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There are now more Syd Barrett biographies around (in the English
language alone) than Syd Barrett records and several Pink Floyd
biographies consecrate the same amount of pages for the first three
years of the Floyd than for the next 30. So obviously there must be
something mysterious going on with this Syd character.
The last in line to open Pandora's box is Rob Chapman. He was actually
one of the few people (around 30 to 50) who saw Syd's mythical band Stars
at the Corn Exchange in Cambridge (24 February 1972) and is still
relatively sane enough to recall it. Young chap Robert Chapman even
wrote a review
for Terrapin
magazine, that would disappear a few years later for 'lack of Syd' but
also because no three Syd Barrett fans can come together without having
a tremendous fight. Try running an Internet joint for that lot nowadays
and you'll see what I mean.
Writing a biography is a difficult job and I once remarked in a (quite
pompous) review that biographers are situated on a scale, ranging
from those who meticulously verify, double verify and triple verify tiny
facts to those that will not hesitate to add a good, albeit probably
untrue, anecdote just because it goes down so well.
Rob Chapman is, and often quite rightly so, annoyed with the many
legends around Barrett and wants to set the record straight. I kind of
like this way of working. But he doesn't indulge us either in an ongoing
shopping list of facts and figures. The art of writing biographies is
not in adding details, that is the easy bit, but in weeding out the
superfluous so that a readable book (rather than a shopping list)
remains.
But sometimes I have the feeling that he weeded a bit too much. The trouvaille
of the name Pink Floyd (p. 53) is literally dealt with in a single line.
Of course ardent Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett fans alike already know the
story about Philips
BBL-7512 and its liner notes by heart, but the occasional reader
might as well benefit from an extra wee bit of information. And quite
frankly it is about time that David (Dave) Moore
gets the credits for the mail he sent to Bryan Sinclair on the 14th of
March 2005 entitled: “RE: [pre-war-blues] Pink Anderson / Floyd Council.”
From an LP apparently in the possession of Syd Barrett: Blind Boy
Fuller, Country Blues 1935-1940, issued on Phillips BBL-7512, c. 1962.
The sleeve notes were by Paul Oliver, and include the following: "Curley
Weaver and Fred McMullen, Georgia-born but more frequently to be found
in Kentucky or Tennessee, Pink Anderson or Floyd Council -- these were a
few amongst the many blues singers that were to be heard in the rolling
hills of the Piedmont, or meandering with the streams through the wooded
valleys." (Source: Pink
Anderson / Floyd Council @ pre-war-blues Yahoo, membership probably
needed)
Update 2015: The complete story of the Blind Boy Fuller album
that gave Pink Floyd its name can be found at: Step
It Up And Go.
Chapman, the fearless vampire killer
You might say, that piece of information is too anoraky and Rob
Chapman was right not to include it, but why then, when he can lash out
at previous Syd Barrett biographers, doesn't he apply his own rules
anymore? Every new biography should have its new findings, otherwise
there would be no necessity to write it, and I do understand that you
can point out a flagrant mistake that has been made in a previous
biography, but Chapman acts repeatedly as a vindictive (and verbally
abusive) Von
Helsing, wooden stake in his hand, ready to stick it through the
heart of a vampire on the loose. Only, in my book, a fellow biographer
should not be treated as a vampire but rather as a colleague, perhaps an
erring colleague, but still a colleague... Writing that some biographies
should have a government health warning on their cover is not nice and
is better left to amateur blog authors like yours truly and journalists
of The Sun.
We have established by now that Rob Chapman does not like false and
superfluous information, but on top of that he also has some theories of
his own. David Gilmour recalls how he was invited at the See
Emily Play recording session (officially the 21st of May 1967, but,
according to David Parker, a first session could have taken place on the
18th) and how he found that 'the golden boy had lost the light in his
eyes'. Somewhere around that date Syd turned 'crazy' so we have been
lead to believe for the past 40 years…
Inside Out
Chapman is of the opinion that Barrett didn't turn mad, but rather that
he was alternatively wired and that, what other people have described as
mad behaviour, was really Syd playing cosmic jokes on the rest of the
world or setting up dadaist and misinterpreted avant-garde performances.
Just like the proverbial fish in a fisherman's story gets bigger and
bigger so have Syd legends accumulated weight over the years. Rob
Chapman doesn't like these apocryphal stories and wants to debunk these
once and for all. He does a good job at that, but - once again - weeds
to much. It is not because you can correct a couple of false rumours
that - by definition - all memories from all witnesses have to be
categorised untrue. And that is what Chapman implies. Even more, in
order to prove his theory, he deliberately skips several events that
have happened but that he can't immediately minimise or contradict.
