Syd Barrett

Syd Barrett biography

Roger Keith "Syd" Barrett (6 January 1946 - 7 July 2006), was an English singer-songwriter, guitarist and painter, best remembered as a founder member of the band Pink Floyd. He was the lead vocalist, guitarist and primary songwriter during the band's psychedelic years, providing major musical and stylistic direction in their early work, including their name. He left the group in 1968 amid speculations of mental illness exacerbated by drug use, and was briefly hospitalised.

Besides being a pioneer in psychedelic rock with his expressive guitar playing and imaginative compositions, Barrett was also a pioneer in the space rock and psychedelic folk genres. He was active in music for only about seven years, recording four singles, the debut album (and contributed to the second one), plus several unreleased songs with Pink Floyd; and a single and two albums (plus a third one of unreleased tracks/alternate takes), as a solo musician, before going into self-imposed seclusion lasting more than thirty years.

In his post-musician life, he continued with his painting and dedicated himself to gardening, never to return to the public eye. He died in 2006. A number of biographies have been written about him since the 1980s, and Pink Floyd wrote and recorded several tributes to him after he left, most notably the 1975 album Wish You Were Here.

Biography

Early years

Barrett was born as Roger Keith Barrett in the English city of Cambridge to a middle-class family. His father, Arthur Max Barrett, was a prominent pathologist and it was known he was related to Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, but a research on Syd Barrett genealogy has not found any relation yet. Max Barrett was member of the Cambridge Philharmonic Society and both he and his wife, Winifred, encouraged the young Roger (as he was known then) in his music. After playing piano occasionally, preferring writing and drawing (he liked Edward Lear), Roger got a ukulele at 10 or less, then a banjo at 11, then an Hofner acoustic guitar six months after. One common tale of how Barrett acquired the nickname "Syd" at the age of 14, is of a reference to an old local Cambridge jazz double bassist, Sid 'the beat' Barrett, which claims Syd Barrett changed the spelling in order to differentiate himself from his namesake. However, when he was 13, his schoolmates nicknamed him "Syd" after he showed up to a field day at Abington Scout site wearing a flat cap instead of his Scout beret; making reference to "Syd" being a "working-class" name. He used both names interchangeably for several years and his sister Rosemary stated, "He was never Syd at home. He would never have allowed it". He attended Cambridgeshire High School for Boys and Cambridge College of Arts and Technology.

His father died of cancer on 11 December 1961, less than a month before Barrett's 16th birthday. Eager to help her son recover from his grief, Barrett's mother encouraged the band he played in, Geoff Mott and the Mottoes, to perform in their front room. Roger Waters and Barrett were childhood friends, and Waters often visited such gigs. Barrett enrolled in Camberwell Art School in South London in 1964 to study painting.

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