Syd Barrett Pink Floyd Psychedelic Music Progressive Music

2010-02-08T18:05:00.001-08:00

SYD BARRETT STARS

It’s so long ago now and the actual details are intermeshed with four decades of rumor & fiction into an, oh-so-slow, shifting tapestry of the cumulative memories of those who were there and those who wish they were. Below is what I could collect about Stars.

Stars were Syd Barrett’s final band (1972). Its members were Syd Barrett on guitar, Twink on drums, and Jack Monck (of Delivery) on bass. They played a few live concerts in Cambridge before Barrett left the group, thus (essentially) ending it. Shortly thereafter Syd Barrett left music altogether and began a life in seclusion, and his work with Stars is sometimes seen as the so called “straw that broke the camel's back”.

Stars:
(Syd Barrett, Jack Monck, and Twink)

Gigs:
Pre Stars: 1-26-72, King's College Cellars -- Barrett, Monck and Twink play a short set (also: Eddie "Guitar" Burns)
1-27-72, Corn Exchange, Cambridge, England -- Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band (also: Hawkwind, Pink Fairies)

February
2-5-72 the Dandelion Coffee Bar, Cambridge, England
2-?-72, Petty Cury (near Market Square) -- Stars
2-?-72, the Dandelion Coffee Bar, Cambridge, England
2-24-72, Cambridge Corn Exchange, Cambridge, England (also: MC5 / Skin Alley)
2-26-72, Cambridge Corn Exchange, Cambridge, England (also: Nektar)

Post Stars: 1973, unidentified location, Cambridge -- Syd performs with Jack Bruce
(also: Pete Brown poetry reading.)

Drummer - Twink, then with the psychedelic band Tomorrow, met Barrett in '67 when Pink Floyd played a European festival. The band brought gifts with them; Twink's, from Syd, was a hash pipe. Though they remained friendly afterwards, it wasn't until 1972 that they got together musically. "I didn't know him closely for that long," but I was in the same space and I could understand exactly where he was at. I thought he was very together, you know. As a friend it was a very warm relationship; no bad vibes at all. We didn't have any crazy scenes."

Stars was originally brought together by bass player Jack Monk's wife Ginny, who took Barrett down to a Cambridge pub to jam with Twink and some others. A few days later a more permanent arrangement coalesced, and Stars began rehearsing for their first gig, an open air May Day celebration in Market Square. Their material, mostly Syd's, included some for the Pink Floyd days; Barrett recorded practice sessions and one coffee bar gig, and seemed genuinely interested in working again when a promoter friend of Twink's booked Stars into the Corn Exchange.

At that gig everything that could possibly go wrong did: the PA sabotaged Syd's vocals, Monk's amp acted up and somehow Barrett cut his finger open. Added to Syd's memory blanks and hesitant playing, the result was bad press and immediate depression for Syd.

“We just weren't ready for it,” Twink concedes. "It was a disastrous gig, the reviews were really bad, and Syd was really hung up about it; so the band folded. He came 'round to my house and said he didn't want to play anymore. He didn't explain; he just left. I was really amazed working with him, at his actual ability as a guitar player."

Recordings and photographs of their performances remain lost, though it has been attested that the Stars performances contained songs like "Baby Lemonade" and "Effervescing Elephant" from the solo LPs, plus "Lucifer Sam" and a couple of 12-bar blues. It is widely believed that many rehearsals and performances were taped. Twink stated in an interview that a relative of the composer Leonard Bernstein recorded some of the concerts.

Below are some recollections by two people, in-the-know, about possible pre-Stars and Stars recordings:

Hawkwind, Last Minute Put-Together Boogie Band (Pre Stars) & Pink Fairies Live at Cambridge, Corn Exchange 1/27/72

From: Mike Kemp, Engineer:

“The recording of the concert was organised at the last minute and the equipment was poor as all that was available was a rather poor mixer so we just stuck a stereo mic pair across the stage for drums/backline and mixed in some PA mix for front. We were positioned on the top of a sort of cloakroom arrangement in a corner near the stage (in about an inch of thick dust) but had a bad view of the stage from the equipment area due to columns in the building. I spent most of my time with headphones at the troublesome mixer so saw little.

The whole affair was a shambles with a fight breaking out around the stage at one point destroying at least one of the mics. I was pretty naive at the time and can not say I saw Syd Barrett but everyone was saying he was there. There were a number of rambling untogether acts and I am pretty convinced that the Syd Barrett All Stars was mentioned at the time, as well as "The last minute put together boogie band".

Recording was onto a 1/4track Revox at 7&1/2 ips (all we had then) and I do recall listening to it after the gig over the next months. Because we changed all our recording equipment quickly to 1/2track (standard professional format) the old 1/4 track tapes couldn't then be listened to. I recall vaguely that it existed for some time but later attempts to find it failed, e.g. when Robyn Hitchcock spent a day (around 1980) checking all the tapes in our library at Victoria Street.

It is possible that the tape was placed with a whole collection of 1/4 track tapes that Gary Lucas had at the time (it was his Revox) and I am trying to find out if he has any knowledge of these. I've lost touch with him in the last few years since he moved away from Cambridge but I think I can track him down again.”

Here's Syd's introduction from that gig:

A question about the Corn Exchange gig was forwarded to Mark Graham, Spaceward Studio Manager in 1985-86. Below is his reply:

Hi Jeff,

I think it was during the Summer of 1985 when we were clearing out the space above the Control Room roof that I came across the Syd Barrett All Stars tape. It was just one among hundreds that were languishing there, pretty much forgotten that Owen Morris and I were sorting through - our task was to phone the bands or record labels concerned and get them either to collect their tapes or allow us to wipe them.

I admit that it was with a trembling hand that I descended the ladder clutching the tape and then threaded it on the Revox. We listened to it once, all the way through, and, though it pains me to say so, it was an absolute load of old shite.

It was awful. Truly. The sound itself was poor and the onstage tuning was non-existent. It was painful to listen to. Stoned, out-of-key noodlings - remarkable only for how dreadful it was. If I remember correctly parts of the Pink Fairies and Hawkwind sets were also on the tape.

What my response would have been had the recording been brilliant, or even good, of course we'll never know (might I have stolen a copy?) but it was clear to me that this could only ever be of historical (or forensic) interest - you'd NEVER want to actually listen to it - so, not having Syd's phone number to hand, I rang EMI.

The very next day a big car swished into the yard and out stepped a suit. I don't remember the gentleman's name - only his suit. He was from EMI and he'd come to listen to the Syd Barrett tape. I explained the history to him, made him coffee and then played him the tape.

He said nothing until the end.

"This recording can add nothing to Syd's legend - it can only detract from it. It must never be made public".

He took the tape away in his big car and, as far as I know, no copies exist.

So the master was taken away by the EMI suit; a copy was kept by a Spaceward employee (or it may be the other way round) and has since been rediscovered. It is known that Silver Machine (not featuring Syd) from Hawkwind's set, and a bit of an instrumental jam from the Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band's set, on which a bit of bluesy noodling from Syd does appear to be audible are on that tape.

Supposedly, some Stars gigs were recorded and, in the Laughing Madcaps group (May, 2000), the following was posted by Joly (Stars Roadie and occasional Bass):

Kiloh Smith wrote:
"I’ve heard that Stars recorded many of their practice sessions and that the ill-fated Cambridge Corn Exchange gig might have been recorded?"

Joly wrote:
"Stars played a number of times at a hippie-community cafe called ‘The Dandelion’ and then one Saturday in the outdoor in the main square in Cambridge and then two shows at the (huge, cavernous) Corn Exchange on a Thursday (with Nektar) and Saturday, two days later, with the MC5.

Nektar, being prog, had state of the art audio—two WEM Audiomasters out front and monitors. I mixed the band. Another roadie was Nigel, who took care of the stage. I think it was a friend of his that taped the show. I was lent the tape by Nigel some months later and it sounded good; I gave it back without copying. I later heard he lost it. I believe that. If it were around, it would have surfaced by now.

The MC5 show was not recorded and was not a good show, mainly due to their being zero monitors—just a big PA amp with one volume knob (the MC5 naturally kept it up all the way) backstage, plus Nigel spread the band too far apart onstage. I was reduced to running back and forwards from front stage to back trying to judge if there was feedback. Syd battled thru but any man would have had problems. The team chalked it up as a good try. You can’t win them all.

The promoter of these shows—Steve Brink—had promised that there would be no press; however he did invite a guy from the Melody Maker, Roy Hollingworth, who had some sort of nervous breakdown at the show (he later ended up in the bin). He wrote a
piece that came out the next Wednesday detailing a wave of absolute alienation he sensed at the show, and used Syd as a metaphor for it.

Syd read that piece, was upset, and resigned from the band. I’ve never heard of him playing live since.

There was an eccentric character called Victor who followed the band around. Usually accompanied by his pre-teen son, Victor was a bearded American somewhat reminiscent of Peter Ustinov, always dressed in tweed suits. He was apparently a nephew of Leonard Bernstein, and once took Twink to one of his uncle’s gigs (The Royal Albert Hall). Another time he brought Aaron Copeland to one of the weekly jam sessions in Cambridge. Victor attended most if not all Stars appearances and he always carried a Nagra in his bag. He taped everything. I suspect that those tapes might exist, because his family is more sensitive to the value of archived music than most.

When Syd first started playing with the band I had no idea who he was—I used to sleep over the rehearsal room and Syd would come over early when I was still abed. I listened for a couple of days, and I remember hearing him on the first day and thinking “this doesn’t make sense” and then on the second day “now I am beginning to get it” and by the third “I like it.” I’d asked Twink his name. “Oh that’s, um, Syd,” had said Twink without elaboration.

Syd was no more peculiar than a lot of people around, used to enjoy a cup of tea after the session. You had to be on your mental toes to keep up with odd tangents he would hit in conversation, and this served to make one aware of the regimented mundanity of one’s normal musings.

It was a shame the band didn’t continue. Jack Monck is a great musician in his own right. He and Twink were playing easy skiffle-jazz rhythms and giving Syd lots of room to play."

