Syd Barrett News Archives: 2001


Previous Years: 2006/2005/2004/2003/2002/2001

 


4/28/2001:  Ok, all you Barrett fans, you can now purchase the new best of CD and all the other Barrett Cd's including the ever elusive box set right here. Just click the store link on the menu on the right, or for now click here (which will also give you some clips). If you need an alternate way to pay, please let me know - email me.


4/23/2001: A great little news article someone informed me about, here you go and look this weekend on how to buy the new Syd CD.

 


4/15/2001: In the next day or two I will have a link here of where you can purchase this CD online, if you do not like online shopping, I will have an alternative soon.

Also, I have more reviews in the news section, and as soon as the CD arrives there will be a 30 second clip of Bob Dylan Blues.


3/27/2001:  A FIRST!!!!!!  I finally have gotten a picture of the CD cover for the new best of cd. Here it is:

 

 

I see we have a new picture on the cover here too. Good luck to everyone on getting their copy on April 16th (UK). If anyone needs help finding a copy let me know.

 

Here is a press release from EMI in the UK:
 
 
SYD BARRETT
'Wouldn't You Miss Me? The Best Of...'
Release Date: April 16th 2001
Catalogue No.: 532 3202
 
         For the first time in the UK, Harvest release a 'best of' Syd
         Barrett compilation.
 
         Titled 'Wouldn't You Miss Me? The Best Of', this 22 track CD
         contains a selection of Syd's 'best' work culled from his two
         studio albums, 'Madcap Laughs' and 'Barrett' and the rarities
         album, 'Opel', together with the previously unreleased and much
         sought after, 'Bob Dylan Blues' (an outtake from 1969, which has
         made its appearance due to Syd's longtime friend and fellow Pink
         Floyd member, Dave Gilmour giving EMI permission to use the
         track). Also included is a BBC session track, 'Two Of A Kind'.
 
         Syd Barrett's music has influenced many artists - this
         compilation not only serves as an excellent reminder of a genius
         at work, but makes the perfect sampler for a whole new
         generation wishing to hear who it was that influenced some of
         their favourite bands, and of course a chance for fans to hear
         the unreleased track for the first time - a pure gem!

Track Listing
Octopus
Late Night
Terrapin
Swan Lee
Wolf Pack
Golden Hair
Here I Go
Long Gone
No Good Trying
Opel
Baby Lemonade
Gigolo Aunt
Dominoes
Wouldn't You Miss Me
Wined And Dined
Effervescing Elephant
Waving My Arms In The Air

I Never Lied To You
Love Song
Two OF A Kind (BBC Session Track)
Bob Dylan Blues (Previously Unreleased)
Golden Hair (instrumental)

SLEEVE NOTES BY MARK PAYTRESS
 
         There are magnificent cult heroes shrouded in the stuff of
         infamy and legend ... and then there is Syd Barrett. Syd the
         unforgotten hero of the early Pink Floyd, who virtually set the
         parameters for British psychedelia with his fanciful songs and
         space-age improvisation. The summer of love's prize bloom who
         soon wilted under the gaze of the pop world's plastic eye. The
         sacrificial lamb of the love generation's wilder excesses who
         simply forgot to sing or play his guitar. The self-styled'
         Vegetable Man' who re-emerged with two solo albums that bore the
         scars of hippie innocence and the acid experience with a
         shocking nselfconsciousness (sic). It's the best of these two
         remarkable records - and out-takes recorded during the sessions
         - that are now available on "Wouldn't You Miss Me", the first
         ever Syd Barrett compilation.
 
         Syd's genius, and its subsequent fragmentation, seems a dream
         and a nightmare away from a potentially idyllic upbringing as a
         middle class son of one of Britain's most prestigious and
         cultured cities. As a Cambridge child, Barrett (born Roger Keith
         Barrett on 6 January 1946) listened attentively to stories read
         by his mother Winifred, tales that instilled in him a thirst for
         escape and invention, an otherworld he continued to inhabit as
         an a student at Camberwell Art School during the mid-60s.
         Inevitably, music too, inspired him, typically The Beatles, Bob
         Dylan and - most of all - the gritty, hostile sounds of R&B
         epitomised by The Rolling Stones. Another, more general
         influence was the emerging post-Beat subculture, which aspired
         to a new way of life where poetry, art, literature, music and
         recreational drug use provided an antidote to artless suburban
         convention. This provided the perfect environment in which the
         ever-imaginative Barrett could flourish.
 
