84 Facts About Syd Barrett

Roger Keith "Syd" Barrett was an English singer, songwriter, and musician who co-founded the rock band Pink Floyd in 1965.

Originally trained as a painter, Syd Barrett was musically active for less than ten years.

Syd Barrett began a brief solo career in 1969 with the single "Octopus" and followed with the albums The Madcap Laughs and Barrett, recorded with the aid of several members of Pink Floyd.

In 1972, Syd Barrett left the music industry, retired from public life and strictly guarded his privacy until his death.

In 1996, Syd Barrett was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Pink Floyd.

Roger Keith Syd Barrett was born on 6 January 1946 in Cambridge to a middle-class family living at 60 Glisson Road.

Syd Barrett's father, Arthur Max Barrett, was a prominent pathologist and was said to be related to Elizabeth Garrett Anderson through Max's maternal grandmother Ellen Garrett.

Syd Barrett played piano occasionally but usually preferred writing and drawing.

Syd Barrett bought a ukulele aged 10, a banjo at 11 and a Hofner acoustic guitar at 14.

Syd Barrett was a Scout with the 7th Cambridge troop and went on to be a patrol leader.

At one point at Morley Memorial Junior School, Syd Barrett was taught by the mother of future Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters.

Syd Barrett's father died of cancer on 11 December 1961, less than a month before Barrett's 16th birthday.

On this date, Syd Barrett left the entry in his diary blank.

Eager to help her son recover from his grief, Syd Barrett's mother encouraged the band in which he played, Geoff Mott and the Mottoes, a band which Syd Barrett formed, to perform in their front room.

Waters and Syd Barrett were childhood friends, and Waters often visited such gigs.

In September 1962, Syd Barrett had taken a place at the art department of the Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology, where he met David Gilmour.

In 1963, Syd Barrett became a Rolling Stones fan and, with then-girlfriend Libby Gausden, saw them perform at a village hall in Cambridgeshire.

Syd Barrett would cite Jimmy Reed as an influence; however, remarked that Bo Diddley was his greatest influence.

At this point, Syd Barrett started writing songs; one friend recalls hearing "Effervescing Elephant".

Syd Barrett had played bass guitar with Those Without in mid-1963 and bass and guitar with the Hollerin' Blues the next summer.

Syd Barrett, now thinking about his future, decided to apply for Camberwell College of Arts in London.

Syd Barrett enrolled in the college in the summer of 1964 to study painting.

Storm Thorgerson and Syd Barrett went to a London hotel to meet the sect's guru; Thorgerson managed to join the sect; Syd Barrett was deemed too young to join.

At the beginning of 1967, Syd Barrett was dating Jenny Spires.

However, unknown to Syd Barrett, Spires had an affair with Peter Whitehead.

At a show in Santa Monica, Syd Barrett slowly detuned his guitar.

Syd Barrett played guitar on the Saucerful of Secrets tracks "Remember a Day" and "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun".

Syd Barrett spent time outside the recording studio, in the reception area, waiting to be invited in.

Syd Barrett came to a few performances and glared at Gilmour.

On 6 April 1968, Pink Floyd officially announced that Syd Barrett was no longer a member, the same day their contract with Blackhill Enterprises was terminated.

Syd Barrett's flat was so close to Gilmour's that Gilmour could look right into Syd Barrett's kitchen.

Syd Barrett wanted to recover the recordings made with Jenner; several of the tracks were improved upon.

At one point, Syd Barrett told his flatmate that he was going for an afternoon drive, but followed Pink Floyd to Ibiza; according to legend, he skipped check-ins and customs, ran onto the runway and attempted to flag down a jet.

The problem with the recording was that the songs were recorded as Syd Barrett played them "live" in studio.

The second album, Syd Barrett, was recorded more sporadically, the sessions taking place between February and July 1970.

On various occasions, Syd Barrett went to "spy" on the band as they recorded their album.

Three would be re-recorded for the Syd Barrett album, while the song "Two of a Kind" was a one-off performance.

Syd Barrett was accompanied on this session by Gilmour and Shirley who played bass and percussion, respectively.

Syd Barrett made one last appearance on BBC Radio, recording three songs at their studios on 16 February 1971.

Free from his EMI contract on 9 May 1972, Syd Barrett signed a document that ended his association with Pink Floyd, and any financial interest in future recordings.

Syd Barrett attended an informal jazz and poetry performance by Pete Brown and former Cream bassist Jack Bruce in October 1973.

Syd Barrett had little contact with others, apart from his regular visits to his management's offices to collect his royalties, and the occasional visit from his sister Rosemary.

Syd Barrett recorded eleven tracks, the only one of which to be titled was "If You Go, Don't Be Slow".

Once again, Syd Barrett withdrew from the music industry, but this time for good.

Syd Barrett sold the rights to his solo albums back to the record label and moved into a London hotel.

Syd Barrett visited the members of Pink Floyd in 1975 during the recording sessions for their ninth album, Wish You Were Here.