Other possible recordings of Stars are:

1) Nektar gig at the Corn Exchange. Joly, who worked with Stars, insists that the second Corn Exchange gig as support to Nektar was much better than the previous MC5 gig (as reviewed in Melody Maker by Roy Hollingworth to Syd's exasperation, signaling the end of the venture). Being prog state of the art instrumentalists, Nektar had a great sound system and mixing desk. Joly believes the Stars set was taped.

This is corroborated by Twink and Alan Lee Shaw. Twink says he heard the tape at the time and thought it was OK; Shaw says he has a mental image of the guy sitting by the side of the stage with his reel to reel machine. No one knows the whereabouts of the man or the tape.

2) Stars in the Petty Cury marketplace. Rumoured audience recording. Rumour went cold quickly.

3) Various rehearsals in Syd's cellar and at the Dandelion Cafe. Supposedly taped by Syd himself (among the box of tapes lost by a Chelsea Cloisters employee?) and more professionally by a relative of Leonard Bernstein!

4) Rehearsals taped at home by Syd. Clearly we're not going to hear these.

5) Dandelion Cafe performances taped by Victor Kraft, a former lover of Aaron Copland and friend (not relative) of Bernstein. Kraft, who died in 1976, was also a professional photographer and as such I suspect he may have taken pictures of the Stars performances.

Pictures of Stars definitely exist somewhere. Not only is it an absurd notion that nobody took a photograph of Syd Barrett, a well-known public figure, between 1972 and 1974, but I know of three sets of photos that were definitely taken. These are:

1. A set of pictures of Stars playing an outdoor gig in Cambridge Market Square in February (?) 1972, taken by an unknown Australian photographer. These were briefly circulated shortly after the performance and both Twink and Jack Monck (independently) remember them being excellent quality.

2. Pictures taken by the American photographer Victor Kraft. Victor Kraft was a professional photographer who had previously worked with Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland before settling in Cambridge in the early 1970s. He attended most of Stars' performances, and would have taken photographs and made tape recordings of the band. Unfortunately, he died in 1976 and his wife said that any possessions that were left in his Cambridge flat were taken (with her permission) by his landlords. Whether these include the Stars material, and what became of it if so, is unknown.

3. Pictures of the Market Square gig taken by Cambridge Evening News (and no, the paper doesn't have them). One picture of the band onstage (minus Syd, who was just out of shot) was published at the time, but more must have been taken.

Articles / Interviews about Stars:

STARS: Syd's Final Performance , Terrapin magazine, January 1973

STARS: At Cambridge, SYD CAME ON, PLAYED HIS SONGS AND THEN LEFT. I could end there, but as it was Syd's first stage appearance for four years, detail becomes sacred necessity. He did versions of 'Octopus' and 'No Man's Land from the Madcap album: 'Waving my arms in the Air' and 'Baby Lemonade' from Barrett: and 'Lucifer Sam' from the legendary first Floyd album.

Twink played drums and Jack Monke played bass until his amp decided it couldn't cope with Syd's musical journey and went dead! The lyrics were, for the most part, inaudible due to the terrible P.A., and Syd did no talking between the numbers, which were sadly under- rehearsed. But that was a genius on stage and he did show odd flashes of brilliance, but after about an hour Syd decided he had had enough, so he slowly unplugged and went home.

Personally I think the band set Syd back considerably. I understand he was pushed into it at very short notice and this was reflected in the music. If Syd is going to do anything worthwhile it must be done when he is ready: and if we have too wait five years for an album as good as "The Madcap Laughs" it will be worth it. Underneath all the mystique bullshit there is an ordinary young English musician who bleeds real blood when he cuts his finger during the final number, and smiles a really warm smile when you thank him afterwards. As he said in the Rolling Stone interview, "You know man, I'm totally together. I even think I should be."

Ivor Trueman discussed Stars with Twink – extracted from Opel #11, 5 December 1985:

Ivor Trueman: After the Pink Fairies you next played in Stars. How did that all happen?
Twink: I was living in Cambridge; after I'd left the Pink Fairies I went back to London for a while & then moved to Cambridge. And while in Cambridge I met Jack Monck & some local musicians, though we didn't do anything serious.

Ivor Trueman: You hadn't known Jack Monck before then?

Twink: No. I met him through Jenny, Jenny Spires who was an ex-girlfriend of mine, and she was also an ex-girlfriend of Syd's. It was Jenny & Jack who brought Syd down to the Eddie Guitar Burns gig at Kings College Cellar. And Syd had a jam that night. And I think, I'm not sure if it's the next day, but within the next day or two Jenny & Jack came round to my house in Cambridge & we were talking & someone said "wouldn't it be great to get Syd playing again." It wasn't just me who said that, it was everyone. So Jenny said 'Oh I'll fix up a meeting with him, we'll go & see Syd & ask him if he wants to play with you & Jack.' So that's what we did. We went round to his house & I think his Mum answered the door & then Syd came to the door & Jenny said, 'This is Twink & Jack, they want to know if you want to form a band, just the three of you.' So he said 'yeh, alright, come in'. And that was that. We started rehearsing down in the basement of his house, that's how it started. I think I'm right.

Ivor Trueman: Did you do much rehearsal?

Twink: Not really, we did about two weeks & then we had this gig come up at the Corn Exchange.

Ivor Trueman: Who arranged those gigs?

Twink: A guy called Steve Brink. And I'm sure Steve's intentions were good but he was just as crazy as everybody else, y'know. If we'd had some sort of management direction then we wouldn't have done any gigs for six months or maybe a year or something, but we went straight into it. He came in & said 'I've got this gig with MC5, I'm going to put you top of the bill.' We said yes & he printed the tickets. This is very important to me actually, the tickets said "Stars - Twink's new band", and it looks as though, from that, that people think that I actually got the bands name on the ticket like that because I was more 'together' than Syd. But that's not true & I'd like it to go on record that it wasn't anything to do with me-it was the promoter trying to be over helpful to me & I'd never seen the tickets before they came out or anything.

Ivor Trueman: I think the gigs attracted more attention than they should've done, as Syd hadn't been in the limelight for quite some time.

Twink: Yeh.

Ivor Trueman: But you did some gigs in Cambridge apart from the Corn Exchange.

Twink: Yeh well some of the gigs were great, some of them were really good but the Corn Exchange gigs were awful. The one that I remember best of all was the one that I enjoyed-the one in the Market Square in Cambridge, in the open air that was great. And we did as few in the Dandelion Coffee Bar, I think we did two there & they were also good.

Ivor Trueman: That was all around the same time.

Twink: Yes, all around the same time, 'cos the band didn't stay together very long. Straight after that gig the bad press that we got, I think it was Roy Hollingworth-Melody Maker, he did a piece & he killed the band in fact, with that review. 'Cos Syd came round with it in his hand the next day, he saw it & says 'I don't want to play anymore'. So that was it. I mean I expected that, I thought that that was a possibility that something like that might happen, but it was a shame that it did.

Ivor Trueman: What about the recording of the earlier gigs?

Twink: Well I don't know where the tapes are.

Ivor Trueman: Which gigs were recorded?

Twink: I think all of them were.

Ivor Trueman: And the rehearsals?

Twink: Syd recorded the rehearsals.

Ivor Trueman: On a portable cassette?

Twink: As far as I remember, yes, just on a cassette. And the other one's were recorded on a really professional set up by a guy from America that was based in Cambridge. He was related in someway to Leonard Bernstein & his name's Victor but I can't remember anything else.

Ivor Trueman: Did you realise that the Eddie Guitar Burns gig was also recorded - a guy in Cambridge has a professional quality tape.

Twink: No, I did have once one of the Stars gigs, between me & Jolly, who was a friend I was working with at the time. He used to make badges. He had a tape but I don't know what happened to it. The tapes were good-they were all Syd's songs, Floyd material. I don't think we had any new stuff, but I can't remember.

Ivor Trueman: So Syd wasn't still writing anything at the time?

Twink: I can't remember. I know he was painting at the time, he was a beautiful artist, he did oil paintings, fantastic abstract paintings. I guess most of those are still at his house, Jenny's got one of them.

Ivor Trueman: Are you still in touch with Jenny?

Twink: No. I don't know if Jack is. They were married but I think they're divorced or separated now.

Ivor Trueman: Have you seen Syd recently?

Twink: No. Well yeh-I bumped into him a few years ago in Harrods. I was going down the escalator & he was going up. But I haven't seen him for a while.

Ivor Trueman: One of the guys writing a book on the Floyd has been to see him recently - Mike Watkinson. [Note, this is my mistake, Mike hasn't been to see Syd yet.]

Twink: Yeh, he's been in touch with me but we haven't got together yet.

Ivor Trueman: How long were the sets that STARS performed? The gig list for the Corn Exchange gig was supposed to have been: Octopus, Dark Globe, Gigolo Aunt, Baby Lemonade, Waving My Arms In The Air, Lucifer Sam and a couple of 12- bar blues

Twink: I can't remember exactly, how long the sets were but I think it was about 40-45 minutes. It's quite amazing actually, when you think about it, that he was keen at the time to do this and y'know he was really 'there'. He's a great guitarist & a great musician.

Ivor Trueman: Did Fred Frith ever play in the Stars line-up? We got a letter from him in New York saying that he played once on stage with Syd.

Twink: He didn't play in Stars but I don't know whether he did play with Syd, it might have even been the Eddie Guitar Burns gig.

Ivor Trueman: Was there somebody else there then?

Twink: I honestly can't remember. It could well have been that though.

Ivor Trueman: There's a rumour that Stars also did See Emily Play in rehearsal.

Twink: Yeh, I think that's right, but I'm not sure.

Ivor Trueman: What happened to the proposed gig at Essex University?

Twink: We tried to do that without Syd, because Syd had said that he didn't want to play anymore-but we had that booked so we all went down there with the intention of playing, I'd brought another couple of musicians in to cover for Syd. But in fact the promoter didn't want us to play 'cos Syd wasn't there-so it was a bit of a disaster.

Ivor Trueman: Were you still going to play Syd's material?

