the brain

called serotonin receptors,

but a particular subtype of serotonin receptor

called the 5-HT or serotonin 2A receptor.

(WATER DRIPPING)

Psychedelic drugs like LSD all work on those receptors

and what they do is to interrupt

the traditional way in which the brain is organised.

Everything we do is orchestrated

in a very reflexive, habitual way.

LSD, by turning on those receptors, disrupts that...

..so what then happens is that your brain,

rather than doing what it's been told to do by habit,

starts to do its own thing.

If you have regular conversations with God or the angels

and they're saying nice things to you, telling you how great you are,

you don't want to lose that.

On the other hand, if you're tormented by devils

or other persecutors,

you may, nevertheless, feel that you're important enough

for the Devil to take an interest in you

and that might give you enough kudos

to continue to carry on with this situation

without telling other people.

MAN: There's a lot of interest in the balance

between right brain and left brain. In very simplistic terms,

the right brain is the more creative, whole-picture side.

The left brain is the more focused, analytical, etc, side.

There's a little saying that "the problems in psychology

are when the right brain's got nothing left

and the left brain's got nothing right,"

and there is a lot of interesting discussion

about the link between creativity and mental illness.

Carl Jung, the psychologist, had this great insight

where he talked about, from his studies of breakdown,

mental illness,

he called it a "failed initiation".

What he meant by that,

which I think is a really interesting thing to say,

was that, often, a breakdown is an attempt at a breakthrough.

It's an attempt to come into a new form of consciousness

and it's either premature

or, in some way, it falters.

SYD BARRETT: A movement is accomplished in six stages #

STORM: I remember one particular interlude

where we went to see the Master

- that's Charan Singh Ji the something or other -

which was a guru that we were all thinking of following

in the heady days of psychedelia.

A few people there and then

said they wanted to become "initiated".

I don't like the word, but anyway.

Syd had asked for initiation

and the Master had said it's too early.

STORM: Did you know why he said that?

Well, quite a lot of commitment in Sant Mat,

which is vegetarianism

and abstaining from mind-altering substances.

STORM: Is it possible that the rejection affected Syd?

LESMOIR-GORDON: Rejection affects us all...

..and I think Charan Singh...

I don't know how deep his insights were - I think he had a lot,

but maybe he could see what was going to happen to Syd.

STORM: When you broke up, did you do it or did he do it?

It was me, I'm afraid.He was a great lover, a good boyfriend

and you got rid of him? (GIGGLES) Yeah.

Explain this to me, Jennifer Spires.

In the early days, he was lovely

cos he was very calm, he was an artist...

I got on the train

at Cambridge at one end

and Syd got on the train at the other end. (CHUCKLES)

That's how we started living at No.2 Earlham Street.

The whole clan went from there

to 101 Cromwell Road.

(GASPS IN MOCK HORROR) 101 Cromwell Road! (CHUCKLES)

A den of iniquity, if ever there was.Extraordinary place!

They'd just puff away at these enormous joints

and get completely out of their heads.

I feel woozy even thinking about it.

Then, you see, Syd and the Pink Floyd were really beginning then

and things were taking off.

So I think then, he was just losing the plot slightly.

I remember we had a cat called Rover.

Well, that was Syd, wasn't it? (BOTH LAUGH)

PINK FLOYD: Improvised Instrumental (from Tomorrow's World)

(MELLOW PSYCHEDELIC JAMMING)

'The Pink Floyd sound was a perfect match

for the spontaneous underground

and its multimedia events.

With Barrett's songwriting output flourishing,

the Pink Floyd were on their way.'

(TRACK CONTINUES)

PINK FLOYD: Flaming

(WHOOSHING)

Alone in the clouds all blue

Lying on an eiderdown

Yippee You can't see me #

'Gigging a punishing four or five nights a week,

the group is approached by Peter Jenner and Andrew King,

who, promising to buy the band some new equipment,

become their managers.

King and Jenner scheme to get the band a record contract

by recording a few demo tracks with American producer Joe Boyd,

who also runs the legendary UFO Club

with John "Hoppy" Hopkins.

The plan works

and Pink Floyd sign to EMI Records in February 1967.

The very next day, they begin recording their debut album,

The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn,

with Norman Smith at Abbey Road.

In the studio next door,

The Beatles are making their landmark LP - Sergeant Pepper.

There were a few casual songs he'd written early,

but the one which I'd call the first real,

"showing where we were going" song

was Arnold Layne.

Arnold Layne Arnold Layne is released as a single

on the 10th of March.

Had a strange hobby

Collecting clothes

Moonshine washing line

KING: Syd worked very hard at Arnold Layne.

He told me it had taken him

a couple of months to write the lyric,

to get it just the way he wanted it. STORM: Really? It wasn't spontaneous?No.

Hung a tall...

KING: This idea that Syd rolled out of bed at lunchtime,

took some acid and wrote a couple of genius songs

is just absolute crap.

See-through baby blue

There's no such thing as easy art, Storm, is there?

Otherwise we'd all be doing it!

La-a-a-ayne

Arnold Layne, don't do it again #

'Despite being banned by Radio London for obscenity,

Arnold Layne reaches No.20 in the Singles Chart,

with the album Piper At The Gates Of Dawn reaching No.6.

ROCK: He was spectacular at the beginning.

From that Christmas through to the summer

when they released Arnold Lanye

and then The Piper,

Syd, and of course Hendrix, were kind of

the two big psychedelic stars.