It is good to counterbalance the Syd Barrett articles and biographies
that have thriven upon sensationalism (Le
premier Pink Floyd from Emmanuel Le Bret comes to mind, luckily that
2008 biography was written in French and completely ignored by the
Anglo-Saxon world) but that is not a reason to indulge into a fairytale
world of Barrett the mystic, but misinterpreted, genius. That is
unethical and close to historical revisionism and it turns the middle
part of the biography (covering the Piper and Madcap years) into a
somewhat misplaced hagiography.
You will probably not believe me when I tell I didn't do it on purpose,
but when Chapman quotes Nick Mason's autobiography Inside Out on
page 198, saying that Nick writes that 'Syd went mad' during the
American tour of 1967, I grabbed my copy (actually, I carefully took and
opened it, as it is quite heavy) and read pages 87 till 97 over again. I
did this three times. I can't find it. I will not conclude that
Nick may never have written (or said during an interview) that 'Syd went
mad' but it isn't there where Chapman claims it is. It makes Chapman a
sloppy researcher, to say the least.
Update October 2010: By accident I stumbled upon the Syd is
crazy quote (or one of the Syd is crazy quotes) from Nick
Mason in Barry Miles' The Early Years book: "You can't believe that
someone's deliberately trying to screw it up and yet the other half of
you is saying 'This man's crazy - he's trying to destroy me!'"
Nick however does write that on two different occasions on the American
tour Syd detuned his guitar, one time even 'until the strings fell off'.
This apparently made Roger Waters so angry that he 'gashed his hand in a
furious attack on his bass guitar', smashing the (lend) instrument to
pieces at the end of the show.
Rob Chapman doesn't see where the problem is and remarks joyfully that
Syd had been deliberately detuning his guitar in the past (during the
Floyd's early free-form jams) and that it was tolerated and even
encouraged then. He seems not to realise that there might have been a
time and place to detune a guitar and a time and place NOT to
detune a guitar. When I visit my doctor, who is looking gorgeous by the
way, and unbutton my trousers in front of her she will not be offended,
but if I catch her at the local supermarket, choosing a deep-freeze
pizza (the living proof that deep-freeze pizzas are healthy, by the way)
and dangle my ding-a-ling in front of her, I will be in hell of a
trouble. Not that I have done that, those rumours are incredibly
exaggerated and I am again allowed to enter the supermarket anyway.
The Big Barrett Conspiracy
Chapman more or less suggests that, over the years, there has been a Big
Barrett Conspiracy going on, claiming that Syd went mad while he was
just being artistically misunderstood. It is obvious that Waters, Mason
and Wright, and to a lesser extent Gilmour, were behind the conspiracy.
They quit their studies and promising architectural career to follow the
narrow path of psychedelic pop music and when money was finally starting
to come in a whimsical Barrett wanted to turn the clock back (probably
through a washing machine) and concentrate on experiment again
(proto-Floyd members Bob
Klose and Chris Dennis had left the band in the past just
because their profession stood in the way). Chapman doesn't even try to
hide his disgust for post-Syd Floyd, but more about that later.
What is less understandable is that Peter Jenner and Andrew King are
part of the conspiracy as well, because when Syd and Pink Floyd went
separate ways, they choose to manage Syd instead of following the goose
with the golden eggs. Jenner assisted Barrett during his first batch of
sessions for The Madcap Laughs (1968) but commented later that these
were 'chaos'. The sessions had been going on from May till July and
Jenner reported that they weren't getting anywhere.
Chapman disagrees, he states that during the 6 studio sessions in
1968 Barrett recorded half a dozen of rough tracks dispelling the myth
of a 'muse run dry'. I count 9 sessions, by the way, making
Barrett's tracks per sessions ratio one third less performing as Chapman
wants us to believe, but that is not the issue here. The main problem is
not that Barrett was out of songs. Six of them still doesn't make an
album, unless you would add the 18 minutes of the avant-garde
(read: tedious) Rhamadan. The main problem with Barrett was that
the songs never outgrew the rehearsal or demo stadium. Simply said:
Barrett wasted a lot of studio time. And these were still the days that
a record company expected an artist to cut an entire album in three or
four sessions, the only exception perhaps being The Beatles.
