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"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."

What are you working on at the moment inside yourself?

I can't really say.

Maybe this break would be very valuable

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.

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.

How would you describe, now in your maturity...

Thank you.

...his contribution to Pink Floyd?

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.

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

I discovered Pink Floyd's music

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

For people that got info Pink Floyd at that point

and were listening to those records first,

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.

There was religious acid taking at that time.

Syd was one of the sort of saints of that underground cult.

Literature and the Bible for example, is full of people

who deliberately isolated themselves.

The hermits who went info 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.

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.

Syd is the ultimate kind of loner.

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

I suppose what is sad ls 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.

He's the perfect god, you see.

A god must actually be killed and eaten,

but then he must be reborn.

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.

But to examine the complex story of Syd Barrett,

one needs to take a trip.

A trip back to the picturesque and historic

English university town of Cambridge.

Roger Keith Barrett was born in Cambridge on January 6th 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.

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 his face was,

"I know it's there, I know you're laughing at me

but I'm going to ignore it."

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.

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

Ok. This is slate three.

I believe Storm's interview, it's 08:10.

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 he were one of the gang.

The group evolved by itself.

Nobody was really the leader.

The centers of Seamus and Storm

was simply because their mothers were very indulgent

towards teenage boys.

The start came at Cherry Hinton Road at your mother's house.

I tended to be into beer and jazz and students.

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, metal work and art.

So I went info the art class

and there I 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 flare 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.

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.

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.

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.

Let's go back, way back to the early '60s.

What is your abiding memory of Syd?

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.

I always remember Syd's hair.

- Do you? - Yeah.

- Curly, black. - Yeah, lovely.

And I also remember his walk.

- He smelled nice. - Sorry?

He smelled nice.

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 these Sunday afternoon jam sessions,

where I saw Syd playing guitar for the first time.

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".

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 going to be.

It had 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? Don't know, maybe."

He used to appear at parties

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

He used to play a lot of the songs that later became songs on his album.

But because he was just as he were one of the gang,

I don't think anybody thought anything about him.

He had this grin

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.

Syd's enthusiasm for painting

sees him enroll 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 had taken up painting.

David Gale suggested that we have an exhibition together.

It is our first venture into commercial art.

A total failure.

- 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.

We loved Beatles and Stones and blues stuff.

Chuck and Bo.

I can remember learning "Come On".

- The 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 10:00 o'clock in the morning just strumming away.

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.

He was very unusual, very interesting.

The complete package I believe you'd say.

The complete package.

Jenny dear, when did you first meet Syd?

And how was he?

I met him in the Cambridge Student Union Cellars.

He was playing with a band called Those Without.

He came up and said hello and introduced himself.

When did you start going steady?

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.

He wrote to me and said

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

He sent this picture

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

"I love you, I love you. I can't stop thinking about you."

How long did you go out with him?

I probably saw him nearly every day from 61 to '63.

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

so that was a bit of a messy year.

In September 1964, Syd moves to London.

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.

- Mike Leonard's place? - Mike Leonard's place.

We were Leonard's Lodgers.

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 have 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 blues men,

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.

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.

When you were at Camberwell with Syd, what kind of guy was he?

The thing that I really remember ls 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.

He said to Robert,

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

- A lot of money. - A fortune really.

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

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

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

but I wrote this really nice song.”

So did Syd then leave for a year?

He left and he didn't come back.

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,

thinking that these were perhaps changing and altering things.

Roger Keith Barret, aspiring painter,

drops out of art school so that Syd Barrett, pop star, may be born.

Before long, Barrett would find himself at the epicenter

of the biggest underground movement ever to hit Britain.

You've got a bright future.

There's a general sea change that 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 lvy.

And within two years they're doing "A Whiter Shade of Pale".

I think Syd is aft 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.

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.

There was a lot of rumors going around

that acid can damage your brain.

And hippies would say, "It's just the CIA, man.

They're just saying that to stop you taking acid,

to stop you eating live kittens."

According to all 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.

There were shouts of joy

and we saw water coming out of the window.