PINK FLOYD: Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk

(PUNCHY PERCUSSION)

ROGER WATERS: Doctor, doctor I'm in bed

Doctor, doctor Achin' head

Doctor, doctor Gold is lead

'In May 1967, Pink Floyd mounts a multimedia psychedelic concert,

Games For May, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

Barrett has written a new song for the event,

whose title, also Games For May,

changes to become the era-defining See Emily Play.

(PSYCHEDELIC ELECTRIC GUITAR)

Used spoon #

He started innovating his music with a Zippo lighter on his Stratocaster,

sliding it up and down,

and in gigs, suddenly, he was using this Zippo lighter

to create these incredibly eerie sounds.

PINK FLOYD: See Emily Play (Instrumental break)

(DYNAMIC DRUMBEAT, SWIRLING KEYBOARDS)

Emily tries but misunderstands

Ah-ooh

She's often inclined to borrow

Somebody's dreams till tomorrow

There is no other day

'See Emily Play becomes the second Pink Floyd hit single,

earning the group several crucial appearances

on the primetime BBC music show Top Of The Pops in July.

Free games for May

See-e-e-e Emily play

(DISTORTED SOUND)

(WHIMSICAL, TINNY MELODY)

(PERCUSSION RESUMES)

Soon after dark

Emily cries

Ah-ooh

Gazing through trees in sorrow

Hardly a sound till tomorrow

There is no other day

Let's try it another way

You'll lose your mind... #

When See Emily Play went to No.5, got into the Top Ten...

STORM: I remember it well. Yeah, I was really excited

and I'm wearing all these stupid clothes!

Yeah, but it was exciting, for God's sake.

It was very exciting,

but I remember erm...

Syd in the dressing room

sitting there and he looked a bit glum

and I went, "What's up?" He looked at me and he said,

"John Lennon doesn't have to do this."

Even when things were going as well as they could,

the band actually was stressful.

I remember we were in Trafalgar Square.

We'd been in Green Park and then...

it was time to go to Top Of The Pops.

Syd said, "I don't really fancy it."

I said, "Well, yeah, but it's a bit of a big deal."

There was the famous three weeks

that we did See Emily Play on Top Of The Pops.

The first week was fine. Syd looks really good.

He's sitting cross-legged on a great big Indian cushion.

The second week, he arrived late

looking very shambolic indeed.

Third week, we couldn't find him anywhere.

I opened the door and Syd was there

looking totally freaked out.

His feet were bare

and he said, "Hi, can I come in?" I said, "Of course you can,"

and...he didn't say anything.

Then there was a bang on the door

and somebody was, like, (FURIOUS) "Is Syd in there?"

Whoever this person was came in

and just literally grabbed him and dragged him out!

PINK FLOYD: Nick's Boogie

(DISTORTED GUITAR)

(SWIRLING SAXOPHONE AND DRUMS)

I think Syd Barrett was interested in this total freedom,

almost like a sort of erm... a jazz, really.

A kind of "divertimenti".

I suppose, trying to structure or rein in this kind of energy

might have been fairly difficult for him.

(PSYCHEDELIC JAMMING)

NICK MASON: There'd been a lot of weird stuff on stage,

with Syd de-tuning guitars

and just turning it into a sort of mind-numbing sound.

We were committed to being a pop group

and Syd was absolutely on the way to being,

"No, I don't actually want to be a pop star."

(DISTORTED GUITAR)

'The relentless gigging and demands of stardom

are taking their toll on Barrett's psyche.'

(MUSIC FADES OUT)

(INHALES AND EXHALES)

I was living in France in '67

and I came back to England.

I went to see them recording

and something had changed quite radically.

He had lost his spark and his bounce

and that was a very odd and erm... uncomfortable moment.

The three songs I think are really important:

Jugband Blues, Scream Thy Last Scream and Vegetable Man.

Now, Vegetable Man he wrote in my room. He sat in a corner

and he just wrote those lyrics down.

Where are you? #

It was scary. You had this skinny guy

who's just crying his heart out,

"That's why I am vegetable man."

You go, "Oh God.

Is that what you really think?

Is that how you feel about yourself now?"

KING: It was all that classic music-business bollocks:

"Come on, Syd, where's the next single?"

He was a sensitive chap, he wasn't hard-boiled.

He didn't like all that pressure...

..and he had a hell of a lot of pressure.

PINK FLOYD: Scream Thy Last Scream

Scream thy last scream

Old woman with a casket

Blam, blam, your pointers

Point your pointers

Waddle with apples to crunchy Mrs Stores #

JENNER: It's like...if you look at Van Gogh's later pictures,

you get the same thing.

You can see the manifestation of the turmoil in his brain,

and all those things.

I think, in the same way,

you can see the confusion and the...everything within Syd's brain.

'Both Vegetable Man and Scream Thy Last Scream

are deemed uncommercial by the record company

and Jugband Blues is held over for the next Pink Floyd album.

Apples And Oranges,

a song written by Syd about his girlfriend Lindsay Korner shopping,

is finally chosen by EMI as Pink Floyd's third single.

It's released in November and is a flop.'

MALE INTERVIEWER: Did you ever see him perform with Pink Floyd?

Mm, yeah, I did - once.

I went to the Roundhouse, but it wasn't any fun.

It wasn't. He didn't look as if he was enjoying it

and so it wasn't anything I did again.

STORM: Do you agree in any way about the family's view

which is, they blame rock'n'roll for Syd's decline?