Twink: No. It was going to be other stuff. But it was the wrong thing to do we should've pulled out. But we decided to go down there and it didn't work out.

Extract from (Twink (John Alder ) /Bevis Frond (Nick Saloman) Interview – May, 1989

Bevis: What was next musical thing you did after that?

Twink: I moved to Cambridge when I came back, and I worked initially with the Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band. The lead vocalist was a guy from San Francisco called Bruce Payne, who was the lead singer in the original American version of Hair. We just put this kind of rock band together, had lots of fun.

The Honk was playing bass with us (from Junior's Eyes) and we did a few shows, then I was playing with some other guys - we called the name of the band ZZZ; it was Alan Lee Shaw and Rod Latter who eventually became the Rings, at a later stage like about 6 years down the road, but anyway we had this little thing going in Cambridge called ZZZ. We did a few shows and then that's when Syd Barrett appears on the scene.

Bevis: Did you know Syd?

Twink: I Knew Syd from the Floyd and from Tomorrow days, because we used to do a lot of shows together in Europe and in the UK.

Bevis: So it wasn't a big surprise that you should get together – if Syd was planning to come out of the shadows again, it's not a kind of unlikely combination?

Twink: Not really because we were acquaintances - I wouldn't say we were mates, but we knew each other. One evening I was playing with the Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band, backing a guitarist called Eddie Guitar Burns - an American Blues guitarist. Jack Monk was playing bass with the Put Together Boogie Band at that time. Jack's wife Jenny used to be a girlfriend of mine and was also a former girlfriend of Syd's, so she knew us all. She invited Syd down that evening to the session, I think it was in the basement of Kings College or one of the Colleges anyway and Syd came down and brought his guitar along and jammed with us.

Bevis: That must have been nice!

Twink: It was great, it was wonderful just to see Syd there, after all the stuff that had been written about him. I had seen Syd perform on stage and actually do nothing, but I'd also seen Yoko Ono do some of her stuff on stage and for me what Syd did was absolutely pure art. I loved it when the Floyd were standing there and Syd was at the front of the stage with his guitar strapped around his neck just looking at the audience for an hour, I thought that was wonderful.

It was a day or two later that Jenny suggested that we go and see Syd, myself and Jack, and we should suggest to Syd that we form a band together. We all thought it was a great idea - I was particularly excited because Syd seemed to be coming out of something, and I always like to help some way if I can. So this sounded like a good idea and off we went to Syd's, three of us, Jenny, Jack and myself went round to Syd's house and knocked on his door. I think his mum came to the door and she said, "Syd there's someone at the door for you."

He came to the door and Jenny said, you know Twink and Jack, they want to form a band with you. Syd invited us in and asked if we'd like a cup of tea, and we had a cup of tea and some cakes and stuff and talked about putting a band together.

We started rehearsing in Syd's basement in his house the next day, took all my drums round there and just started jamming. Eventually we needed a bigger rehearsal place so we started rehearsing in my room in Cambridge - I was living at the back of a shop, it was big enough for rehearsals and we were knocking some of Syd's songs into shape.

Bevis: What kind of material were you doing?

Twink: We were doing all of Syd's stuff, old material like "Lucifer Sam".

Bevis: He hadn't written a batch of new songs or something?

Twink: Not that I'm aware of, although he was working on new stuff and painting a lot as well - he was a great artist you know, oil painting. He was standing there one day, I think it was the first day that we went down to his studio, and he had all these oil paintings that he'd done. There was this one big one and I was looking at it thinking how beautiful it was, and Jenny said "I think that's lovely, Syd" and he said "that's for you Jenny", he just gave it to her. All the time that I was working with him, it was a pleasure, it really was.

Nick: So you actually got The Stars, as they were called, together?

Twink: How the name came about was we'd all had the same idea, we'd all thought of the same name without discussing it at the same point in time. Jack Monk wanted to call it Jack Monk's Stars, I wanted to call it Twink's Stars and Syd wanted to call it Syd Barrett Stars, so we all agreed on Stars.

Bevis: It's easier than being called Twink, Syd and Jack Stars! So anyway, you actually did some gigs?

Twink: Yes, we did about half a dozen gigs. I think it was a pretty tight set but some of the gigs were kind of loose because we didn't have road managers, we just had people helping out and stuff. We played all around the Cambridge area, didn't go out of Cambridge, just places like coffee bars - and we played the Market Square on May Day with a huge audience, that was the most memorable gig. It was a good gig, it was really brilliant.

Bevis: A lot of fruit stall holders had a good time?!?

Twink: I think it was cleared that day for the May Day celebrations, but God there was such a crowd - it was unbelievable. Bevis: I've read somewhere that these gigs were actually recorded by someone?

Twink: Yes they were, they were definitely, there's no doubt about that, we know who it was but we don't know if he still has the tapes.

Bevis: I read it was something to do with Leonard Bernstein?

Twink: Yes, Leonard Bernstein's cousin Victor, he used to come around to the gigs, with a really professional machine recording all the shows - but I lost touch with him. He introduced me to Leonard Bernstein and all this other stuff, so I know the connection is real.

Bevis: The tapes must be somewhere around, one would think, unless he kind of wiped them out and put the Archers over it? I've never seen bootleg versions of them, so they obviously haven't materialised, because they'd be prime bootleg stuff?

Twink: They've never appeared, so obviously if they still exist they're untouched.

Bevis: Have you ever seen Syd again?

Twink: I've seen him, you know just bumping into him. I would like to just drop by and see him when I'm up in Cambridge. It would be nice to put The Stars together again. I've got Jack's number. Jack Monk is still around, but I don't know what he's doing now.

Bevis: So it all came to a rather abrupt end?

Twink: Yes, one of the shows we did at Cambridge Corn Exchange was very, very poor, everything went wrong for us that night, and there was somebody there from one of the music papers reviewing the show and they put a really bad review in, I think the NME or something. Syd saw the review, came round to my house the next day and said he didn't want to play any more - and that was it.

Pink Floyd Cheetah Club 1967 - Rare Flyer/Handbill

2010-02-01T19:41:00.001-08:00

This is the front and back of a handbill for one of Pink Floyd’s first concerts in the United States. This was a single night at the Cheetah Club in Venice, California on November 5th, 1967. The previous set of dates was November 2nd – 4th. This was Pink Floyd supporting Big Brother and the Holding Company at Winterland.

See, Pink Floyd missed the first week of the US Tour because if “work permit” problems. They returned to the Britain and did one off-gig as long as they were waiting around: 10-28-67 at Dunelm House, Durham University, Durham, Co. Durham, England.

This Cheetah show was the gig where Syd smeared the Mandies and Brylcream over his head and (reportedly) played a single chord. At the Cheetah, after a lengthy wait, the rest of Pink Floyd decided to take the stage except for Syd Barrett, who was left in the dressing room, manically trying to organize his, badly permed at Vidal Sassoon, hairstyle of the time. As the rest were tuning up, Syd, more out of desperation than anything, emptied the contents of a jar of Mandrax, broke the pills into tiny pieces and mixed the crumbs in with a full jar of Brylcream. He then poured the whole coagulated mass onto his head, picked up his Telecaster, and walked on stage.

As he was playing, the Mandrax/Brylcream combination started to run amok under the intense heat of the stage-lighting and dribbled down from his scalp so that it looked like his face was melting into a distorted wax effigy of flesh. Audience members supposedly screamed in horror. Needless to say, there was a wildly positive review in the LA Free Press newspaper. The reporter states that this gig was the only area appearance for Pink Floyd.

According Dr. Sam Hutt, peripatetic physician to the Underground, people were always looking for new ways to take acid. One of those methods was to mix acid with gel (grease, hair wax or whatever) and to put it in your hair. The acid would then enter your brain by sweating, stage lighting, etc... Another one was to put liquid LSD on the inside of your eyelid. Syd Barrett did that, according to Dr. Sam Hutt, with acid and gel on several occasions.

Dr. Hutt also tells that later on Syd tried it with Mandrax, (the famous Brylcream incident), on more than one occasion. According to Dr. Hutt, "I remember near the end with Syd him coming up and somebody had given him a bottle of Mandies. Mandies were the big bouncing around drug, dodgy indeed, and probably a good idea that they took them off the market. Barbiturates are just plain bastards, but Mandies have this awful seductiveness about them. Syd appeared on-stage with this jar of Brylcream, having crushed the Mandies into little pieces, mixing them up with the Brylcream and putting this mixture of Brylcream and broken Mandy tablets all over his hair. So when he went out on-stage the heat of the lights melted the Brylcream and it all started to drip down his face with these bits of Mandrax."

Tony Secunda (manager of the Move), stated he ran into Barrett on the loading dock of the Roundhouse at the last big UFO fest in September or 1967, and Syd had bits of Mandies stuck in his hair.

Supposedly, after showing up for a gig with his hair streaked with crushed Mandrax tablets, Syd was fired from the band that he had founded and was replaced by David Gilmour.

So, Syd Barrett had been fucking around, mixing LSD with Brylcream, for some time. He graduated to mixing Brylcream with crushed Mandrax tablets. The “Mandies” incident wasn’t an isolated event but a behavioral pattern of his drug abuse.

Syd Barrett Article - You Shone Like the Sun

2010-01-28T20:58:00.000-08:00

You Shone Like the Sun - Sunday October 6, 2002, The Observer

Syd Barrett was the prodigiously talented founder of Pink Floyd, but after just two years at the centre of the 60s psychedelic scene, he suffered a massive breakdown and has lived as a recluse ever since. In this extract from his candid new book, Tim Willis tracks him down and pieces together the story of rock's lost icon

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.
Pink Floyd's tribute to Syd Barrett on Wish You Were Here, 1975

The received wisdom is that you don't disturb him.The last interview he gave was in 1971, and from then until now, there are only about 20 recorded encounters of any kind. His family says it upsets him to discuss the days when he was the spirit of psychedelia, beautiful Syd Barrett, the leader of Pink Floyd. He doesn't recognise himself as the shambling visionary who, during an extended nervous breakdown exacerbated by his drug intake, made two solos LPs, Madcap and Barrett , which are as eternally eloquent as Van Gogh's cornfields. He doesn't answer to his 60s nickname now. He's called Roger Barrett, as he was born in 1946.

