Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd

I'm having a bad brain day. I am of course my own proverbial bottle of beef, but day in day out of hearing dumb crap from people who get paid to be important wears on a guy like me, you know? So, before i let any more of it spill out into the world, here's more of it:

From Richard Carpenter to Syd Barrett. Richard was a Quaalude brand methaqualone enthusiast, but Syd preferred his Mandrax style, cut with a little Benadryl (diphenhydramine). Neither of them were what you really think of when you say "drug addicts." Syd was always going to burn out, the acid just accelerated him toward the realization that it would be a lot better for him if he did it quickly. Both of them were essentially self medicating the obvious symptoms of severe underlying anxiety. Richard finally realized it was a serious problem and got help, Syd just shut down and retired to a life of painting and gardening in solitude. That sounds dreamy....

Fans of Pink Floyd will know that as Syd began his downward belly flop into the sea below the sea, the boys brought in their mutual friend David Gilmore to eventually replace him as lead singer/guitarist/cruise ship navigator, get the airplane back up in the air so to speak. They just didn't pick Syd up on the way to the studio one day, and that was that.

That must have been weird? Apparently not, Syd's toboggan ride continued at it's own pace and he liked Gilmore so much he asked him to produce his two solo albums. They needed other musicians, so the other members of Pink Floyd came and played too. It's like at some point he just forgot that Pink Floyd was his band, and asked his friends to help him make some music. He famously just showed up at the studio while they were making Shine On You Crazy Diamond and silently watched them work before retiring forever.

So, what do you get from Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, and A Saucer Full Of Secrets? You get an LSD day-trip through the mythological English countryside. Gnomes, and space, and doctors, and the first take of Scarecrow recorded the day after they watched the Beatles record Lovely Rita. You get massive, almost frighteningly nebulous soundscapes followed by quaint English folk. Viscious and bitey electric guitars, then recorders. It doesn't sound funny or silly like when the Carpenters do it. It's disturbingly matter-of-fact, like these completely unrelated things just happen one after the other because there is no reason why they shouldn't.

Early Pink Floyd was a jam band. They would get up on stage and just improvise for hours, Syd would act weird and the crowd would eat it up. Roger, Nick, and Richard were boring old non-psychedelic terra-naut architecture students and the whole art-school freak-out mind-melt thing just kept getting more and more fightening/frustrating.

Everyone has a story about how they felt like Syd didn't respond well to suggestions or criticism, but that's clearly because there wasn't anything he could change about it. He wasn't "crafting" anything, he was just letting whatever was in his head come out into the real world. I doubt it made any more sense rattling around on the inside. Sure is fun to listen to, though. And, as strange as it must have been to follow Syd's unpredictable lead, they spent a whole lot of time and thought and energy trying figure out how to do it without him. I don't think Roger Waters ever did, actually. His Pink Floyd was completely centered around the loss of Syd, and eventually he too had to reluctantly hand the whole thing over to Gilmore. The band did indeed have a life of it's own, no one person made it what it was, no one could stop it's evolution, and i think that's what i like most about them.

On a tangential real life note, i'm not really interested in drugs per se. Caffeine and nicotine in moderate doses are plenty for me. I even take way less ibuprofen than anyone in my life actually recommends. But, i am fascinated by the phenomenon that so many musicians ascribe such power and importance to their drugs of choice. I think thinking is capable of producing most of those effects all by itself, but the governor of iowa and the president of our country sure do seem to make the people i meet in the real life whom i'd rather stay home from antagonistic to my cause.

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