I think that's not an unreasonable position.

I don't think he would have liked NOT to have done it.

He got into it,

he was very happy doing it. It was good fun.

It was sad to see him go downhill.

You could see by his eyes.

You know, he would just...

he would be looking sort of...

He just wouldn't look at you -

he'd be looking into space.

PINK FLOYD: Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Pts. 1-5)

(HISS OF PLANE ENGINE)

'With hopes of breaking America

and despite concerns about Syd,

the band set off for a mini tour of the US.'

(INDISTINCT IN-FLIGHT ANNOUNCEMENT)

(WISTFUL TRACK CONTINUES)

You're there with Syd who was just an artist

who wrote songs and was having a good time

and liked listening to music,

playing in a band and, "Wow, isn't this groovy," you know,

able to go and buy a new shirt and, you know, have your hair frizzed

and do all these things that you could do.

STORM: Buy some new boots.Buy some new boots. Yeah - all that stuff.

I mean, "Gosh, got some money coming," and, "Oh wow."

Then people started asking him the meaning of life.

(REEL WHIRS)

He was, as it were, the pinup boy of the revolution.

KING: That was probably very strange, going to America,

cos, "Wow, I'm in America now.

You know, I'm doing the Fillmore! Wow!

And these guys give me this nice acid. Whay!

(SPACED-OUT VOICE) Oh, wow!"

You know...

SYD BARRETT: Lanky, Pt.1

(AVANT-GARDE, PSYCHEDELIC PERCUSSION AND CHIMES)

STORM: Are you telling me that you and Syd got picked up

by a couple of Californian blondes?

WYNNE-WILSON: Exactly that - with those straight eyebrows, yes.

Everybody would dream about this.

STORM: And this happened to you? It happened to Syd and I,

but we were young kids from England, you know,

where this sort of thing was fucking...(BOTH LAUGH)

There was lots of dope and lots of everything

and Syd was very happy...

until we returned.

I think... Well, then, it would be the gig in Los Angeles,

which was probably the worst gig of all.

These gentlemen you're about to meet

are on their first visit to the US.

They've only been here less than a week, as a matter of fact.

Would you greet them warmly, please. The Pink Floyd!

(APPLAUSE) Apples And Oranges (Intro)

KING: Rick lip-synched it. STORM: Because?

Because Syd wouldn't sing.

Couldn't sing, wouldn't sing.

Just stood there.

It was a tricky tour.

Syd, did you write this? Yeah.

I noticed on the album you wrote most of the songs, is that true?

Yeah, that's right.

We did a TV show in LA. He walked out of the studio and disappeared.

STORM: For a reason? KING: No.

Let me wish you gentlemen all very good luck.

I hope you enjoy your stay, get some sleep

and get something other than cheeseburgers during your stay. Thank you.

Nick, nice to see you.

When Syd became unreliable,

I think we really almost hated him,

because we were so dependent on him.

By the time Andrew came back from America,

it was definitely a problem.

STORM: OK, one of the more contentious rumours

is the idea that he might have been given acid

every morning in his coffee. Did Rick say something?

He said that... he reckoned that Syd's downfall

came about by his hangers-on

and then, people who are writing books or doing interviews,

they sort of think, "Who were his friends at that time?" "So-and-so."

STORM: Jock and Sue in this case, right?Yeah.

Apparently, we're living in Richmond,

we used to get up every morning,

we all sit round the breakfast table.

We would then spike Syd (!)

It's absolute fucking bollocks!

STORM: Maybe that's also a quality of rumours.

It's quite good if your hero is flawed

because of somebody else's actions - Yes!- rather than their own.

Better for him to be spiked than to have him gone to them and said,

"Oh, can I have some acid now?"

It is awfully considerate of you

To think of me here

And I'm most obliged to you

For making it clear

That I'm not here

And I never knew the moon could be so big

And I never knew the moon could be so blue

And I'm grateful that you threw away my old shoes

And brought me here instead

Dressed in red

PINK FLOYD: Jugband Blues (Instrumental break)

And I'm wondering

Who could be writing this song

JENNER: In a way, it would have been much easier for all of us

if Syd said, "I'm really fucked up. I'm really sorry.

I can't cope any more. Can you help me?"

So we were always trying to help him

without him giving any indication

that he had any desire or need for help.

I took Syd to Ronnie Laing's and he refused to get out of the car.

Not that I'm convinced Laing would've been able to do

a huge amount for him.

As psychiatrists and psychotherapists who er...

profess to be able to...

be of some service to people

in distressed states of mind,

we cannot expect to be of any help

beyond pulling people back to this side,

into this er...socially reinforced,

totalitarian, egalitarian,

quantitative, dequantified,

de-experientialised dead world...

where there's no fun or joy

or any genuine celebration of anything,

because all that is life

and science is...is studying death.

(HYPNOTICALLY) And the sea isn't green

And I love the Queen

And what exactly is a dream?

And what exactly is a joke? #

RAWLINSON: You could argue that some forms of so-called madness

are strong moves to retain freedom.

You could also argue,

at a certain level,

he could see that the success of the Floyd

was reducing his freedom.

He was playing us this song in a rehearsal

and the song was called Have You Got It Yet?

And basically, the song would alter

so that the chorus was, "No, no, no."

(CHUCKLES) Syd would alter the rhythmic pattern,

or do whatever was necessary

to ensure that no, they hadn't got it yet, or no, we hadn't.