Paul Charrier wielding the rose of the shower spraying Syd.

They were just mucking about like six-year-olds.

People were hanging around in the garden.

Syd went info the kitchen of the house, found a box of matches,

an orange and a plum, sat down and looked at them.

Most of the time, what I remember is Syd sitting quietly

in the back garden of Dave Gale's house

holding and examining these objects.

At that time, everybody was dropping acid in London.

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 2507.

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.

Self-realization, speaking to God through acid,

is 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.

And two hours before you were eating fish and chips down the corner.

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.

So called reality was only one of many.

1966 is the year the doors come off the hinges.

Fuelled by experimentation with mind-expanding drugs

flowing through the counter culture,

the seismic upheaval of post-war British society

spreads from politics and art, to fashion and music.

Everybody was taking lots of drugs.

People liked these long things that you could really get into,

which strung you out

and took you very slowly through various climactic trajectories.

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

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

Da-da-da-da-da da-da-da.

Done in the "Little Red Book", or something like that.

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

Syd said, "You mean like this?" And he played it.

That's what became "Interstellar Overdrive",

It was that riff mangled by me and then reinterpreted by Syd.

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.

"Fire." Da-da-da, da-da.

Pete would have been supplying a psychedelic projection apparatus

to the increasingly gigging Pink Floyd.

Were you as excited by this as were the audience?

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

I remember being in the audience

thinking this was probably the centre of the universe.

Yes it was, indeed.

The only time II'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.

The band had come out with this interesting rig,

which was two Binson Echorec units.

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

Dow-dow, dow-dow-dow.

Nobody used them.

Certainly Jimi Hendrix did not use an echo box

and neither did I, and neither did Eric Clapton 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 he was 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, he pushes another couple of buttons on the machine

and suddenly it goes...

Da-na-na, da-da-da WO-WO-WO-WO...

His analogue echo degrades.

He 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.

Nick Mason starts to play and then Roger Waters starts to play

and it just turns info what can only be described

as spectacular psychedelic heavy metal.

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

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 by the fact that we've played in ballrooms.

I think concerts have given us a chance o realise

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

like normal pop groups.

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 over emphasize his importance

because he was the creative genius.

I remember sitting with him

while he was looking info the stars book

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

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

They were so totally and unbelievably original.

You could say that the various technologies were available,

like Hammond organs and this and 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".

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?

Everybody listens, we don't need it very loud to be able to hear it.

And with some of it is very quiet in fact.

Do you in your turn feel aggressive towards your audiences?

No, not at all.

In spite of all the loudness?

- No, not at all. - Sorry?

There's not many young people who dislike it.

- There's no shock treatment intended. - No, certainly not.

When Syd Barrett started writing for Pink Floyd,

he seemed to give it this very English voice,

which was quite unusual at the time.

The Kinks were doing that, I guess, as well.

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.

He's the Lake Poets.

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

He was not London 1966.

But he was London 1966.

He happened to be, but that was a cloak he wore.

In his lyrics, there's a lot of animal references.

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

there's fairies, there's scarecrows, there's cats.

It's a world that I was always fascinated with.

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.

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.

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 fools to have at your disposal.

Syd had all this churning around in his Mina,

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 love or death or illness or loss.

"I've got a bike, you can ride it if you like."

"It's got a basket, a bell, a ring and things that make it look good."

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

Where does this come from?

Every verse is like that I think.

I suppose things like "Bike"

was more of a structured thing happening,

but sonically towards the end,

I've never really heard anything like that.

A sort of over saturation of sounds, clocks,

and then this kind of repetitive sound

that sounded like a goose attacking you.

- Like a what? - Like a goose attacking.

Going into attack mode.

Quite disturbing.

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.

Psychedelic drugs like LSD all work on those receptors

and what they do is to interrupt the traditional way

in which the brain is organized.

Everything we do is orchestrated in a very reflexive habitual way.

LSD, by turning on those receptors disrupts that.

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 pleasant 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 carry on with this situation without telling other people.

There's a lot of interest in 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 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 was 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.

I remember one particular interlude where We Went to see the Master,

that's Charan Singh Ji.

