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subject appears to be a white male, early 50's, pathologically tall/skinny. brain patterns show evidence of a life in alcohol - first swimming in it then running from it. fingers show wear from years of guitar playing. heart presents slow repair, through writing, from being broken by rock and roll.
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The Madcap Dies: Syd Barrett and the Power of Denial
Sitting on the couch w/MacDougal yesterday morning watching CNN and fretting about the possibilities pesented by the Indian bombings and I see on the crawl that Syd Barrett passed away. For those who don't know who the man was there's plenty of detailed sites around the Net, but the short version is that he was the founder and original visionary of Pink Floyd who took too much acid and freaked out. Much of "Dark Side of the Moon"and "Wish You Were Here" were reportedly "about" him. Suffice it to say, in this reporter's opinion, Roger Waters has been going to the bank w/wheelbarrow for years at the expense of another man's tragedy.
David Gilmour, Barrett's replacement and current helmsman of the S.S. Pink Floyd, was good enough to 'produce' Barrett solo records ('The Madcap Laughs' is the place to start, followed by 'Barrett' and the outakes record 'Opal'); bleak, ramshackled bursts of genius mixed w/gibberish (it is, of course, up to you to decide which is which), kinda in a Beck-before-Beck-was-Beck lo-tech melange of opposing inspirations, vomited out on the sonic canvas like some kind of cross between Jackson Pollack and Lenny from "Of Mice and Men". These records have been packaged and repackaged on a fairly regular basis through the intervening years, though not as often as "Dark Side of the Moon' or 'The Wall' (Personal aside to Waters and Gilmour: Please stop milking those cows. Thank you.), re-introducing generation after generation to the man's music. While this is, in and of itself a good thing and I suppose kept Old Syd in Beer and Skittles through the dry times, it's with these reissues that 'The Legend' began and was stoked through years of dope smoke and teenagers in dark rooms who built a romance out of a man gone mad.
Pink Floyd's first record 'The Piper at the Gates of Dawn' is a psychedelic masterpiece, which means it's groovy sounding bullshit. Barrett was a magnificent frontman, stoned, beautiful, immaculate. Until his creeping psychosis, doubtless excacerbated by drugs, bore it's little chemical tentacles into the poet's brain, rendering him increasingly incapable of performing to what we loosely call 'standards'. There's the classic footage of Roger Waters lyp-synching Barrett's vocals on Ready, Steady, Go because Barrett refused to. He stood with his guitar, arms limp at his side, staring directly into the camera, not playing along (on more than one level). Stoned, beautiful, immaculate.
Not soon after, his band was hijacked by Waters and the rest. They simply decided to not pick him up on the way to a gig one night in the Summer of Love. It was as simple as that.
I'm as much easy prey as anyone to the inclination to canonize the mad genius (hope to be one myself someday, maybe when I grow up) mainly because it's just too hard on the human psyche to contemplate the realities of madness. Syd Barrett spent the last, what, 35 years of his life in a haze we'll never understand, immune and probably unaware of the legend and the industry that grew out of his personal tragedy. There was little romantic about it.
But let's not think of that, America. Let's perpetuate the myth that Barrett fried for our sins, that he was the great messed-up hope. A reason to take acid, 'cause it's all just to heavy, maaaaaaaaaaaan.
Rest in peace, Syd. Sleep well, Roger.
Posted by: timbyrnes at 21:14 |
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