STORM: Or couldn't. Or couldn't get it...

and might never have got it.

(CLANG, THEN CREAKING)

'Stories are legion

about Syd's alarming behaviour on stage during this period:

playing one note for an entire show,

or slowly de-tuning his strings until they fell limp on the guitar.

Live bootleg recordings, however,

capture several inspired performances.

Nevertheless, on a small package tour

with Jimi Hendrix, The Move and a few other bands,

Barrett would sometimes need to be replaced

by David O'List from The Nice.

As far back as 1965,

Syd himself had written to Libby Gausden

suggesting his old friend David Gilmour should join the group,

referring to him as "Fred".

What became known as "the Fred plan" was now put into effect.

(EERIE, ATONAL TINKLING)

Looking back on it, I can see

that they all played a distinct part

in the success of Pink Floyd.

You had Roger, who had sort of this massive determination,

Rick's musical sophistication

and you've got Nick's showmanship.

PINK FLOYD: Interstellar Overdrive

'For several shows,

the band performs as a five-piece

in the hopes of keeping Syd around.'

MASON: We'd already tried three or four gigs as a five-piece.

It was a very uncomfortable feeling,

but I think we were absolutely geared to this idea.

It wasn't a matter of trying Dave out.

I think we absolutely loved the idea of having him in the band.

(ENERGETIC ELECTRIC-GUITAR RIFF)

(TEMPO DECELERATES)

STORM: Do you recall what happened on what I call "The Day"?

MASON: I can't remember where Syd was living at the time.

We were all aboard - Were you on your way to a gig?

Yeah, we were absolutely on the way to the gig.

Everyone else had been picked up,

so we were on the way to pick Syd up...

(INHALES SHARPLY) ..and someone said, "Shall we bother?"

More or less... and there was this sort of moment

and we went, "Do you know what? Let's...let's not."

'Syd's last gig with Pink Floyd

was on 20th January 1968 at Hastings Pier.'

PINK FLOYD: Interstellar Overdrive

STORM: Do you think it's understandable, then,

that they had to move on, as it were?That's the way it works.

It's animal husbandry.

STORM: I'm amazed that they managed to recover

from losing their main creative drive, you know.

WYNNE-WILSON: It's not amazing they recovered.

They became the pop group

that they always desired to be.

Once David Gilmour's in there, it's the beginning of something else.

It's the beginning of the Pink Floyd

that became very successful later on with Meddle,

Dark Side Of The Moon and Wish You Were Here.

STORM: When the Floyd broke up,

you and Peter, as Blackhill, as I understand,

elected to continue with Syd.

We made a particularly astute commercial decision.(BOTH LAUGH)

(ACOUSTIC GUITAR INTRO) SYD: That's two verses.

Sorry, I'll do it again.

SYD BARRETT: It Is Obvious

It is obvious

May I say oh baby

(GENTLE STRUMMING)

That it is found on another plane

(WIND HOWLS)

But I can creep into cupboards

Sleep in the hall

Your stars, my stars

Are simple cot bars #

Syd came to live with us at Egerton Court,

which is a flat that we had in the centre of London, in South Ken.

KORNER: I went there and you were there, Po was there...

Nigel and Jenny - they had the smart room at the front.

STORM: But how was Syd doing those days? Do you remember?

He was unpredictable then.

He was very unpredictable.

I don't think anybody in the flat realised

just how bad Syd had become.

He began locking himself in his room for several days with Lindsay.

There were rows, all sorts of things going on.

I had the small room adjacent to the large room

in which he and Lindsay lived.

I could hear him tickling her, which sounded harmless enough,

and then she'd scream at him to stop tickling and he wouldn't.

I can't remember what happened, but he pushed me over and jumped on me.

That's when I called out and you came in.

Syd decided that, presumably, the relationship was not as it should be

and seemed to be attacking her with a mandolin.

Then the next day you took me home to Cambridge.

Don't you remember?Yeah. But was this the end of you and Syd?

Oh, yes - that was it.

Syd's apparent malaise, shall we say,

didn't appear initially.

I thought he was charming and good company.

This was his very room.

Dave Gilmour, he lived in Richmond Mansions, one street away.

We could see from our kitchen into his kitchen.

(GUITAR RIFF)

'Syd goes back

into Abbey Road studios

to begin recording some demos.

With the support of Peter Jenner, Malcolm Jones,

David Gilmour and Roger Waters,

these sessions, though difficult,

would result in his first solo album - The Madcap Laughs.'

SYD BARRETT: Baby Lemonade

In the first lot of sessions,

you couldn't get an honest answer to an honest question.

You know, "Shall we do that again?" No reply.

You know, "I think that was really good. Can we try that again?"

No reply.

"Well, do you want to go and play a bit more?"

Then he would go out and maybe play a bit more, or maybe not.

(ELECTRIC GUITAR STRUMS)

SYD: Is it on? (GUITAR AND DRUMS PLAY)

There'd been a considerable amount of time and money gone into it

and EMI had decided to, more or less, pull the plug.

Roger and I asked them if we could finish it off

and they gave us something like three days.

We stuck him in the studio

and recorded everything and anything

that we could get him to do.

Please, please

Baby Lemonade #

The end result is a pretty fair portrait of him at the time

and I think his writing probably was better

than the writing on Piper At The Gates Of Dawn.STORM: Yeah.

"Oh, where are you now pussy willow who smiled on this leaf?"

You know, you go, "What the fuck is that about?"