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.

Did you know why he said that?

Well, there's quite of a lot of commitment in Sant Mat,

which is vegetarianism,

and abstaining from mind altering substances.

Is it possible that the rejection affected Syd?

Rejection affects us all.

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.

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?

Yeah.

Explain this to me, Jennifer Spires.

In the early days, he was lovely cause 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.

That's how we started living at number 2 Earlham street.

The whole clan went from there to 101 Cromwell Road.

101 Cromwell Road!

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.

You see Syd, and the Pink Floyd were really beginning then

and things were taking off.

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?

The Pink Floyd sound was a perfect match

for the spontaneous underground and its multimedia events.

With Barrett's song writing output flourishing,

the Pink Floyd were on their way.

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 equip men,

become their managers.

King and Jenner scheme o 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 for their debut album,

"The Piper at the Gales 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" is released as a single on the 10th of March.

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.

- Really? It wasn't spontaneous? - No.

This idea that Syd rolled out of bed at lunchtime,

took some acid and wrote a couple of genius songs

ls just absolute crap.

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

Otherwise we'd all be doing it.

Despite being banned by Radio London for obscenity,

"Arnold Layne" reaches number 20 in the singles chart

with the album "Piper at the Gates of Dawn"”

reaching number six.

He was spectacular at the beginning.

From that Christmas, through to the summer

when they released "Arnold Lao ye"

and then "The Piper", Syd, and of course Hendrix,

were kind of the two big psychedelic stars.

In May 1967, Pink Floyd announce 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".

He started innovating his music

with the Zippo lighter on his Stratocaster

sliding it up and down.

In gigs, suddenly he was using this Zippo lighter

to create these incredibly eerie sounds.

"See Emily Play" ” becomes the second Pink Floyd hit single,

earning the group several crucial appearances

on the prime time BBC music show Top of the Pops in July.

When "See Emily Play" went to No. 5 or got into the top ten...

I remember it well.

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 Syd in the dressing room

sitting there and he looked a bit glum

and I went, "Come on, 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 come in."

And he didn't say anything.

Then there was a bang on the door

and somebody was like, "Is Syd in there?"

Whoever this person was, came in and just literally grabbed him

and dragged him out.

I think Syd Barrett was interested in this total freedom

almost like 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.

There'd been a lot of weird stuff on stage

with Syd detuning guitars

and turning it info a 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."

The relentless gigging and demands of stardom

are taking their toll on Barrett's psyche.

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 uncomfortable moment.

The three songs I think that are really important,

'Jugband Blues', "Scream Thy Last Scream"

and "Vegetable Man".

"Vegetable Man", he wrote it in my room.

He sat in a corner and he just wrote those lyrics down.

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?"

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.

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 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 EM/ as Pink Floyd's third single.

It is released in November and is a flop.

Did you ever see him perform with Pink Floyd?

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.

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

which is they blame rock and 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.

He would be looking sort of...

He wouldn't look at you, he'd be looking into space.

With hopes of breaking America and despite concerns about Syd,

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

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?"

Able to go and buy a new shirt, have your hair frizzed

and do all these things that you could do.

- Buy some new boots. - Yeah, all that stuff.

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

Then, people started asking him the meaning of life.

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

That was probably very strange going to America

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

I'm doing the Fillmore.

Wow! And these guys give me this nice acid.

"Wahey! Oh, wow." You know.

Are you telling me you and Syd got picked up

by a couple of Californian blondes?

Exactly that, with those straight eyebrows.

Yes, everybody would dream about this story.

- And this happened to you. - It happened to Syd and I.

But we were young kids from England

where this sort of thing was fucking...

There was lots of dope and lots of everything

and Syd was very happy.

Until we returned.

I think, 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 United States.

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

Would you greet them warmly please, The Pink Floyd!

- Rick lip-synched it. - Because?

Because Syd wouldn't sing, couldn't sing, wouldn't sing.

He just stood there.

That 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 Los Angeles,

he just walked out of the studio and disappeared.

- For a reason? - 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 very much. Nick, nice to see you.