On a blistering hot day, pacing the cracked tarmac pavement in this suburban Cambridge street, I wonder if I can act honourably by him. When the DJ Nicky Horne doorstepped him in the 80s, Barrett said, 'Syd can't talk to you now.' Perhaps, in his own way, he was telling the truth. But I could talk to him as Roger; ask him if he was still painting, as reported. I could pass on regards from friends he knew before he became Syd.

Two housewives in the street say he ignores their 'Good mornings' when he goes out to buy his Daily Mail and changing brands of fags. Apart from his sister, they don't think he has any visitors - not even workmen. But they don't see why I shouldn't take my chances. It's been a few years since backpackers camped by his gate. 'He didn't open the door for them, and he probably won't for you.'

So I walk up the concrete path of his grey pebble-dashed semi, try the bell and discover that it's disconnected. At the front of the house, all the curtains are open. The side passage is closed to prying eyes by a high gate. I knock on the front door and, after a minute or two, look through the downstairs bay window. Where you might expect a television and a three-piece suite, Barrett has constructed a bare, white-walled workshop. Pushed against the window is a tattered pink sofa. On the hardboard tops, toolboxes are neatly stacked, flexes coiled, pens put away in a white mug.

Then, a sound in the hall. Has he come in from the back garden? Perhaps it needs mowing, like the front lawn - although, judging by the mound of weeds by the path, he's been tidying the beds today.

I knock again, and hear three heavy steps. The door flies open and he's standing there. He's stark naked except for a small, tight pair of bright-blue Y-fronts; bouncing, like the books say he always did, on the balls of his feet.

He bars the doorway with one hand on the jamb, the other on the catch. His resemblance to Aleister Crowley in his Cefalu period is uncanny; his stare about as welcoming...

In 1988, the News of the World quoted the writer Jonathan Meades who, 20 years before had visited a South Kensington flat that Barrett shared with a bright, druggie clique from his home town of Cambridge. 'This rather weird, exotic and mildly famous creature was living in this flat with these people who to some extent were pimping off him, both professionally and privately,' said Meades. 'There was this terrible noise. It sounded like the heating pipes shaking. I said, "What's that?" and [they] sort of giggled and said, "That's Syd having a bad trip. We put him in the linen cupboard."'

It's a common motif in the Barrett legend: the genius mistreated, forced to endure unspeakable mental anguish for the fun of his fairweather friends. But it's not necessarily true. There are some terrible tales from that flat in Egerton Court. But on this occasion, as flatmate Aubrey 'Po' Powell remembers it, 'Pete Townshend used to come there, and Mick and Marianne. It was an incredibly cool scene. Jonty Meades was a hanger-on, a straight cat just out of school. I'm sure we told him that version of events - but only to wind him up.'

Similarly, Barrett's lover and flatmate at the time, Lindsay Corner, denies the stories that he locked her in her room for three days, feeding her biscuits under the door, then smashed a guitar over her head. This time, however, three other residents swear he did: 'I remember pulling Syd off her,' says Po. And that's the trouble with the whole Barrett business. There are witness accounts by people who weren't there, those who were there disagree - half of them, being as totally off their faces as Barrett was, must have a question mark over their evidence. If you can remember the 60s, as they say...

By October 1966, Barrett was already well on the way to stardom. Pink Floyd supported the Soft Machine's experimental jazz-rock at the IT magazine launch party, a 2,000-strong happening in the disused Roundhouse theatre, featuring acid aplenty, Marianne Faithfull dressed as a nun in a pussy-pelmet, and Paul McCartney disguised as an Arab. There was a giant jelly and a Pop Art-painted Cadillac, a mini-cinema and a performance piece by Yoko Ono.

'All apparently very psychedelic,' sniffed The Sunday Times of the Floyd, thus encouraging hundreds of difficult teenagers to check out their new residency at the All Saints Hall in Ladbroke Grove.

Now once- or twice-weekly, the shows took time to take off. Barrett's friend Juliet Wright remembers an occasion when there were so few punters that Barrett movingly recited Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' soliloquy onstage. But soon ravers were crossing London for the lights and the weirdness, titillated by music-press adverts using Timothy Leary's phrase of 'Turn on, Tune in, Drop out'. With Barrett's nursery-rhyme freak-outs lasting 40 minutes each, the Floyd become known as Britain's first 'psychedelic' band.

Apart from playing a packed live schedule, the Floyd were in pursuit of a recording contract, rehearsing and making rough demos. Floyd gig promoter Joe Boyd, who had production experience, took them into a studio in late January. Barrett had written 'Arnold Layne' by then, and perfected the relentless riff of 'Interstellar Overdrive'. EMI - the same label as the Beatles - signed them up on the basis of these demos, nominating 'Arnold' as the first single. Barrett was delighted. 'We want to be pop stars,' he said, gladly grinning for cheesy publicity shots of the band high-kicking on the street. However, by the beginning of April, he was already railing in the music papers against record-company executives who were pressing him for more commercial material.

He was even less cheery by the end of the month. Six weeks before, 'Arnold Layne' had been released. This jolly tale of Barrett's childhood pal and later Pink Floyd member Roger Waters's mum's washing-line raider was helped up the charts by a ban from Radio London, due to its lyrics about transvestism. But Barrett had grown to hate playing note-perfect, three-minute renditions on stage. On 22 April it reached number 20, its highest position. On 29 April, Barrett was still playing it, at Joe Boyd's UFO club at dawn and on a TV show in Holland that evening. The band then drove back to London to headline at 3am in Britain's biggest happening ever, the '14 Hour Technicolor Dream' at the cavernous Alexandra Palace.

It was a druggy affair. Floyd's co-manager Peter Jenner was certainly tripping that night, and Barrett is said to have been. John Lennon, Brian Jones and Jimi Hendrix were among those who played to a 10,000-strong audience. There were 40 bands, dancers in strobe shows, a helter-skelter and a noticeboard made of lightbulbs which displayed messages like 'Vietnam Is A Sad Trip'. The Floyd came on as the sun's pink fingers touched the huge eastern window. Barry Miles, the 60s chronicler, reported: 'Syd's eyes blazed as his notes soared up into the strengthening light, as the dawn was reflected in his famous mirror-disc Telecaster [or rather, Esquire].' The truth was less rosy. Barrett was tired, so terribly tired.

There's a horrible ring of truth to Barrett's old college friend Sue Kingsford's contention that, in 1967, Barrett would regularly visit her in Beaufort Street, to score from a heavy acid dealer in the basement called 'Captain Bob'. It certainly sounds more likely than the rumours that Barrett's camp-followers were lacing his tea with LSD. Kingsford's boyfriend Jock says: 'Spiking was a heinous crime. You just wouldn't do it. There was a ritual to acid-taking those days - a peaceful scene, good sounds.'

Cambridge pal and future Floyd member David Gilmour reckons: 'Syd didn't need encouraging. If drugs were going, he'd take them by the shovelful.' Gilmour tends to agree with something fellow Camridgian and Floyd's bassist Waters once said that 'Syd was being fed acid.' But Sue Kingsford giggles: 'We were all feeding it to each other... It was a crazy time.' Despite her attachment to Jock, she had a one-night stand with Barrett. 'We were tripping,' she explains.

Ah, but what does she mean by tripping? Another of Barrett's Cambridge friends, Andrew Rawlinson, comments: 'Acid in those days was five times stronger than today's stuff. On a proper trip, you might take 250 micrograms. But a faction believed in taking 50mcg every day. [There was even a popular hippy-handbook on the subject.] On that, you could function - you might even appear normal - but you couldn't initiate much.'

Perhaps that was Barrett's way. But if he had actually taken a proper dose of acid at the Technicolor Dream then it was a fairly rare event. He simply didn't have the time for anything stronger than dope - which he did smoke in copious quantities. And maybe for a few Mandrax, the hypnotic tranquillisers which, if one can ride the first wave of tiredness, induced an opiate-like buzz when swallowed with alcohol. In legend, 'Mandies make you randy.' They may have appealed to Barrett because they were fashionable in the late 60s - or because they stopped his mind from spinning.

The band weren't worried by his behaviour, yet Syd was Syd. And if, by the end of May, people who hadn't seen Barrett for a while thought he had changed, his month had started well. On 12 May 1967 the band played the 'Games for May' concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Barrett wrote an early version of 'See Emily Play' for the event, which was essentially a normal concert bookended by some pretentious bits. The Floyd introduced a rudimentary quad sound-system, played taped noises from nature and had a liquid red light show. Mason was amplified sawing a log. Waters threw potatoes at a gong. The roadies pumped out thousands of soap bubbles and one of them, dressed as an admiral, threw daffodils into the stalls. The mess earnt the Floyd a ban from the hall and a favourable review from The Financial Times.

On 2 June, the Floyd played Joe Boyd's UFO after a two-month absence. Though the other band members were friendly, Boyd said Barrett 'just looked at me. I looked right in his eye and there was no twinkle, no glint... you know, nobody home.' Visiting London from France, David Gilmour dropped in on the recording of 'Emily': 'Syd didn't seem to recognise me and he just stared back,' he says. 'He was a different person from the one I'd last seen in October.' Was he on drugs, though? 'I'd done plenty of acid and dope - often with Syd - and that was different from how he had become.'

Touring the provinces in July, like the rest of the band, Barrett resented the beery mob baying for 'Arnold' and 'Emily'. The Floyd even wrote a white-noise number called 'Reaction in G' to express their feelings. But Barrett's inner reaction was harder to fathom. With his echo-machines on full tilt, he might detune his Fender until its strings were flapping, and hit one note all night. He might stand with his arms by his side, the guitar hanging from his neck, staring straight ahead, while the others performed as a three-piece.

Perhaps Barrett was making a statement. Perhaps he was pushing his experimental notions of 'music-of-the-moment' to new boundaries. Whatever else, he was now seriously mentally ill. And almost certainly he suspected it himself.

