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Gone to the great gig beyond

Syd Barrett was the driving force behind the unique sound that Pink Floyd is now legendary for, says RAKESH MEHAR in a homage to the tortured, reclusive genius who passed away last week

PHOTO: AP

NEW SOUND Syd Barrett's (third from left) radical experiments pushed the envelope on the sonic potential of the electric guitar

For the contemporary music listener, it's easy to dismiss Syd Barrett as a flash in the pan. After all, the genius guitarist, christened Roger Keith Barrett, spent only seven years in Pink Floyd, followed by two underground solo albums, and finally a self-imposed exile in his mother's home in Cambridge right up to his death last week. One couldn't really fault opinions such as Abhishek Nair's, the bassist for the Bangalore band Maximum Pudding: "He is more remembered by the layman for his eccentricities than for his musical skill. Possibly the only good thing to come out of all that was David Gilmore, his replacement in Pink Floyd."

Take a walk down that road though, and all you'll find along the way is an insipid, starved version of the rock and roll landscape deprived of the richness of British psychedelia that Pink Floyd pioneered under Barrett's leadership. After all, the genius guitarist's contribution to rock music might not stand quantitative analysis, but such an analysis would only be missing the surreal point of his musical career.

As Arfaaz, former drummer of the band Zebediah Plush and presently with Maximum Pudding, explains, Barrett was the driving force behind the unique sound that Pink Floyd is now legendary for. "Their sound was what it was because of the way he thought of music, which was influenced by the drug-induced haze he was commonly under," explains Arfaaz.

Indeed, few musicians or fans will ever forget Barrett's trademark technique of running down the fret board with a Zippo lighter through an echo box, or any of his other radical experiments that pushed the envelope on the sonic potential of the electric guitar.

Poster boy

His other-worldly musicianship made him the poster boy of the '60s and his early contributions to the band, whether on singles such as "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play" or on Pink Floyd's debut album Piper at the Gates of Dawn, inspired generations of chart-topping musicians that came after, from David Bowie to Blur to everyone else who broke onto the '80s and '90s music scene.

Although Barrett left the band soon after the debut album and did not contribute significantly to any of its future projects, the spectre of his lunatic genius always hung heavily on the band. Their three greatest post-Barrett recordings, Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall all seemed to pay homage to the man in some form or another. The Wall, in particular, was strongly reminiscent of Barrett's life in its telling of the tale of a frustrated, directionless guitarist named Pink.

His two solo efforts, The Madcap Laughs and Barrett, after his unceremonious exit from Pink Floyd (the band famously "forgot" to pick him for one of its concerts) followed in the same vein, leading listeners through a dark and formidable journey into the mind of a genius on a downhill journey from the top. Despite the intervening years, these two mercurial releases are still spoken of in tones of highest reverence, loved by fans of all ages for the mind-bending experimentation that went into them. "Barrett was too far ahead of his time," says Ganesh Krishnaswamy, bassist and vocalist of Kryptos. "He was doing in the '60s and '70s what Radiohead and others like them are doing now."

There are those that will forget the musical talent in the face of the overwhelming eccentricity that surrounded it, however. Almost from the beginning, Barrett's drug addiction and eventual psychological problems threatened to take over his life. In the end they did.

Cult status

But, while Barrett's life did have its excesses, the rumours and stories grew in the telling, spread by a public that wanted to worship him, feel sorry for him and be horrified at the same time. "He was the original rock-and-roll recluse," says Ganesh. "He was one of those brilliantly mad musicians that are responsible for the mad rocker image. Someone who's not scared to jump into the unknown," adds Suraj Mani of Motherjane. But, counters Ganesh, that doesn't matter. "He still was the same genius."

For all the hullabaloo that centred on him, Barrett diverged from the normal rock star formula, choosing to go quietly away instead.

Reports say he spent his last years pursuing his twin interests of painting and gardening. As a musician who's seen it all puts it: "That's a nice way to go."

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