Oh, where are you now

Pussy willow that smiled on this leaf?

When I was alone

You promised the stone from your heart

WATERS: He's still making these extraordinary connections

with the deepest feelings of,

"Can I or can I not make contact with other human beings?"

Which is the stuff of all our lives.

Storm and I had a company called Hipgnosis...

..and we were asked to do the album cover.

Storm went to photograph Syd with Mick Rock.

SYD BARRETT: Octopus

Trip to heave and ho

Up down, to and fro #

He had a flat in which he'd painted the floorboards blue and red,

I think for the photo session,

which is pretty amazing.

What was interesting about the floor - there was this rubble,

because he'd painted over the cigarette butts

and various bits of debris.

STORM: I took a photo of Syd crouched

a bit like an animal, really.

ROCK: I took a ton of them, too.

It wasn't just Storm.

And Iggy the Eskimo, who was never really his girlfriend,

cos these were hippie times.

I think she lingered for a couple of weeks.

STORM: On the back cover

was the picture of a naked woman

who was an Eskimo,

but liked, whether Syd was there or not, to walk around naked,

so Syd went, "This is Iggy.

Why don't you put her in the picture?" I said, "Fine."

SYD BARRETT: Octopus (Instrumental break)

'The Madcap Laughs is released

on EMI's new progressive imprint, Harvest, in January 1970.

It reaches No.40 in the UK charts,

successful enough for EMI to finance the recording

of Syd's second solo album - Barrett.

SYD BARRETT: Gigolo Aunt

Grooving around in a trench coat

With the satin on trail

There was more time,

so we could relax a little bit more

and try and do things slightly differently.

We lived around the corner from each other,

"we" being myself and Willie Wilson.

He and I shared a flat in Chelsea.

Syd lived around the corner.

We'd try and get him to play along with the band,

but he'd never do it the same twice,

so usually it meant we'd cut a backing track without him

and then get him to put some stuff on it afterwards.

Rick came along and helped a bit on that one.

All I ever saw was Dave wanting to get

the best out of Syd he could possibly get,

which was not easy.

We just followed him wherever he went.

Sometimes, it just kept falling down and falling over itself

and sometimes it got interesting.

SYD BARRETT: Love You

Honey, love you Honey, little honey

Funny sunny morning

Love you more funny

Love in the skyline baby

I scream 'scuse me

I've seen you looking good the other evening #

He wrote some pretty unusual chord sequences

and found some unusual melodies to sit on the top of it

and wrote...fascinating lyrics!

It's no good trying to place your hand

Where I can't see

Because I understand

That you're different from me #

(JANGLY GUITAR)

Even though some, around that Wetherby Mansions time,

are very moody,

there's quite a lot of them he's laughing in.

Rocking backwards

And you're rocking towards

The red-and-yellow mane of a stallion... #

'Released in November, "Barrett" would be Syd's final studio album.

It fails to chart.'

SYD BARRETT: No Good Trying (Instrumental break)

STORM: Can you recall when you first met Syd?

He came running up looking like a rock star

with his velvet jeans on and his velvet jacket

and his Chelsea boots on...

He looked and I thought, "Ooh, wow, it's Syd Barrett""

He had a spare room.

I wasn't sure at that stage

whether it was, "Come and live with ME," or...

STORM: "Would you like a room?" .."I've got a room."

"Give us some money." Yeah, "Give us some money."

He was pretty strange.

He'd just open the door and come in the room

and that would be it.

I thought it was kind of great to have a boyfriend like that

rather than a bloke working in Barclays Bank.

I really love you

And I mean you

The star above you #

In support of the Madcap Laughs and Barrett albums,

Syd records a session for influential Radio 1 DJ John Peel...

..and on the 6th June 1970,

he plays a gig - his first for two years -

at the Olympia Exhibition Hall,

with David Gilmour on bass guitar and Jerry Shirley on drums.

After just a few songs, however,

Syd abruptly walks off stage.

He decided at one stage

that he no longer wanted to be a pop star.

He went out and bought canvases

and tons of pots of paint and brushes

and he locked himself in that room and painted day and night,

and every time I was allowed to see a canvas,

the next time I saw it,

it would either be destroyed

or he'd painted all over it.

Try and keep up with Duggie -

"him next door".

He never used his name. It was "him next door" or "that painter".

You've got two aspects of his personality, though, haven't you?

You've got Roger and Syd.

Syd was the musician.

Roger was maybe a would-be artist,

but Roger never found his way.

He put a layer of hessian over the curtains,

so he had this darkened room that he lived in.

People would stand outside his door

knocking on his door, going, "Syd, let me in" - for hours, sometimes.

I moved back to Cambridge

and Duggie had called me and said,

"You know, this is getting crazy. He's...he's..."

I don't know what he was doing, but... (SIGHS)

..he'd been in his room for days and nights

and hadn't come out.

I contacted Syd and I said, "Why don't you come to Cambridge?"

And somehow or other, it was just like we were back together again,

so I moved in.

STORM: What, into Hills Road? Into Hills Road.

Into the cellar? Into the cellar, with Syd.

It was all dark and it was originally a coal cellar.

It had all his bits and pieces from his childhood there -

his drawings, his paintings and his guitar...

..and it was all very normal!

Mrs Barrett would come rushing out and say,

"Oh, hello, dear! Hello, dear.

What about a cup of tea? Rog, would you like a cup of tea?"

We became engaged.

Mum organised this big Sunday lunch.