When Syd became unreliable, ! 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.

One of the more contentious rumors is the idea

that he might have been given acid every morning in his coffee.

Did Rick say something?

He reckoned that Syd's downfall came about by his hangers-on.

Then, people who are writing books or doing interviews,

they think, "Who were his friends at that time?"

"So and so."”

- Jock and Sue in this case? - Yeah.

Apparently we're living in Richmond, we used to get up every morning,

we all sit around the breakfast table, we would then spike Syd.

It's absolute fucking bollocks.

Maybe that's also a quality of rumors.

It's quite good if your hero is flawed

because of somebody else's 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?"

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

if Syd had 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 remember taking Syd to Ronnie Laing's

and him refusing to get out of the car.

Not that I'm convinced Ronnie Laing

would have been able to do a huge amount for him.

As psychiatrists and psychotherapists

who 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 socially reinforced,

totalitarian, egalitarian, quantitative,

dequantified, de-experientialized dead world.

Where there's no fun or joy

or any genuine celebration of anything

because all that is life and science is studying death.

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."

Syd would alter the rhythmic pattern

or do whatever was necessary to ensure that no, they hadn't got it yet.

- Or couldn't. - Or couldn't get it.

Or might never have got it.

Stories are legion about Syd's alarming behaviour

on stage during this period.

Playing one note for an entire show,

or slowly detuning 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,

Barret 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 info effect.

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 this massive determination,

Rick's musical sophistication and you've got Nick's showmanship.

For several shows, the band performs as a five-piece

in the hope of keeping Syd around.

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 loved the idea of having him in the band.

Do you recall what happened on what I called 'The day'?

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

- We were all... - Were you on the way to a gig?

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

Everyone else had been picked up, SO we were on the way to pick Syd up

and someone said, "Shall we bother?" more or less.

There was this sort of moment and we went,

"Do you know what? Let's not."

Syd's last gig with Pink Floyd

was on the 20th of January, 1968 at Hastings Pier.

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.

I'm amazed that they managed to recover

from losing their main creative drive.

No, it's not amazing they recovered,

they became the pop group that they always desired to be.

Once David Gilmour's in there, that'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”.

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.

That's two verses.

Sorry, I'll do it again.

Syd came to live with us at Egerton Court

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

I went there, you were there and Po was there,

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

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 lived in Richmond Mansions, one street away.

We could see from our kitchen info his kitchen.

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".

In the first lot of sessions

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

"Shall we do that again?"

No reply.

"I think that was really good, can we try that again?"

No reply.

"Would you want to go and play a bit more?"

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

Is it on?

There'd been quite 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.

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".

"Where are you now pussy willow who smiled on this leaf?"

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

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.

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 is there was all this rubble

because he'd paint over the cigarette butts

and various bits of debris in the room.

I took a photo of Syd crouched a bit like an animal really.

I took a ton of them foo, it wasn't just Storm.

And Iggy the Eskimo, who was never really his girlfriend

because these were hippie times.

I think she lingered for a couple of weeks.

On the back cover was a picture of a naked woman

who was an Eskimo,

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

He said, "This is Iggy, why don't you put her in the picture?"

I said, "Fine."

"The Madcap Laughs" is released

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

It reaches number 40 in the UK charts.

Successful enough for EMI to finance the recording

of Syd's second solo album, "Barrett".

There was more time so we could relax a little bit more

and try and do things in a slightly different way.

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.

He wrote some pretty unusual chord sequences

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

and wrote fascinating lyrics.

Even though some around that Wetherby Mansions time are very moody,

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

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

It fails to chart.

Can you recall when you first met Syd?

He came running up looking like a rock star

with his velvet jeans on, 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...

- "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.

In support of the "Madcap Laughs" and "Barrett" albums,

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

And on the 6th of 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, tons of pots of paint and brushes

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

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 and going,

"Syd, let me in," for hours sometimes.

I moved back to Cambridge and Duggie had called me and said,

"This is getting crazy."

I don't know what he was doing but he'd been in his room for days and nights

and hadn't come out.

