The Squeaking Door Will Always Squeak

It has just been revealed to the press that Syd Barrett, the original leader of Pink Floyd and one of the most brilliant and tragic musicians of the late 60s, died on Friday. Of course, Syd had not been well for quite some time, and had essentially been a recluse for the past few decades following an apparent breakdown sometime in the early 70s.

Pink Floyd “Bike” – A lot of the cult of Syd Barrett is based on the mystique of his madness, and so it is very unfortunate that his genius and originality as a musician is overshadowed by his reputation as being rock and roll’s most famous acid casualty. It’s particularly troubling when the lyrical content of his songs is written off as the ramblings of a lunatic. True, the songs tend to include bizarre images and peculiar asides (“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”), but it was always in the service of something rather raw, genuine, playful, and childlike in its humor and concerns. Not only that, but he would leap from oddball lines to lyrics so direct and perfect and honest that they would be especially disarming in context: “You’re the kind of girl who fits in with my world, I’d give you anything, everything if you want things.” “I really love you, and I mean you.” “I understand that you’re different from me. Yes, I can tell.” “Won’t you miss me? Wouldn’t you miss me at all?” (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Syd Barrett “Octopus” – My personal favorite Syd Barrett song has always been “Octopus,” with its churning, seasick guitar rhythms and manic melodies. It cycles between feelings of high adventure, anguish, frustration, and giddiness like nothing else I’ve ever heard, and it does it so gracefully that the transition between contrary emotions is fluid rather than jarring. Much of the unique sound of The Madcap Laughs album comes from the fact that Syd recorded his guitar and vocal parts live to tape before the rhythm tracks were added, basically the opposite of the way most rock music is recorded. Apparently this was done as a way of minimizing wasted time in the studio, since it was feared that Barrett would eat up hours of valuable time attempting to synch up with the session players. Barrett’s strange guitar rhythms are all over the place, changing up meters at unlikely intervals and arbitrarily speeding up or slowing down, but somehow it comes out sounding exactly right. “Octopus” may have been a headache to overdub, but the resulting composition is positively sublime. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: John Darnielle recently posted about Syd Barrett over on Last Plane to Jakarta, mostly commenting on this remarkable bit of footage of Pink Floyd performing “Astronomy Domine” on British television, followed by an interview with Roger Waters and Syd, who is surprisingly passionate, lucid, and articulate.

WFMU’s Beware of the Blog also has a small tribute to Syd, including a link to an old article about Barrett’s influence written for the long defunct WFMU magazine, LCD.