After a couple of further concert debacles, Jenner and his partner Andrew King were forced to act. Though their debut LP Piper at the Gates of Dawn was released on 4 August, Blackhill cancelled the next three weeks' gigs and arranged a holiday for Barrett and Corner on the Balearic island of Formentera. Hutt and Rick Wright would be chaperones, accompanied by their partners and Hutt's baby son. Waters and his wife would be in Ibiza. When Melody Maker learnt of this, their front-page splash read: 'Pink Floyd Flake Out'.

2 November 1967, US mini-tour. Pink Floyd were not prepared for the American way. They had expected the San Francisco scene to be similar to Britain's. Instead, they found themselves in humungous venues like the Winterland, supporting such blues bands as Big Brother and the Holding Company (led by Janis Joplin). The three nights they played with Joplin, they borrowed her lighting because their own seemed too weedy. The crowd weren't into feedback or English whimsy - acid-inspired or not. Barrett was off the map, and when he did play, it was to a different tune.

At the beginning of the week his hair had been badly permed at Vidal Sassoon, and he was distraught. The greased-up 'punk' style with which he'd been experimenting would be better. Waters remembers that in the dressing-room at the Cheetah Club in Santa Monica, Barrett suddenly called for a tin of Brylcreem and tipped the whole lot on his head. As the gunk melted, it slipped down his face until Barrett resembled 'a gutted candle'. Producing a bottle of Mandrax, he crushed them into the mess before taking the stage. David Gilmour says he 'still can't believe that Syd would waste good Mandies'. But a lighting man called John Marsh, who was also there, confirms the story. Girls in the front row, seeing his lips and nostrils bubbling with Brylcreem, screamed. He looked like he was decomposing onstage. Faced with this farce, some of the band and crew abandoned themselves to drink, drugs, groupies and the sights. When they arrived in Los Angeles, Barrett had forgotten his guitar, which caused much cost and fuss. 'It's great to be in Las Vegas,' he said to a record company man in Hollywood. He fell into a swimming-pool and left his wet clothes behind.

The Floyd survived the tour by the skin of their teeth. On TV's Pat Boone Show, where they did 'Apples and Oranges', Barrett was happy to mime in rehearsals - but live he ignored the call to 'Action' four or five times, leaving Waters to fill in. Asked what he liked in the after-show chat, Barrett replied... after a dreadful pause... 'America!', which made the audience whoop. On American Bandstand and the Perry Como Show, he did not move his lips, to speak or mime.
Finishing their commitments on the West Coast, the band began thinking of how to replace or augment him. The next day, they were in Holland, handing Barrett notes in the hope that he would talk to them. The day after, they were bus-bound on a British package tour with Hendrix, the Move, Amen Corner, the Nice and others, playing two 17-minute sets a night for three weeks, with three days off in middle.Though he had worked harder, the schedule was too much for Barrett. Onstage, he was unable to function. Sometimes he failed to show up and the Nice's Dave O'List stood in for him. Once, Jenner had to stop him escaping by train.

Barrett did play occasional blinders through out the autumn of 1967, but these instances were as unpredictable as spring showers, and the band's hopes that he might 'return' dimmed. The Floyd stumbled through to Christmas, while the three other band members hatched a plan: they would ask David Gilmour to join the group to cover lead guitar and vocals while their sick colleague could do what he wanted, so long as he stood onstage.

Barrett couldn't care less, and Gilmour, broke, bandless and driving a van for a living - was known to be not only a terrific guitarist but also a wonderful mimic of musical parts. Drummer Nick Mason had already sounded him out when they ran into each other at a gig in Soho. On 3 January 1968, Gilmour accepted a try-out. The band had a week booked in a north London rehearsal hall before going back on the road.

Four gigs followed in the next fortnight, with Barrett contributing little. He looks happy enough in a cine-clip from the time, joining in with the lads for a tap-dance in a dressing-room. 'But in reality,' says Gilmour, 'he was rather pathetic.' On the day of the fifth gig the others were driving south from a business meeting in central London. As they drove, one of them - no one remembers who - asked, 'Shall we pick up Syd?' 'Fuck it,' said the others. 'Let's not bother.' Barrett, who probably didn't notice that night, would never work again with the band that he had crafted in his image. And they never quite put him out of their minds.

Not that their minds were made up. Though the Floyd would go on to huge fame and fortune, at the time they believed they probably had a few months left of milking psychedelia before ignominious disbandment. Barrett, as Waters says, was the 'goose that had laid the golden egg'. Now their frontman had become such a liability on tour, they would rather appear without their main attraction than risk his involvement.

However, Barrett still had the band's schedule. Waters remembers him turning up with his guitar at 'an Imperial College gig, I think, and he had to be very firmly told that he wasn't coming on stage with us'. At the Middle Earth, wearing all his Chelsea threads, he positioned himself in front of the low stage and stared at Gilmour throughout his performance. Now he had to watch his old college friend playing his licks. Undoubtedly, he felt hurt by this treatment.

Though the money from Piper came rolling in, Barrett's work went completely to pot. Jenner took him into the Abbey Road studios several times between May and July 1968, bringing various musicians and musical friends to help out, but achieved next to nothing.

Barrett was all over the place - forgetting to bring his guitar to sessions, breaking equipment to EMI's displeasure. Sometimes he couldn't even hold his plectrum. He was in a state, and had little new material. Jenner had the experience neither as a person not as a producer to coax anything out of him. By August, he and King were having less and less to do with Barrett - which could equally be said of the other lodgers in Egerton Court.

According to flatmate Po, 'Syd could still be very funny and lucid, but he could also be uncommunicative. Staring. Heavy, you know?'

In the spring of 1968, Roger Walters had talked to the hip psychiatrist RD Laing. He had even dri ven Barrett to an appointment: 'Syd wouldn't get out. What can you do?' In the intervening months, however, Barrett became less hostile to the idea of treatment. So Gale placed a call to Laing and Po booked a cab. But with the taxi-meter ticking outside, Barrett refused to leave the flat.

By the autumn of 68, he was homeless. Periodically he returned to Cambridge, where his mother Win fretted, urged him to see a doctor, and blindly hoped for the best. In London, he crashed on friends' floors - and began the midnight ramblings which would continue for two years.

By the mid 70s, the Syd Barrett Appreciation Society had folded, due to 'lack of Syd'. But he wasn't quite invisible. In 1977, ex-girlfriend Gala Pinion was in a supermarket on the Fulham Road. 'Where are you going, then?' he said. 'I'm going to buy you a drink.' They went for a drink, and he invited her back to his flat. Once there, 'He dropped his trousers and pulled out his cheque book,' says Pinion. 'How much do you want?' he asked. 'Come on, get your knickers down.'

Gala made her excuses and left, never to see him again. However, even as an invisible presence, he loomed large. The previous year, punk rock had appeared and the King's Road had become heartland. Without success, the Sex Pistols, their manager Malcolm McLaren and their art director Jamie Reid tried to contact Barrett, to ask him to produce their first album. The Damned hoped he would produce their second, realised it was impossible and settled for the Floyd's Nick Mason ('Who didn't have a clue', according to the band's bassist Captain Sensible).

Barrett continued to do as little and spend as much as ever. Bankrupt, he left London for Win's new Cambridge home in 1981.

From then until now, only a handful of encounters with Barrett have been reported first-hand, but some facts have come to light. An operation on his ulcer meant that Barrett lost much of his excess weight. Win thought he should keep himself occupied, so Roger Waters's mother Mary found him a gardening job with some wealthy friends. At first he prospered but, during a thunderstorm, he threw down his tools and left.

By this time, he was just calling himself 'Roger'. In 1982, his finances restored, he booked into the Chelsea Cloisters for a few weeks, but found he disliked London. He heard the voice of freedom and he followed - walking back to Cambridge, where he was found on Win's doorstep - and leaving his dirty laundry behind.

The circumstances of his final return to Cambridge were rightly interpreted by his family as a 'cry for help' and he agreed to spend a spell in Fulbourne psychiatric hospital. (It has often been said, on the grounds that he has an 'odd' mind, rather than a sick one.) He continued for a while as an outpatient at Fulbourne, with no trouble.

Barrett has never been sectioned. He has never had to take drugs for his mental health, except after one or two uncontrollable fits of anger, when he was admitted to Fulbourne and administered Largactyl. However, he has received other treatments. In the early 80s, he spent two years in a charitable institution, Greenwoods, in Essex. At this halfway house for lost souls, he joined in group and other forms of therapy, and was very content. But after an imagined slight, he walked out - again all the way to Win's house. The increasingly frail Win moved in with her daughter Roe and her husband Paul Breen, according to Mary Waters, 'because she was so scared of his outbursts'.

Some people think Barrett suffers from Asperger's Syndrome. It certainly seems he can't be bothered to think about anything that doesn't directly affect him. He kept rabbits and cats for a while but forgot to feed them, so they had to be sent to more caring homes. Thereafter, the only intimate contacts he maintained were with Win and Roe. Otherwise, he seems to have lost the habit - and become wary - of human interaction, limiting himself to encounters with shop assistants and his sympathetic GP, whose surgery has become a second home. He was - and is still - in and out of hospital for his ulcers.

Paul Breen revealed that his brother-in-law was 'painting again', and meeting his mother in town for shopping trips. It was a 'very, very ordinary lifestyle,' said Breen, but not reclusive: 'I think the word "recluse" is probably emotive. It would be truer to say that he enjoys his own company now, rather than that of others.'

As more years went by, other news leaked out. Barrett was collecting coins. He was learning to cook, and could stuff a mean pepper. On the death of Win in 1991, he destroyed all his old diaries and art books - and also chopped down the front garden's fence and tree, and burnt them (though more in a spirit of renewal than grief). He had been a great support to Roe in her mourning, but hadn't attended the funeral because he 'wouldn't know what to do'. He still wrote down his thoughts all the time. He still painted - big works, six foot by four - but destroyed any that he didn't consider perfect, and stacked the rest against the wall. And sometimes he was unable to finish them, because obsessive fans had climbed over his back fence, and stolen the brushes from the table outside, where he worked.