This is the time when Syd threw a bowl of tomato soup over me.

It was a normal Sunday lunch

and Syd just went, "Whoops!"

Then he stood up from the table, laughed,

disappeared...and came down

and he'd cut all his hair off.

I'd gone back to my parents.

The next day, a letter arrived

saying that the engagement was officially off.

"Yours sincerely, RK Barrett."

I got another letter from him two days later saying,

"Dear Gala, I think we should get married.

Ignore the letter I sent you yesterday. Lots of love, Syd."

We went up to London and bought another engagement ring!

STORM: So there's always two - two rings, two parts of Syd.

Two rings and two letters.

'Syd's relationship with Gala Pinion would end

when he became convinced she was having an affair

with a colleague in the local department store.

Gala would be the last of Barrett's girlfriends.'

SYD BARRETT: Clowns & Jugglers

He became more reclusive when he returned to London

and he was living in Chelsea Cloisters.

'Sightings of Syd become less frequent,

with just the odd lurid story in the papers

and occasional visits to the local pub

or to the office of his music publishers.'

When we were still at NEMS, which was early '70s,

and he started coming to those offices,

that's when we realised

he actually had no money, or very little money.

We talked about it and he said

he didn't know where his money and his royalties were,

so we said, "That's easy. We'll write to Essex, we'll write to EMI,

we'll write to PRS and find out where your royalties are."

I used the phrase very loosely, "Poor Syd",

and, of course, Bryan being a money man,

he went, "Poor Syd?

He made £2.5 million last year."

I said, "God, where do you keep all your guitars? You've got loads."

He said, "Oh, I've got another flat for them."

He said, "John Lennon's got lots of guitars."

SYD BARRETT: The Gnome

I want to tell you a story

'Bout a little man

If I can #

'With royalties from Pink Floyd sales

and David Bowie's cover of See Emily Play on his Pin Ups album,

Syd would move back and forth between London

and the small back bedroom in his mother's house in Cambridge

for the next 12 years or so.

While in Cambridge, Jenny Spires introduces Barrett to her husband,

bass player Jack Monck

and drummer Twink from The Pink Fairies.

After several impromptu jam sessions,

the trio form the group Stars

and play a handful of gigs locally.'

ANNOUNCER: "We'd like to bring Syd Barrett up to the band stand.

Would you come on? How about a hand for Syd Barrett, huh?"

(APPLAUSE)

'All appears to be going well,

but following a disastrous gig with MC5

and a negative review in Melody Maker, Syd leaves the group.

He will never play in public again.'

PINK FLOYD: Speak to Me (Intro)

(HEARBEAT / COINS CLINK/ TILL RINGS)

MAN: Very hard to explain why you are mad.

'A year later, Pink Floyd release Dark Side Of The Moon

and hit the top of the US Billboard album charts.

It remains one of the best-selling records of all time.'

(MAN LAUGHS MANIACALLY) (RAPID CLATTERING)

'As Pink Floyd's success and fame grows,

Peter Jenner persuades Syd to return to Abbey Road.

After three days in the studio producing just a handful of riffs,

the sessions are abandoned.'

PINK FLOYD: Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Pts. 6-9)

'In 1975,

Pink Floyd records their ninth studio album,

the concept record Wish You Were Here,

again reaching No.1 on the Billboard charts.

Written as a tribute to Syd,

Shine On You Crazy Diamond,

a 25-minute-long track made up of nine parts,

bookends the album.

(ATMOSPHERIC ELECTRIC GUITAR)

The last personal abiding memory I have of Syd

was at Abbey Road,

when he turned up, remarkably,

at the recording of Shine On You Crazy Diamond...

but I didn't realise it was him.

I was sitting in my usual place

in the control room in Studio 3.

I heard the door go, looked round

and there was this chap in the back of the room

who was slightly portly,

with a shaven head and a raincoat on, and...

..I just assumed he was something to do with the studio.

You would occasionally get odd people popping in.

I had been doing something in the studio -

I don't know what, but I'd been in the studio,

so I came into the control room

to find the band all looking a little bit sort of weird.

It took a little while and I don't recall

whether it was Roger or David who realised that it was Syd.

I was waiting for someone to either say, "This is so-and-so,"

or for someone to say, "Security are coming any minute now,"

for someone who'd come in off the street.

(ELECTRIC-GUITAR SOLO)

Dave looked at me and he said, "Do you know who that is?"

I went, "No,"

and he said, "It's Syd."

Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Pts. 6-9)

STORM: He hadn't been seen for six years.

He asked if he could help.

Syd came in and sat down

and David and Roger started talking to him...

..and I then took this opportunity to snap a couple of photos

with a camera that I'd only had a couple of days

as a present from the band after we'd done Knebworth.

It turns out I was using a slow-speed outdoor film,

so pictures indoors are a little bit grainy.

Roger had Brian Humphries the engineer

play him the end of Shine On,

which features the melody line of See Emily Play,

and Roger asked him afterwards if he recognised it

and Syd...just said no.

Very blank: "No."

Syd did pick up the Martin,

the D-35 guitar in the control room there.

I don't think he played anything in particular.

STORM: Then what happened?

Nothing. (CHUCKLES) We carried on working, as far as I remember,

but probably a little bit shellshocked.

STORM: Rick was terribly upset and Roger cried.

Often people forget that, although Syd was a huge talent,

this is a talent that was all too soon lost to us,

and that the band...

..had loved him.