         It was Syd's peculiarly acute imagination that transformed the
         early Pink Floyd from a promising R&B group with lofty ambitions
         into the UK's premier acid-rock combo. Barrett's fragmented,
         glissando guitar-playing added an otherworldly gloss to the
         band's extended jams, while his shorter songs conjured up a
         magical, idyllic backdrop to flower-power's technicolor dreams.
         In 1967, when half of the western world appeared to turn on,
         tune in and at least fantasise about dropping out, these were
         indeed admirable qualities.
 
         After the debut 45, "Arnold Layne", scraped into the charts, the
         the (sic) impeccable psych-pop follow-up, "See Emily Play", took
         the band into the Top 5, onto 'Top Of The Pops' and around the
         country's ballroom circuit. By August 1967, and with the band's
         debut album, "The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn", poised for
         release, The Pink Floyd were on the cusp of a real breakthrough.
         Unfortunately, it was the moment when Syd decided to absent
         himself for a few days; worse still, he returned a changed man.
         Always erratic, now his behaviour seriously undermined the
         group's future. His ability to translate his raw songwriting
         into finished studio creations left him; on stage, he often
         stood motionless contributing nothing more than provoking looks
         of bewilderment on the faces of his colleagues. After a second
         guitarist, Syd's old Cambridge buddy Dave Gilmour, was added to
         the line-up, Barrett became virtually dispensable to the band.
         On 26 January 1968, the group that had once relied so much on
         his contributions, set off for a concert without him.
 
         Despite this apparent humiliation (though Barrett already seemed
         past caring), all was not lost. Pink Floyd's co-managers Andrew
         King and Peter Jenner chose to dissolve their relationship with
         the band, and Jenner - who once described Syd as "the most
         creative person I'd ever known" - became Barrett's manager and
         producer. But while the Floyd steadily rebuilt their career
         through constant gigging and an infinitesimal attention to
         detail in the recording studio, Syd became more difficult than
         ever. Recording sessions for his first solo album, "The Madcap
         Laughs", began in May 1968 and continued intermittently until
         October 1969, overseen by a number of increasingly exasperated
         producers and engineers.
 
         "Initially, these were booked as demo sessions just to see if
         Syd had any songs worth recording," recalls Peter Mew, who
         engineered several of the tracks on the first record. "it was
         all a bit chaotic - do a bit, then go off and have a smoke - and
         Syd wasn't totally compos mentis. He wasn't temperamental, just
         not on the same planet as the rest of us. A lot of the songs had
         potential and you thought, "if the guy pulls himself together,
         you've got something here." After stints with Jenner and EMI
         staffer Malcolm Jones handling production duties, the Floyd's
         Dave Gilmour and Roger Waters were drafted in to salvage
         something from the sessions.
 
         Syd's work with Pink Floyd had been ornate and sophisticated.
         The arrangements on 'The Madcap Laughs" - threadbare, slapdash
         even - couldn't have been more different. The effect was both
         unsettling and inspiring, for here was pitiable estrangement and
         unharnessed imagination, unrefined and nerve-tinglingly raw. On
         "Feel", one of the record's more despairing songs, Barrett
         complains: "I want to go home..." Early in 1970, around the time
         of the album's release, that's exactly what he did, leaving his
         central London flat and returning to the family home in
         Cambridge, where he famously took up residence in the cellar.
 
         Between February and July that year, he was tempted back to
         London for intermittent work on a second solo album, "Barrett",
         a marginally more conventional - though less inspired - affair
         thanks to the involvement again of Dave Gilmour. "Dave showed
         incredible amounts of patience," says Jerry Shirley, who played
         drums on the sessions. "We never knew what time Syd would start
         or finish. He might not even turn up at all. The only
         predictable thing about Syd at that point was that he was
         totally unpredictable, as nutty as a fruitcake."
 