A few titbits, to finish. In 1998, Barrett was diagnosed as a B-type diabetic - a genetic condition - and was prescribed a regime of medication and diet to which he is sporadically faithful. His eyesight will inevitably become 'tunnelled' as a result - sooner, rather than later, unless he regularly takes his tablets. However, he is far from 'blind', as reported on the more excitable websites.

For Christmas 2001, Barrett gave his sister a painting. For his birthday in January 2002, she brought him a new stereo, because he likes to listen to the Stones, Booker-T and the classical composers. However, he evinced no interest in the recent Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd (on which nearly a fifth of the tracks are written by him, despite the fact that he only recorded with the band for less than a 30th of its lifespan). To coincide with the album's release, the BBC screened an Omnibus documentary about him, which he watched round at Roe's house. He is reported to have liked hearing 'Emily' and, particularly, seeing his old landlord Mike Leonard - who he called his 'teacher'. Otherwise, he thought the film 'a bit noisy'.

'Mister Barrett?'

'Yes.'

His voice is deeper than on any recordings, more cockneyfied than on the TV interviews he gave in 67. Behind him, the hall is clean but bare, the floorboards mostly covered in linoleum. I mention someone dear to him, from his childhood. She'd be coming to Cambridge in a couple of weeks, and wondered if Barrett might like a visit?

'No.'

He stands and stares, less embarrassed than me by the vision of him in his underpants.

'So is everything all right?'

'Yeah.'

'You're still painting?'

'No, I'm not doing anything,' he says (which is true - he's talking to me). 'I'm just looking after this place for the moment.'

'For the moment? Are you thinking of moving on?'

'Well, I'm not going to stay here for ever.' He pauses a split second, delivers an unexpected 'Bye-bye', and slams the door.

I'm left like others before me, trying to work out just what he meant. 'I'm not going to stay here for ever.' Does he just mean, 'One day, I might move house.' Or is it a nod to the fate that awaits us all? A coded message that he may re-emerge into the world - perhaps show new work or perform? And is opening the door in your underpants an unwitting demonstration of self-confidence, or an eccentricity, or worse? I retrace my steps, cross the main road to my car where I write a note that I hope is tactful: 'Dear Mr Barrett, I'm sorry to have disturbed your sunbathing. I didn't have time to mention that I'm writing a book on you...' I plead my case, give my telephone number, and return down the cracked pavement.

As I reach the gate, I see him weeding in the front corner of the garden, on his knees.

'Hi,' I say. 'I've written you a note.'

'Huh,' he says, not looking up, throwing roots behind him.

'May I leave it?' He straightens and stares into my eyes, but doesn't answer. He's wearing khaki shorts now, and gardening gloves, which aren't really suited to receiving the note - and I would be tempting fate to rest it on the side of the wheelbarrow which he has bought with him.

'Shall I put it through the letterbox?'

'It's nothing to do with me,' he says. So I do.

'Nice day,' I say, on leaving. 'Goodbye.'

He doesn't reply, and I never hear from him.

Syd Barrett interview - Melody Maker, Mar 27 1971, Michael Watts

2010-01-28T20:43:00.000-08:00

Syd Barrett interview - Melody Maker, Mar 27 1971, Michael Watts

Syd Barrett came up to London last week and talked in the office of his music publisher, his first press interview for about a year. His hair is cut very short now, almost like a skinhead. Symbolic? Of what, then? He is very aware of what is going on around him, but his conversation is often obscure; it doesn't always progress in linear fashion. He is painfully conscious of his indeterminate role in the music world: 'I've never really proved myself wrong. I really need to prove myself right,' he says.

Maybe he has it all figured. As he says in 'Octopus,' 'the madcap laughed at the man on the border.'

Watts: What have you been doing since you left The Floyd, apart from making your two albums?

Syd: Well, I'm a painter, I was trained as a painter...I seem to have spent a little less time painting than I might've done...you know, it might have been a tremendous release getting absorbed in painting. Any way, I've been sitting about and writing. The fine arts thing at college was always too much for me to think about. What I was more involved in was being successful at arts school. But it didn't transcend the feeling of playing at UFO and those sort of places with the lights and that, the fact that the group was getting bigger and bigger.

I've been at home in Cambridge with my mother. I've got lots of, well, children in a sense. My uncle...I've been getting used to a family existence, generally. Pretty unexciting. I work in a cellar, down in a cellar.

Watts: What would you sooner be a painter or a musician?

Syd: Well, I think of me being a painter eventually.

Watts: Do you see the last two years as a process of getting yourself together again?

Syd: No. Perhaps it has something to do with what I felt could be better as regards music, as far as my job goes generally, because I did find I needed a job. I wanted to do a job. I never admitted it because I'm a person who doesn't admit it

Watts: There were stories you were going to go back to college, or get a job in a factory.

Syd: Well, of course, living in Cambridge I have to find something to do. I suppose I could've done a job. I haven't been doing any work. I'm not really used to doing quick jobs and then stopping, but I'm sure it would be possible.

Watts: Tell me about The Floyd how did they start?

Syd: Roger Waters is older than I am. He was at the architecture school in London. I was studying at Cambridge I think it was before I had set up at Camberwell (art college). I was really moving backwards and forwards to London. I was living in Highgate with him, we shared a place there, and got a van and spent a lot of our grant on pubs and that sort of thing. We were playing Stones numbers. I suppose we were interested in playing guitars I picked up playing guitar quite quickly...I didn't play much in Cambridge because I was from the art school, you know. But I was soon playing on the professional scene and began to write from there.

Watts: Your writing has always been concerned purely with songs rather than long instrumental pieces like the rest of The Floyd, hasn't it?

Syd: Their choice of material was always very much to do with what they were thinking as architecture students. Rather unexciting people, I would've thought, primarily. I mean, anybody walking into an art school like that would've been tricked maybe they were working their entry into an art school.

But the choice of material was restricted, I suppose, by the fact that both Roger and I wrote different things. We wrote our own songs, played our own music. They were older, by about two years, I think. I was 18 or 19. I don't know that there was really much conflict, except that perhaps the way we started to play wasn't as impressive as it was to us, even, wasn't as full of impact as it might've been. I mean, it was done very well, rather than considerably exciting. One thinks of it all as a dream.

Watts: Did you like what they were doing the fact that the music was gradually moving away from songs like 'See Emily Play'?

Syd: Singles are always simple...all the equipment was battered and worn all the stuff we started out with was our own, the guitars were our own property. The electronic noises were probably necessary. They were very exciting. That's all really. The whole thing at the time was playing on stage.

Watts: Was it only you who wanted to make singles?
Syd: It was probably me alone, I think. Obviously, being a pop group one wanted to have singles. I think 'Emily' was fourth in the hits.

Watts: Why did you leave them?

Syd: It wasn't really a war. I suppose it was really just a matter of being a little offhand about things. We didn't feel there was one thing which was gonna make the decision at the minute. I mean, we did split up, and there was a lot of trouble. I don't think the Pink Floyd had any trouble, but I had an awful scene, probably self-inflicted, having a mini and going all over England and things. Still...

Watts: Do you think the glamour went to your head at all?

Syd: I don't know. Perhaps you could see it as something went to one's head, but I don't know that it was relevant.

Watts: There were stories you had left because you had been freaked out by acid trips.

Syd: Well, I don't know, it don't seem to have much to do with the job. I only know the thing of playing, of being a musician, was very exciting. Obviously, one was better off with a silver guitar with mirrors and things all over it than people who ended up on the floor or anywhere else in London.

The general concept, I didn't feel so conscious of it as perhaps I should. I mean, one's position as a member of London's young people's, I dunno what you'd call it underground wasn't it, wasn't necessarily realised and felt, I don't think, especially from the point of view of groups.

I remember at UFO one week one group, then another week another group, going in and out, making that set-up, and I didn't think it was as active as it could've been. I was really surprised that UFO finished. I only read last week that itUs not finished. Joe Boyd did all the work on it and I was really amazed when he left. What we were doing was a microcosm of the whole sort of philosophy and it tended to be a little bit cheap. The fact that the show had to be put together; the fact that we weren't living in luxurious places with luxurious things around us. I think I would always advocate that sort of thing the luxurious life. It's probably because I don't do much work.

Watts: Were you not at all involved in acid, then, during its heyday among rock bands?

Syd: No. It was all, I suppose, related to living in London. I was lucky enough...I've always thought of going back to a place where you can drink tea and sit on the carpet. I've been fortunate enough to do that. All that time...you've just reminded me of it. I thought it was good fun. I thought The Soft Machine were good fun. They were playing on 'Madcap,' except for Kevin Ayers.

Watts: Are you trying to create a mood in your songs, rather than tell a story?

Syd: Yes, very much. It would be terrific to do much more mood stuff. They're very pure, you know, the words...I feel I'm jabbering. I really think the whole thing is based on me being a guitarist and having done the last thing about two or three years ago in a group around England and Europe and The States, and then coming back and hardly having done anything, so I don't really know what to say. I feel, perhaps, I could be claimed as being redundant almost. I don't feel active, and that my public conscience is fully satisfied.

Watts: Don't you think that people still remember you?

Syd: Yes, I should think so.

Watts: Then why don't you get some musicians, go on the road and do some gigs?

Syd: I feel though the record would still be the thing to do. And touring and playing might make that impossible to do.

Watts: Don't you fancy playing live again after two years?

Syd: Yes, very much.

Watts: What's the hang-up then? Is it getting the right musicians around you?

Syd: Yeah.

Watts: What would be of primary importance whether they were brilliant musicians or whether you could get on with them?

Syd: I'm afraid I think I'd have to get on with them. They'd have to be good musicians. I think they'd be difficult to find. They'd have to be lively.

Watts: Would you say, therefore, you were a difficult person to get on with?

Syd: No. Probably my own impatience is the only thing, because it has to be very easy. You can play guitar in your canteen, you know, your hair might be longer, but there's a lot more to playing than travelling around universities and things.

Watts: Why don't you go out on your own playing acoustic? I think you might be very successful.

Syd: Yeah...that's nice. Well, I've only got an electric. I've got a black Fender which needs replacing. I haven't got any blue jeans...I really prefer electric music.

