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In memoriam

Syd Barret was the driving force behind Pink Floyd

NEW SOUND Syd Barrett

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 to his mother's home in Cambridge right up to his death last week. 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 the leadership of Barrett. 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.

Indeed, few musicians or fans will ever forget Barrett's trademark technique of running down the fretboard 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. Barrett's other-worldly musicianship made him the poster boy of the '60s, with his early contributions to the band and 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 their future projects, the spectre of his 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 their 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. His two mercurial releases are still spoken of in tones of highest reverenceThere are those that will forget the musical talent in the face of the overwhelming eccentricity that surrounded it. Almost from the beginning, Barrett's drug habit and eventual psychological problems threatened to take over his life. In the end they did.

RAKESH MEHAR

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