Waters asked him what he thought of the song to which Syd Barrett responded "sounds a bit old".

Syd Barrett is reported to have briefly attended the reception for Gilmour's wedding to Ginger that immediately followed the recording sessions, but Gilmour said he had no recollection of this.

In 1978, when Syd Barrett's money ran out, he moved back to Cambridge to live with his mother.

Syd Barrett returned to live in London for a few weeks in 1982, but soon returned to Cambridge permanently.

Syd Barrett walked the 50 miles from London to Cambridge.

Syd Barrett was reclusive, and his physical health declined, as he had stomach ulcers and type 2 diabetes.

Apparently, Syd Barrett did not like being reminded about his musical career and the other members of Pink Floyd had no direct contact with him.

Syd Barrett made a final public acknowledgement of his musical past in 2002, his first since the 1970s, when he autographed 320 copies of Psychedelic Renegades, a book by the photographer Mick Rock which contained a number of photos of Syd Barrett.

Syd Barrett died at home in Cambridge on 7 July 2006 aged 60, from pancreatic cancer.

Syd Barrett was cremated at a funeral held at Cambridge Crematorium on 18 July 2006; no Pink Floyd members attended.

Syd Barrett was the guiding light of the early band lineup and leaves a legacy which continues to inspire.

Syd Barrett's career was painfully short, yet he touched more people than he could ever know.

The 2010 compilation An Introduction to Syd Barrett includes the downloadable bonus track "Rhamadan", a 20-minute track recorded at one of Syd's earliest solo sessions, in May 1968.

Syd Barrett was an innovative guitarist, using extended techniques and exploring the musical and sonic possibilities of dissonance, distortion, feedback, the echo machine, tapes and other effects; his experimentation was partly inspired by free improvisation guitarist Keith Rowe of the group AMM, active at the time in London.

One of Syd Barrett's trademarks was playing his guitar through an old echo box while sliding a Zippo lighter up and down the fret-board to create the mysterious, otherworldly sounds that became associated with the group.

Syd Barrett was known to have used Binson delay units to achieve his trademark echo sounds.

Syd Barrett was described by Guardian writer Nick Kent as having a "quintessential English style of vocal projection".

Syd Barrett played several different guitars during his tenure, including an old Harmony hollowbody electric, a Harmony acoustic, a Fender acoustic, a single-coil Danelectro 59 DC, several different Fender Telecasters and a white Fender Stratocaster in late 1967.

Syd Barrett had an influence on alternative and punk music in general.

Syd Barrett was the best example: having crashed out of Pink Floyd before the advent of indulgent "progressive" rock, and succumbed to a fate that appealed to the punk generation's nihilism, he underwent a revival.

Syd Barrett's decline had a profound effect on Waters' songwriting, and the theme of mental illness permeated the later Pink Floyd albums The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall.

In 1987, an album of Syd Barrett cover songs called Beyond the Wildwood was released.

In 2008, The Trash Can Sinatras released a single in tribute to the life and work of Syd Barrett called "Oranges and Apples", from their 2009 album In the Music.

Syd Barrett is portrayed briefly in the opening scene of Tom Stoppard's play Rock 'n' Roll, performing "Golden Hair".

In 2016, in correspondence with the 70th anniversary birthday, The Theatre of the Absurd, an Italian independent artists group, published a short movie in honour of Syd Barrett named Eclipse, with actor-director Edgar Blake in the role of Syd Barrett.

For 2017 TV series Legion creator Noah Hawley named one of the characters after Syd Barrett, whose music was an important influence on the series.

Syd Barrett stated that, contrary to common misconception, Barrett neither suffered from mental illness nor had he received treatment for it since they had resumed regular contact in the 1980s.

Some years later, Syd Barrett agreed to sessions with a psychiatrist at Fulbourn psychiatric hospital in Cambridge, but Breen said that neither medication nor therapy was considered appropriate.

Syd Barrett knew what they wanted, but he wasn't willing to give it to them.

Wright asserted that Syd Barrett's problems stemmed from a massive overdose of acid, as the change in his personality and behaviour came on suddenly.

However, Waters maintains that Syd Barrett suffered "without a doubt" from schizophrenia.

Bolan became concerned when Syd Barrett "kept his girlfriend under lock and key for three days, occasionally shoving a ration of biscuits under the door".

Syd Barrett was later rescued from that flat by friends and moved elsewhere, but his erratic behaviour continued.

On one occasion, Syd Barrett threw a woman called Gilly across the room, because she refused to go to Gilmour's house.

Syd Barrett said he took a keen interest in art and horticulture and continued to devote himself to painting:.

Syd Barrett made regular trips to the Botanic Gardens and to the dahlias at Anglesey Abbey, near Lode.

Syd Barrett had relationships with various women, such as Libby Gausden; Lindsay Korner; Jenny Spires; and Pakistani-born Evelyn "Iggy" Rose, who appeared on the back cover of The Madcap Laughs.

Syd Barrett never married or had children, though he was briefly engaged to marry Gayla Pinion and planned to relocate to Oxford.