Watts: What records do you listen to?

Syd: Well, I haven't bought a lot. I've got things like Ma Rainey recently. Terrific, really fantastic.

Watts: Are you going into the blues, then, in your writing?

Syd: I suppose so. Different groups do different things...one feels that Slade would be an interesting thing to hear, you know.

Watts: Will there be a third solo album?

Syd: Yeah. I've got some songs in the studio, still. And I've got a couple of tapes. It should be 12 singles, and jolly good singles. I think I shall be able to produce this one myself. I think it was always easier to do that.

Rare Floyd rehearsal photo

2010-01-22T05:54:00.001-08:00

Pink Floyd rehearsing at Broadhurst Gardens, West Hampstead, London, early 1967. (From March 2010 edition of 'MOJO' magazine. Big feature on Syd and 'The Madcap Laughs' album, Syd is on the cover too!)

Pink Floyd - Corporal Clegg Videos

2010-01-20T07:58:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple of promotional videos for this.

Pink Floyd Corporal Clegg lyrics

Corporal Clegg had a wooden leg
He won it in the war In nineteen forty four.

Corporal Clegg had a medal too
In orange, red, and blue
He found it in the zoo.

Dear, dear were they really sad for me?
Dear, dear will they really laugh at me?

Mrs. Clegg, you must be proud of him.
Mrs. Clegg, another drop of gin.
Corporal Clegg umbrella in the rain
He's never been the same
No one is to blame

Corporal Clegg recieved his medal in a dream
From Her Majesty the queen
His boots were very clean.
Mrs. Clegg, you must be proud of him
Mrs. Clegg, another drop of gin?

Corporal Clegg
Corporal Clegg

Pink Floyd Astronomy Domine - Belgium 1968

2010-01-19T18:04:00.000-08:00

Pink Floyd Astronomy Domine - Belgium 1968. Yeah, it's without Syd but it's still great!

Pink Floyd Bike - Video, Lyrics, Joe Boyd Comment

2010-01-18T16:10:00.000-08:00

Joe Boyd Remembers Syd and Bike:

Question: The recordings that [subsequent Pink Floyd producer] Norman Smith made would there be any way you would have recorded the material differently?Joe Boyd: I don't think so. I think "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" was a very good record. I think "Bike" is the best track they ever did. So even though I was pissed off at the time, I was very gratified when the band had to come back to Sound Techniques and use my engineer to get the sound they wanted for "See Emily Play." I was expecting the LP, when they finally produced it, to be something that I would not like or something. In fact, I thought it was pretty good. It's very hard to say.

Pink Floyd Bike lyrics:

I've got a bike
You can ride it if you like
It's got a basket
A bell that rings
And things to make it look good
I'd give it to you if I could
But I borrowed it

You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world
I'll give you anything
Everything if you want things

I've got a cloak
It's a bit of a joke
There's a tear up the front
It's red and black
I've had it for months
If you think it could look good
Then I guess it should

You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world
I'll give you anything
Everything if you want things

I know a mouse
And he hasn't got a house
I don't know why
I call him Gerald
He's getting rather old
But he's a good mouse

You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world
I'll give you anything
Everything if you want things

I've got a clan of gingerbread men
Here a man
There a man
Lots of gingerbread men
Take a couple if you wish
They're on the dish

You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world
I'll give you anything
Everything if you want things

I know a room full of musical tunes
Some rhyme
Some ching
Most of them are clockwork
Let's go into the other room and make them work

Live at the Star Club, Copenhagen, Sept 1967

2010-01-18T14:12:00.001-08:00

This pic showed up in my email today. I'd not seen it before and shows Pink Floyd performing at the Star Club in Copenhagen. They played here for 3 days in September 1967, the 11th, 12th and 13th. The 13th was recorded and is one of the 2 gigs available on 'Have You Got It Yet?', so this photo could show that gig, or it could have been taken on one of the other 2 dates.

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (40th Anniversary Edition)

2010-01-12T17:09:00.000-08:00

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (40th Anniversary Edition) - I just got my copy! Yeah, I know I'm tardy but better late than never. I give this package my THUMBS UP!

The restoration of the sound is complete and fantastic. The Engineers let the compression alone it seems. The full dynamic range is there. One can hear the nuances very well. It's a joy.

This package also sports the Fart Enjoy booklet. It's actually pretty cool and one can see Syd Barrett's amazing lyrical skills in the making.

The third disc is the real treat here. Again, there are the definitive versions of the singles along with the French EP Mix of Interstellar Overdrive. We then get unreleased versions of Apples and Oranges, Matilda Mother & Interstellar Overdrive. Matilda Mother & Interstellar Overdrive are completely different versions! Syd would wipe the Mandrax and Bryll Cream out of his face and play completely different versions! This is why we must get everything that they have out!

This package is quality all of the way. It’s a must for every Pink Floyd fan. The best part is that it’s available on Amazon for around fifteen bucks! Search: Piper at the Gates of Dawn 3 disc set.

Here’s the track listing:

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn [3-CD Deluxe Edition]
Disc 1
1 Astronomy Domine Mono Version 4:15
2 Lucifer Sam Mono Version 3:09
3 Matilda Mother Mono Version 3:05
4 Flaming Mono Version 2:46
5 Pow R. Toc H. Mono Version 4:24
6 Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk Mono Version 3:07
7 Interstellar Overdrive Mono Version 9:41
8 The Gnome Mono Version 2:14
9 Chapter 24 Mono Version 3:53
10 The Scarecrow Mono Version 2:10
11 Bike Mono Version 3:27

Disc 2
1 Astronomy Domine Stereo 4:12
2 Lucifer Sam Stereo 3:07
3 Matilda Mother Stereo 3:08
4 Flaming Stereo 2:46
5 Pow R. Toc H. Stereo 4:26
6 Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk Stereo 3:05
7 Interstellar Overdrive Stereo 9:40
8 The Gnome Stereo 2:13
9 Chapter 24 Stereo 3:42
10 The Scarecrow Stereo 2:11
11 Bike Stereo 3:24

Disc 3
1 Arnold Layne Mono Version 2:55
2 Candy and a Currant Bun Mono Version 2:45
3 See Emily Play Mono Version 2:54
4 Apples and Oranges Mono Version 3:05
5 Paintbox Mono Version 3:45
6 Interstellar Overdrive Mono Version / Edit 5:15
7 Apples and Oranges previously unreleased / Stereo Version 3:11
8 Matilda Mother previously unreleased / Alternate Version 3:09
9 Interstellar Overdrive previously unreleased / Take 6 5:03

New Pink Floyd Oude-Ahoy Hallen 11/13/67 Pictures & Footage

2010-01-11T16:21:00.000-08:00

Check out this new batch of Pink Floyd Oude-Ahoy stuff! Wow! This show has been bootlegged for years. It's really cool to get an idea of what it was like.

Pink Floyd Oude-Ahoy 11/13/67 setlist:

Reaction In G
Pow R. Toc H
Scream Thy Last Scream
Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun (announced as "Old Woman With A Casket")
Interstellar Overdrive

2 rare 'Junkyard' photo shoot pics of Syd

2010-01-06T08:46:00.001-08:00

These are photos I'd not seen before. They were published in an NME annual in 1975 along with an article by Nick Kent. They are from the 'Junkyard' photo shoot and, at a guess, are probably crops from whole band photos that haven't surfaced yet.

2010 Memorial Day Cosmic Campout!

2010-01-01T12:03:00.000-08:00

Be there or be square:
http://tinyurl.com/yfu2n9a

The above URL has pictures and movies of where we will be. It's going to be a hoot!

Pink Floyd 1968 - Shrine Exposition, Los Angeles Concert Ads

2009-12-30T20:55:00.000-08:00

Newspaper concert ads for Pink Floyd 1968, Shrine Exposition, LA, CA. July 26-27.

Whew, Blue Cheer, Pink Floyd and Jeff Beck on the same bill. Those were the days.

14 Hour Technicolor Dream Poster

2009-12-26T09:41:00.000-08:00

Here's a true psychedelic rarity--an original poster for the legendary "14 Hour Technicolor Dream" concert in London on April 29, 1967. This multi artist event, featuring many poets, artists and musicians, is referred to in Wikipedia as "one of the most infamous acid freak outs ever to take place in London."

Performers included Syd Barrett & Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, Pete Townsend of The Who, The Pretty Things, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, The Creation, The Move, Social Deviants (The Deviants), Alexis Korner, Graham Bond, Denny Laine, Savoy Brown, John Fahey, The Purple Gang, The Flies, Savoy Brown, Yoko Ono (she snipped the clothes off a girl, onstage) and many many more. John Lennon was in attendance as well.

UK website ukrockfestivals.com says it was "the closest London ever got to duplicating the infamous Acid Tests that Ken Kesey & the Merry Pranksters held in California in the mid-60's..."

Pink Floyd Zabriskie Point

2009-12-23T22:14:00.000-08:00

Pink Floyd Zabriskie Point Explosion /(come in number 51, your time is up), re: Pink Floyd's originally called "Careful with That Axe Eugene" was included in his album "Ummagumma" released the 17 December of 1968.

The group re-recorded the track, and renamed it, in the key of E minor instead of the original D minor, in 1969 for the Antonioni's Zabriskie Point film. The Pink Floyd tracks, "Heart Beat, Pig Meat", "Come In Number 51",the somewhat country-like "Crumbling Land", are like much of the music that followed the immediate departure of Syd Barrett. Rather spacy and drifting.

«The explosion apparently represents the psychological separation from corporate greed, superficiality, and racial injustice.»
New York Times - February 10, 1970

Pink Floyd - Hyde Park 07/1970

2009-12-23T05:44:00.000-08:00

A selection of slides taken of Pink Floyd playing at the Hyde Park Free Concert in 07/1970. These are possibly the only pictures of the event available that shows the choir and brass section preparing for 'Atom Heart Mother'. Glenn Povey has used a selection of the slides in his two books, 'In the Flesh' and more recently 'Echoes'. The music is from the BBC Radio 'In Concert' show of July 1970.