PINK FLOYD: Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Pts. 6-9) (Instrumental break)

WATERS: (RECITES) Remember when you were young,

you shone like the sun.

Shine on, you crazy diamond.

Now there's a look in your eyes...

like black holes in the sky.

Shine on, you crazy diamond.

You were caught in the crossfire...

..of childhood and stardom,

blown on the steel breeze.

Come on, you stranger,

you legend, you martyr and shine!

(ORCHESTRATION SWELLS / EMOTIVE GUITAR SOLO)

(MUSIC FADING OUT)

SYD BARRETT: Golden Hair (Acoustic-guitar intro)

(FOOTSTEPS)

(BIRDSONG)

(LOWING)

Lean out your window

Golden hair

I heard you singing

In the midnight air

My book is closed

I read no more #

'In spite of his now cult status

in the eyes of a new generation of fans and musicians,

in 1978, Barrett sells the rights to his solo albums

to the record company.

By 1981,

he's facing bankruptcy proceedings.

In 1982, Syd walks the 50 miles from London back to Cambridge,

returning home for the last time.'

(MAN SCREAMING)

Ya-a-a-a-a!

BREEN: He had enormous blisters on his feet

and he was just lying on the sofa with his feet up,

trying to get these blisters mended.

He just wanted to get home and he hadn't got any money.

You see, you've got to remember

that he never did a day's work in his life,

getting a salary or a wage packet.

He never had that,

so he never actually grew up to be responsible,

because he never needed to.

I suppose all of us, if we didn't need to, we wouldn't do it.

It's more fun being a child.

(BIRDSONG)

And we used to go out in the car,

go to areas where he could photograph

for a painting,

so we spent a lot of time at Grantchester, which is just nearby.

MAN: He went back to Cambridge

and his art very much reflects that.

You could say it's a return to landscape. STORM: What happened to the work?

He wasn't keen on keeping his works.

It's not that he didn't care for them afterwards,

because he did take photos of them,

but he did tend to destroy work.

STORM: Syd made things

and then seemed to destroy them, or so we're told,

and I'm wondering what that means.

STERN: Maybe he didn't like too much clutter.

It's called Syd's Feng Shui (!) (STORM LAUGHS)

SYD BARRETT: Maisie (Bluesy instrumental)

BREEN: He needed a lot of support.

He was distressed.

For 25 years or so, he was my responsibility.

I cared for him.

He'd come on his bike

and he'd got a canvas shopping bag

- very much an old person's thing - and I said to him,

"Do you know who I am?" And he said, "Yes, I do. It's Libby, isn't it?"

I said, "Yes, it is," and we talked for a little while.

STORM: But that's a strange question to ask: "Do you know who I am?"

I know who you are - you don't have to ask me.

I did have to ask him. He looked different.

He totally moved on and didn't like that person,

and didn't like that world

and didn't want to be reminded of it.

When people came to the door, he'd say,

"Well, Syd doesn't live here any more,"

you know - because he didn't.

He wasn't Syd any more.

His luminous grin put her in a spin #

I think it most unlikely that you can reinvent yourself,

that you can become an ordinary bloke

who goes down the pub and plays darts

when you've been a rock star,

when you've been in the hit parade and then you're not.

STORM: Do you think people like to embroider and romance things?

This is perfect for rumours:

a magnetic person

who'd had so much impact

and the band went on being more and more successful

and where was Syd?

Perfect for rumours!

I know the Daily Mail, on a quiet celebrity period,

would rediscover him every three years (!)

STORM: Ah, the Daily Mail! "The mad genius of Pink Floyd" (!)

(BOTH CHUCKLE)

STORM: I have a feeling that,

underneath a lot of this, is a sadness.

KORNER: Yes, but you don't know, you see?

What was he thinking

on his bicycle in Cambridge, you know, on his own?

We can talk about it forever, but won't know.

(BIRDSONG)

(BICYCLE BELL RINGS)

SYD BARRETT: Birdie Hop (Gentle strumming intro)

Birdie hop, he do

He hop along

A lonely bird upon

A window there, hee, hee

There he blow

A windy snow

He knew the snow

I know the snow

A hoppy bird #

RAWLINSON: It's not for us to say how people should be.

Of course, it would have been great

if he'd gone on to produce stuff all his life, but he didn't. And why?

You could say he was in a weather system,

something bigger than him,

that...turned him over,

and it was sunny for the first two weeks

and then it rained for six years.

PINK FLOYD: Wish You Were Here (Melancholic guitar intro)

There was a tragedy being played out - partly self-induced...

..and, in the end, it's a tragic tale

and tragic tales resonate with us

in a different way, and perhaps more acutely,

than tales of triumph.

Out in Idaho, they know who Pink Floyd are.

They probably don't know Syd Barrett.

He's the old singer

in the band that I love, which is Pink Floyd.

The band we know Floyd to be now

wouldn't be here without Syd,

but it doesn't really bear much resemblance

to the band that Syd was in.

BIXLER-ZAVALA: What would it have sounded like,

if he had stayed in the band?

I would hope that he would be able to see

what a beautiful thing it ended up being.

He did things for their own sake

and he depended heavily on his own childhood memories,

which, I think, that's also a good lesson to us all,

to go back inside yourselves and see what you can find.

COXON: Now I don't understand how boring music can be,

when at one point somebody was trying to put so much

into four minutes' worth of listening

and erm...the ear was entertained.

I hope, really, that young people think twice, because...

look what can happen.

