Barrett

http://www.pink-floyd-co.com/band/interviews/art-rev/art-vimenn.htm

Who in these days doesn't know who Syd Barrett was? He's the most spoken-of legends in rock. Many people say that he was a genious, an excellent song writer, a magnificent painter, who turned out into a madman, a wreck from drugs, a desintegrated mind. "Barrett-A Mind In Desintegration" article originally written by Yan Friis, for the Vi Menn magazine in 1993. This is the story of the man who made Pink Floyd. This is the purpose of the author, to show the audience a little bit of Syd's crazy life.

He's the man that has been, since he left Pink Floyd 35 years ago, an enigma, a mystery for all Pink floyd fans, even for the Pink Floyd themselves. His life went downhill since the time he started taking heavy doses of drugs. The drug abuse gave him more ideas of how to do music, but it was only for a short time, because after that he experienced his own failure. He was able to write the first Pink Floyd singles, which as a matter of fact were a hit. But as time was passing by, he was loosing his mind. "He made Pink Floyd a disturbing experience." He started being uncooperative, the band had to kick him out only a year after they started playing professionally.

His ideas, his guitar, his voice changed to become insane. The author says that if someone listens to one of the two albums that he released after leaving the Floyd, These albums would give you the unpleasant feeling of being locked up together with a lunatic. The albums are "The Madcap Laughs" and "Barrett." The songs from these two albums are scetchy, whimsical, and at times both off-key and atonal. Barrett wasn't the same genious as he used to be when he started composing. Even more than that, he wasn't him anymore.

After these two solo albums were released, Barrett lost his remaining connections to reality. Although he made sporadical attempts to do more in the studio, and Dave Gilmour tried to help him, but it was worthless; because he never again managed to complete a single idea. And as the author says, and we all know it is true, Barrett's myth has grown. This, made possible by the helping hand from the members of the Pink Floyd. Yan Friis thinks that the Floyd had the same attitude towards Barrett as an exorcist towards a deamon.

As far as we all know, Barrett is blind and suffers from diabetes, and his family is taking care of him. But nobody knows what is on his head. I think maybe he stills suffers from nightmares and hallucinations created by the narcotic substances he took, but who knows. His soundtracks are still being played by many people around the world, those soundtracks being created from a mind in desintegration, Barrett's. "Scary, magical, powerful and terribly sad. A kind of Edgar Allen Poe short story from reality."