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

And somehow it was like we were back together again.

So, I moved in.

- Into Hills Road? - Into Hills Road.

- Into the cellar? - Into the cellar with Syd.

It was all dark, 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 organized 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, R.K. Barrett."

I got another lefter from him two days later

saying, "Dear Gala, ! 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.

So there's always two. Two rings and 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.

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 didn't have any 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 use the phrase very loosely, "Poor Syd."

Of course, Brian being a money man,

he went "Poor Syd?"

He made two and a half million quid last year.”

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

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

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

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 Monk and drummer Twink from The Pink Fairies.

After several impromptu jam sessions, the trio formed the group Stars

and play a handful of gigs locally.

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

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

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.

A year later, Pink Floyd release "Dark Side of The Moon"

and hit the fop of the US Billboard album charts.

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

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.

In 1975, Pink Floyd records their ninth studio album,

the concept record "Wish You Were Here",

again reaching number one 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

book ends the album.

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 of Studio 3.

I heard the door go, looked round

and there was this chap standing in the back of the room

who was slightly portly, with a shaven head and a raincoat on.

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 weird.

It took a little while.

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.

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

I went, "No."

And he said, "It's Syd."

He hadn't been seen for six years.

He asked if he could help.

Syd came in and sat down,

David and Roger started talking to him.

I then took this opportunity to snap a couple of photos

with the 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".

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.

Then what happened?

Nothing, we carried on working, as far as I remember.

Probably a little bit shell shocked.

Rick was terribly upset and Roger cried.

Often people forget that although Syd was a huge talent,

this is a talent that was all foo soon lost to us.

And that the band, had loved him.

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.

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.

He had enormous blisters on his feet

and he was 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'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.

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

It's more fun being a child, isn't it?

We used to go out in the car,

go lo areas where he could photograph for a painting.

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

He went back to Cambridge and his art very much reflects that.

You could say it's a return to landscape.

- 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.

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

and I'm wondering what that means.

Maybe he didn't like foo much clutter.

It's called 'Syd's Feng Shui'.

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.

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.

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,

he didn't like that world and didn't want to be reminded of it.

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

"Syd doesn't live here anymore."

Because he didn't.

He wasn't Syd anymore.

I think it's 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.

Do you think people like to embroider and romance things?

He's perfect for rumors.

A magnetic person who's had so much impact

and the band went on going on being more and more successful.

And where was Syd?

Perfect for rumors.

I know the Daily Mail on a quiet celebrity period,

would rediscover him every three years, you know.

"The mad genius of Pink Floyd."

I have a feeling that underneath a lot of this is a sadness.

Yes, but you don't know, you see.

What was he thinking on his bicycle in Cambridge on his own?

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

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 it rained for six years.

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

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 who Syd Barrett is.

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.

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.

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

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

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 the ear was entertained.

I hope 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 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.

! think it's really hard to not feel something.

We probably did about as much as we could.

We were all very young.

- But I have a regret or two. - In what form?

That I never went to see him.

His family kind of discouraged it.

Maybe we should have.

I regret that I never went up to his house in Cambridge.

- In the '80s you mean? - '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.

- Yeah, I think... - It's a terrible story.

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

- It's a sad story. - It's a very, very sad story.

Is it a sad story? I wonder.

I don't think so, Storm, no.

- Sorry? - I don't think so.

I hope not.

I suppose it's because I partly feel he was unfulfilled

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

Yeah.

Well, all right, 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.

Do you have anything to tell me?

Yeah.

OK, Syd.

I can't, I sort of...

I can't really say.

If you were, hypothetically, to write a letter to Syd...

Writing to him now? Yeah.

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 the 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."

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

and I don't think Roger was any happier.

A lot of people think my career started with David Bowie

and I'd have to say, well, of course, really the beginning was Syd Barrett.

So, thank you Syd.

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 like to give him a hug.

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 people of our age.

Slippery memories, aren't they?

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.

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 everybody who's not here,

and particularly, of course, for Syd.

Syd, are you ready?

- Yeah. - Off you go.

I'll do it on fop, right?

I'll start again.