It'd be nice to think that people could learn a bit.

There are some people who must have a...a weakness of some sort

that is like a switch waiting to be turned,

and that switch will go and they'll never quite come back.

STORM: I think it's really hard to not feel something.

Well, we probably did about as much as we could

and we were all very young,

but I have a regret or two. In what form?

That I never went to see him, you know.

His family kind of discouraged it.

Yeah, maybe we should have. I regret that I never went up

to his house in Cambridge and knocked on -In the '80s?

'80s, '90s, 2000s...

I didn't go, either.None of us did, but I think, in retrospect...

both Syd and I might have gained something

out of one or two people popping around to his house

for a cup of tea.

There's this bloke who changed the lives of everyone around him...

STORM: Yeah, I think... ..and it...it's a terrible story.

Sorry?It's a terrible story! It's a terrible story, Storm.

I'm not surprised -It's a sad story.It's a very, very sad story.

STORM: Is it a sad story, I wonder?

Oh, I don't think so, Storm, no.

Sorry? I don't think so.

I hope not.

I suppose it's cos I partly feel he was unfulfilled,

but that's just my projection, rather than what he felt.Yeah.

Well, all right, it's sad... it's sad in this way:

we thought we were moving in this wonderful direction to utopia.

We were fully engaged in the hip dream,

and it WAS a dream.

We had spiritual heights in our sights,

and Syd, too.

(ROAR OF TRAFFIC)

MALE INTERVIEWER: Do you have anything to tell me?

(ROAR OF TRAFFIC CONTINUES)

SYD: Yeah.

OK, Syd. Um, I can't. I sort of...

I can't really say.

PINK FLOYD: Pow R Toc H

Pu-pum, pu-tch-tch

Pu-pum, pu-tch-tch

Pu-pum, pu-tch-tch

Pu-pum, pu-tch-tch

Pu-pum, pu-tch-tch (ELECTRONIC SQUAWK)

Pu-pum, pu-tch-tch (ELECTRONIC CHIRP)

Pu-pum, pu-tch-tch (ELECTRONIC SQUAWK)

Pu-pum, pu-tch-tch (ELECTRONIC CHIRP)

Woo, woo! (SCREAMS AND ULULATES)

Woo, woo, woo, woo!

(PSYCHEDELIC RHYTHM)

(CYMBALS CRASH)

(RHYTHMIC ELECTRONIC ANIMAL SOUNDS)

STORM: If you were, hypothetically,

to write a letter to Syd... JENNY SPIRES: Writing to him now?

Yeah... Oh, it would take me ages, I think.

I would say that he was a good man.

"You were a good man

and...it's terribly sad what happened to you.

Sorry about all the rubbish that gets written about you

and silly stories that get told."

"I'm glad that you managed to get away

from all that madness that was going on in London

around your life

and I hope that you were happy."

(TRACK CONTINUES)

I'd say, "Syd, come back," because he became Roger

and I don't think Roger was any happier.

ROCK: A lot of people think my career started with David Bowie

and I have to say, well, of course,

really, the beginning was Syd Barrett...so thank you, Syd.

FIELDING: I always go back, revisit his work,

and it's always as good, as I get older

and my understanding grows.

For me, he's like the perfect artist,

so I'd love to... I'd like to give him a hug.

(PSYCHEDELIC JAMMING)

Do you know, it's very interesting that you bring up memory,

and clearly this whole story

that you're trying to tell about Syd

depends upon the memories of...of people of our age.

STORM: Slippery memories, aren't they?Yeah. Well...

we all know that we make up memories to suit our egos.

Thank you very much. No.That was great.

It was nice to be led gently back.

Wish You Were Here (Electric-guitar intro)

(CHEERING) It's actually...quite emotional

standing up here with these three guys

after all these years.

Standing to be counted with the rest of you.

Anyway, we're doing this

for everyone who's not here,

and particularly, of course, for Syd.

(WISTFUL MELODY)

(EMOTIVE SOLO)

So

So you think you can tell

Heaven from Hell?

Blue skies from pain?

Can you tell a green field

From a cold steel rail?

A smile from a veil?

Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade

Your heroes for ghosts?

Hot ashes for trees?

And hot air for a cool breeze?

Cold comfort for change?

And did you exchange

A walk-on part in the war

For a lead role in a cage? #

ENGINEER: Syd, are you ready? SYD: Yeah.Off you go.

This is a story

About a girl that I knew

She didn't like my songs

And that made me feel blue

She said, "A big band is far better than you"

She don't rock 'n' roll

She don't like it

She don't do the stroll

Well, she don't do it right

Well, everything's wrong

And my patience was gone

When I woke one morning

And remembered this song

O-oh-oh

Kinda catchy

I hope that she will talk to me now

And even allow me

To hold her hand

And forget that old band

I strolled around to her pad

Her light was off

And that's ba-a-ad

Her sister said

That my girl was gone

"But come inside, boy

And play, play, play me a song!"

I said "Yeah! Here I go" #

SYD BARRETT: A Long Cool Look

She took a long cool look at me

And smiled and gazed all over my arm

She loves to see me get down to ground

She hasn't time just to be with me

Her face between all she means to be

To be extreme just to be extreme

A broken pier on the wavy sea

She wonders why for she wants to see

But I got up and I stomped around

And hid the piece where the trees touch the ground... #

(MUSIC FADES)

(CLEARS THROAT) I'll do it from the top, right? I'll start again.

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