         On these solo records, Syd's working methods took the
         psychedelic model of spontaneous creativity to the extreme. "The
         one thing Syd could still do was to write a decent, unusual
         song," says Shirley. "But even they got so unpredictable that
         even he couldn't remember them. If you didn't record a new song
         right away, it would be gone." After getting several of Syd's
         new songs down on tape, the musicians - who also included Floyd
         keyboard player Rick Wright and Gilmour himself - would overdub
         the parts afterwards, no mean feat given Syd's erratic sense of
         timing. "He found it extremely difficult to play as part of a
         band by this time," maintains Jerry Shirley. "it was just all
         over the place." Despite this obvious limitation, Shirley and
         Gilmour nevertheless braved an appearance with Syd for a
         comeback concert at the Olympia, London, in June 1970. Four
         songs into the set, Barrett simply put his guitar down and
         walked off. By the end of the year, he'd returned to Cambridge
         for good, largely oblivious to the enormous cult that was
         growing, and continues to grow around him.
 
         One of many latter-day celebrity Barrett devotees is Blur
         guitarist Graham Coxon, who once donated a vast, Syd- inspired
         sculpture to a charity auction. "I think Syd made a decision,
         although a very twisted one, that a musician's lifestyle wasn't
         for him," he says. "I like to think of him being happy, painting
         and going for strolls in the park. I don't think he misses the
         pop circus. I think he overdosed on it and chose a more pastoral
         existence." And the reason why the Barrett milieu is so
         enduring? "There is a little bit of Syd in everyone," he
         insists. "It's that sensitivity and vulnerability."


Syd Barrett Song Unearthed

 
"Bob Dylan's Blues" might be an uncharacteristically prosaic title from a man better known for his songs about gnomes, octopuses and effervescing elephants. But as this newly unearthed Syd Barrett song -- to be included on a new compilation, Wouldn't You Miss Me (EMI), which is due for release in the U.K. on April 16th -- suggests, Pink Floyd's original "Crazy Diamond" was far from immune to the occasional mortal influence.

Barrett, the errant star of British psychedelia, masterminded Pink Floyd's early success before a combination of a nervous breakdown and a tendency to overindulge in the era's more potent stimulants prompted his departure from the group early in 1968. Tales of mammoth drug binges, erratic stage performances and baffling behavioral traits inevitably earned Barrett the "acid casualty" epithet. After two solo albums, The Madcap Laughs and Barrett, both clearly the work of a wildly distracted man, he simply disappeared from view, taking up residence in the cellar of his family home in Cambridge. Turning his back on rock & roll, he returned to painting. Occasional Syd sightings, each one depicting the acid rock pin-up as increasingly bald and overweight, prompted inevitable rumors of renewed activity, but aside from a disastrous studio session in 1974, he's maintained a strange, intensely private silence. Since the death of his mother in the early Nineties, Syd Barrett lives alone in Cambridge, suffers from diabetes and is tended to by his sister.

The Barrett legend has also been maintained by Pink Floyd themselves, most noticeably by Roger Waters, whose "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" and The Wall were both inspired by his ex-colleague's mental health problems. Now, it is guitarist Dave Gilmour, Barrett's replacement in Pink Floyd and producer of his two solo LPs, who provides the fillip. "Bob Dylan's Blues," a remarkable pastiche unlike anything else in the Barrett canon, has been culled from Gilmour's private collection and is being released with the blessing of Barrett's family.

"We knew of the song's existence when we put together [1993's] Crazy Diamond box set," says project co-ordinator Tim Chacksfield, "but we had plenty of other material so there was no pressure for us to find it." The new compilation provided an ideal opportunity to approach Gilmour and request permission to use the song. But why the guitarist took the master tape with him after the February 27, 1970 demo session had been completed remains a mystery. David Parker, author of Random Precision -- Recording the Music of Syd Barrett 1965-1974, maintains that Gilmour has always rated the song highly. Chacksfield tends to agree: "The fact that Dave was happy to let it out says a lot."