The second video is of Roger Waters playing Hyde Park. He does Shine on You Crazy Diamond.

Syd Barrett's Gear

2009-12-21T21:23:00.000-08:00

Syd Barrett’s Gear
From 'Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd: Lost in the Woods' by Julian Palacios (Plexus, March 2010)

By the end of 1966, Barrett used a 50-watt Selmer Truvoice Treble n’ Bass 50 Mk II with matching ‘All-Purpose 50’ Speaker Cabinet with 2X12 speakers. Onstage, the Pink Floyd used Selmer Goliath cabinets and Stereomaster guitar amplifier heads, with four Selmer TV/100 PA amplifier heads, for a tremendous roar.

A perfect gig amp with clean tone, Syd’s Selmer combo excelled at two things – treble and bass. Channels had clean tone to about four on the volume dial. Turning volume up, bass channel had vigorous crunch, with blues and jazz overtones. A bit higher and Syd’s dark expansive proto-metal sound rumbled through. Even with treble control down, treble channel had knife’s edge sharpness. As Syd turned treble higher and pushed the amplifier hard, he got into extreme noise and feedback. His Selmer amp had an effects loop wired to pre-amp valve, an echo send return on the back Syd utilised with Binson and a Selmer Buzz-Tone fuzz pedal.

An early solid-state distortion unit Selmer introduced in September 1966, a three-stage transistor circuit gave Buzz-Tone much smoother distortion than other fuzz pedals. Barrett was an expert manipulator of effects, used with restraint. Barrett’s Buzz-Tone fuzz had stinging bite at high volume, with great sustain. (‘buzz a while...sting!’)

Syd put Buzz-Tone on maximum setting then rolled guitar volume knob down for overdriven parts and back for distortion. Like Gilmour or Hendrix, Syd set fuzz and volume at maximum level and used guitar volume to control gain and fuzz. Fuzz pedal boosted and clipped sine wave input from guitar into square waveform. Buzz-Tone’s germanium transistors were notorious for wonky tone in hot clubs, an interstellar overdose of flat sine waves. As Buzz-Tone clipped, intermodulation caused signal heavy with extra harmonics, often distorted.

Syd’s Esquire proved versatile for every gig. With all 21 frets clear of the cutaway, Syd howled right up the neck with superb sustain. The single coil bridge pickup was heavy, with strong mid-range, and much power at high volume. Playing live, Syd flicked the three-tone selector switch, with resistors and capacitors altering frequency response.

In position one, or bridge-setting, tone control was disconnected and wired direct to output jack. Here, Syd got crisp treble lead tones, setting Selmer at four or five gain, for leads more scalding than Telecaster. In position two, standard volume and tone control arrangement allowed Syd to darken and brighten passages. Turning tone knob to the centre gave Syd good Telecaster-like mid-range to vamp while Rick soloed. Syd could mellow tone a bit by strumming past where neck pickup would be, or diving to the bridge with Zippo flashing across the bottom E string for his signature sustain violin-like tone. In position three, tone control was again disengaged.

A unique Fender tone capacitor rolled off treble and some bass, producing muted dark tone the rhythm player in Syd thrived on. Here he could drop into Waters’ bass range and thicken rhythm.

Esquire enthusiasts rave about so-called ‘cocked wah’ in the third position, where signal highs and lows swooped and dipped for pronounced hard-hitting tone. Barrett relied on barré chords to reduce dissonance, damping with his thumb over E string. Applying effects to amplified signal after distortion by preamp, echo and fuzz sounded better. Syd tweaked Binson volume input for overdrive and ran the loop in parallel with dry amp signal, boosting Binson’s maelstrom undertow as signal waned. Syd would raise volume on fading echoes, capturing decay, decentring rhythm. Using different pedals in effects chain, plugging ends into the amplifier, Syd got repetitive feedback signal he modulated with effects; filtering with Binson, adding gain with Buzz-Tone; modulating wave forms with swell.

By the Games For May concert, Syd was experimenting with a Fender Stratocaster and Vox Tone-Bender pedal, also using a foot switch to tap in and out of Binson echoes. By the end of the summer, Syd was further using a Selmer wah pedal, one of the first British guitarists to do so.

The Roundhouse "Psychedelicamania" December 31, 1966, The Who, The Move with Pink Floyd and Opening Up.

2009-12-20T14:51:00.000-08:00

The Roundhouse "Psychedelicamania" December 31, 1966, The Who, The Move with Pink Floyd opening up. The Move ended their set by smashing up television sets with fire axes. Floyd played a shifting seventy five minute version of "Interstellar Overdrive." Townshend was particularly unhappy at playing a psychedelic event with strobe lights in his face and the art house crowd so by the time of "My Generation" he reduced his Rickenbacker to his component atoms.

A large and interesting advert was placed in Melody Maker on the 24th and the 31st to promote the event, which was scheduled from "10.00 pm till dawn". The Daily Mail newspaper attended both gigs, and published an article warning of "pop above the danger level".

Teenagers celebrating the New Year at two psychedelic pop music sessions in London were risking permanent damage to the ears. The music and light were arranged to create the psychedelic sensations similar to those experienced by taking the drug LSD. The lowest sound level in both clubs was 90 decibels on the edge of the dance floor. The highest was a steady 110 near the loudspeaker, where 20 to 30 young people were clustered in dazed immobility. The Pink Floyd group occasionally reached 120 at the "Freak-out". Nick Jones reviewed the gig in detail for Melody Maker on 7 January of the following year. Of the Floyd he wrote how 'on stage the Pink Floyd, The Who, and The Move each attempted to excite the audience into some positive action. The Pink Floyd have a promising sound, and some very groovy picture slides which attract far more attention than the group, as they merge, blossom, burst, grow, divide and die.

BTW, this poster is an artist's creation of what such a poster might have looked like.

'Pow R Toc H' video

2009-12-17T04:45:00.000-08:00

Here's another video that was prepared for, and shown at, the Manchester Syd Barrett tribute night at 'Night & Day' on 28th Sep 2006.

Pink Floyd Piper at the Gates of Dawn

2009-12-16T08:59:00.000-08:00

Here is yet another picture of the original (stereo) Pink Floyd Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Can't get enough of those!

Pink Floyd Relics - Japanese Pressing

2009-12-14T20:26:00.001-08:00

PINK FLOYD RELICS

1967 TOSHIBA EMI JAPAN Issue LP
[ EMS-80321, Out of Print, RARE!! ] ID: 0911_403

"Relics" is a collection of very early Pink Floyd singles and rare tracks, covering the band's first couple of years from 1967 to 1969. Consider it "Pink Floyd: The Early Years" if you like.

Released in 1971, this album isn't so much of a 'greatest hits' as it is a collection of interesting classic songs and singles that were being re-released just as Pink Floyd was entering its most productive and memorable years.

Five tracks come from the group's first three albums: the classic, trippy instrumental "Interstellar Overdrive" and the half children's song/half freak-out number, "Bike" (both from "Piper At The Gates Of Dawn"), the breezy "Remember A Day" (from "A Saucerful Of Secrets"), and a pair of tunes from the "More" movie soundtrack: the eerie "Cirrus Minor," and the thunderous rocker, "The Nile Song."

All superb stuff, but the main selling point of "Relics" are the six rare Floyd tracks that make up the remainder, such as the classic early singles "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play," both great little blasts of late-60's psychedelic pop, the jaunty "Paintbox," and the lovely, mysterious atmosphere of "Julia Dream."

Also included is the original studio version of "Careful with That Axe, Eugene," an outstanding Floyd instrumental that's probably more famous in it's live version from the "Ummagumma" album. Although the live version of "Eugene" IS more monstrous and powerful, as the Floyd were able to slowly build it up and expand on it in concert, the slightly-faster studio version is nothing to sneeze at either, and the band give it a studio performance that's very impressive, skillful, and passionate.

And finally, there is what might be quite possibly the happiest and most upbeat song in the entire Pink Floyd catalog, "Biding My Time." Although the song starts out softly, before long the band turn it into a full-throttle jazz-rock rave-up, complete with horn section! Sounds to me like the Floyd had a grand ol' time in the studio when they recorded this number, and it shows.

In some ways, this album sounds like a more mature and dynamic companion piece to Piper at the Gates of Dawn. You see more of the band rather than a specific leader, and almost every song is brief with multiple dimensions.

Pink Floyd's "Relics" may indeed be, as the album cover says, "a bizarre collection of antiques & curios," but oh, is it good. Floyd fans everywhere should definitely add this album to their collection.

Photo shoot by Marc Sharratt

2009-12-13T04:43:00.000-08:00

Here are 5 nice photos Pink Floyd taken in a studio by Marc Sharratt. Anyone got any more info as to when these where & when these were taken and for what purpose?

Pink Floyd / Syd Barrett contact sheet photos

2009-12-06T05:54:00.000-08:00

Here are some not often seen photos in the form of contact sheets. Apologies for the poor quality of some of these photos but, with most of them here, they are the only version we have of that particular photo.

Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun - Metal Acetate

2009-12-03T07:10:00.000-08:00

Check out this 10", EMIDISC, metal acetate for Pink Floyd Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun. The acetate plays at 45rpm. Supposedly, Syd Barrett plays some guitar on this song. It's sure buried in the mix but the Have You Got It Yet? Series has put this bit out.

This is a pre-production 10" playback metal lacquer (also known as an acetate) most probably produced in just a handful of copies!

According to Chinese whispers from the time Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun was intended to be the group's follow up single to the flop 45 It Would Be So Nice. Whether or not that rumor was true, needless to say, this was never released commercially as a single by the group!! I guess John Peel would have played it but I doubt very much that this would have cracked the top 20 either!

The Pink Floyd Set The Controls for the Heart of the Sun 10" EMIDISC ACETATE 1-sided acetate (flip side is blank - no label or grooves), approximate playing time is around 5:15. It seems to play for about 7 or 8 seconds longer than the version on A Saucerful of Secrets.

Obviously.....a mega serious Pink Floyd rarity: as was the case with these studio acetate discs there would have only been a handful of copies produced, probably five or less, usually for group members, studio engineers and high level record company personnel etc.. etc..