Although R&B, improvised music and nursery rhyme-like folksong clearly influenced Barrett, the Dylan connection is far more obscure. Barrett and Gilmour -- at the time mere Cambridge-based teenage beat buffs -- did catch the visiting American at an early show in London in 1963, and it's likely that "Bob Dylan's Blues" was written during the following months. Peter Barnes, Pink Floyd's music publisher, maintains, "It's one of Syd's very earliest songs written before he even had a publishing deal."

The 1970 recording, with Barrett accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, is a neat take on Dylan's early, talking blues style. While finger-picking with typical, Dylan-like imprecision, Barrett gently lampoons Dylan's activism and instead plays up the singer's infamous nonchalance: "Got the Bob Dylan blues/And the Bob Dylan shoes/And my clothes and my hair's in a mess/But you know/I just couldn't care less." The chorus is equally even-handed: "Cos I'm a poet/Doncha know it/And the wind, you can blow it/Cos I'm Mr. Dylan, the King/And I'm free as a bird on the wing."

Though he later adopted Dylan's unkempt curly-top hairstyle, this is the first aural evidence of Syd Barrett's early enthusiasm for Dylan and provides an amusing aside to his more brain-teasing material.

MARK PAYTRESS
(February 14, 2001)

Thanks to Rolling Stone for the Article.

 

Here is the track listing Supposedly:

BEST OF SYD BARRETT
1 OCTOPUS 3.48
2 LATE NIGHT 3.11
3 TERRAPIN 5.04
4 SWAN LEE 3.13
5 WOLFPACK 3.41
6 GOLDEN HAIR (Madcap) 2.00
7 HERE I GO 3.10
8 LONG GONE 2.50
9 NO GOOD TRYING 3.25
10 OPEL 6.27
11 BABY LEMONADE 4.11
12 GIGOLO AUNT 5.46
13 DOMINOES 4.09
14 WOULDN'T YOU MISS ME (DARK GLOBE) 3.00
15 WINED AND DINED 2.58
16 EFFERVESCING ELEPHANT 1.29
17 WAIVING MY ARMS IN THE AIR 2.07
18 I NEVER LIED TO YOU 1.52
19 LOVE SONG 3.04
20 TWO OF A KIND ------
21 BOB DYLAN'S BLUES ------
22 GOLDEN HAIR (electric inst) 1.56

 

And here is some info on a new book.

Random Precision
Recording the Music of Syd Barrett 1965-1974'.
Author: David Parker


Syd Barrett was the original lead guitarist and a founder member of the group Pink Floyd, and remains one of rock music's most enduring characters. He was the principle songwriter for the first Pink Floyd album 'The Piper at the Gates of Dawn', and composed their 1967 hit single 'See Emily Play' before leaving the group in early 1968. He subsequently released two eccentric solo albums ('The Madcap Laughs' in 1969 and 'Barrett' in 1970) before withdrawing completely from the music business in the mid-1970's.

try before you buy!Much has been written about his life, but here for the first time are the full details of all of his recording sessions - from his first semi-professional recordings with Pink Floyd in 1965 up to his last abandoned solo recording sessions at Abbey Road in 1974.

The author David Parker was co-editor of the respected Syd Barrett fanzine 'Chapter 24', and has spent four years researching and writing the book, which is based principally on information obtained from the official archives at EMI Records and Abbey Road Studios.

The book uses a diary format, and includes exclusive interviews with many of the recording producers and engineers involved, including Peter Jenner, Andrew King, Peter Bown, Alan Parsons and John Leckie. The book also includes rare photographs and illustrations, many previously unpublished.

This is the most comprehensive, accurate and detailed account yet published of the background to the creation of Syd Barrett's unique musical legacy.


Release Date: April 2001
Price: £14.99


Record Collector Magazine Cover Story: Try to find a copy of this UK magazine.