Update October 2010: after 40 years Rhamadan has been issued as a
free download with the An Introduction to Syd Barrett
compilation. The track isn't half as bad as everyone - especially those
who never heard it - claimed it to be, but it needs some serious weeding
to be presentable as a 'real' album track. More info: Gravy
Train To Cambridge.
Juggling the Octopus
I see in Rob Chapman a man with a passion and he is at his best when he
analyses Syd's songs. It takes him 7 pages to scrutinise Clowns &
Jugglers (re-titled later as Octopus),
making it clear to the outside world that Syd wasn't just a young
innocent bloke whose lyrics came to him in a psychedelic, LSD-induced,
dream. Chapman traces back references (and quotes) from: Huff
the Talbot and our Cat Tib (Mother Goose rhyme), Thomas Nashe's
Summer's Last Will and Testament (an Elizabethan masque play), Shakespeare's
King Henry VI Pt. 1, Kenneth Grahame's The Wind In The Willows and
poems from Anonymous (Mr
Nobody), John Clare (Fairy Things), Sir Henry Newbolt (Rilloby-Rill)
and William Howitt (The
Wind in a Frolic).
Unfortunately I have in my small collection of Barrett related works a
12-page essay, written in 2005 by Paul Belbin, published at the Madcapslaughing
and Vegetable Friends mailing groups, titled: Untangling the
Octopus. It describes in detail, almost verse per verse, where Syd
Barrett sampled the lines from Octopus from. Although Chapman nearly
literally copies the information for 7 pages long, he neglects to
mention the source of his findings.
Update October 2010: Paul Belbin has authorised the Holy Church
of Iggy the Inuit to host the 2006 version of his essay: Untangling
the Octopus v2 (PDF file).
In 2009 a revised and updated version of Untangling
The Octopus was published by Julian
Palacios, a Syd Barrett biographer who doesn't even appear in
Chapman's bibliography, but as Chapman spifflicates the biographies he
does mention that probably is a compliment.
Mandrax & Brylcreem
Demythologising Syd
Chapman can get downright cynical when he wants to take the myth out of
Barrett and this is where the biography as a biography goes astray.
Although a biographer may be unconditionally in love with his subject he
(she) must at the same time keep a certain distance, be unprejudiced and
should approach the subject with at least a glimpse of unbiased
neutrality.
Debunking the brylcreem and mandrax anecdote is not bad,
but it is not directly original either. Chapman isn't the first one to
have done this as shows this forum
post by Julian Palacios and also Mark Blake has put some question
marks concerning the event.
Apart from some anecdotes that happened at family parties or random
encounters on the street with old friends and (past) lovers, we don't
know a lot about Syd Barrett's life in Cambridge. So if a witness does
turns up it would perhaps be a chance to check him (or her) out. But in
a Q&A
that was published on the official Syd
Barrett website Chapman tells why he didn't contact the Barrett neighbour
who has not always been positive
about the rockstar next door:
My thoughts, clearly and unambiguously are that I didn’t want to give
this individual a scintilla of publicity. (…) I did check him out, quite
extensively as it happens, and my enquiries lead, among other places, to
a website where he gives his enlightened views on capital punishment and
who should receive it – most of us, by the look of it.
It is not because someone has a dubious opinion about capital punishment
that his memories about Barrett are - by definition - untrue or
unreliable. However Chapman is not that reluctant when a witness turns
up who has got some positive things to say about Barrett.
On pages 365 and following, Chapman recites the charming anecdote of a
young child who ran into Barrett's garden to ask him a pertinent
question about a make-believe horse. Not only did Barrett patiently
listen to her dilemma, he also took the time to explain her that in
fairy tales everything is possible, even flying horses.
It is in anecdotes such as this that Chapman shows his unconditional
love for Barrett, and I confess that it made my grumpy heart mellow as
well. Here is the man, who invariably smashed the door to any fan
approaching his house, earnestly discussing fairy tales figures with a
neighbourhood's kid.
Update September 2013: some more information about this girl,
Radharani Krishna, can be found at the following article: Making
it clear...
Amplex ad, ca. 1958.
Wish You Were... but where exactly?
One of the greatest legends about Syd Barrett is how he showed up at the Wish
You Were Here recording settings on the fifth of June 1975. A Very
Irregular Head merely repeats the story as it has been told in other
biographies, articles and documentaries, including Rick Wright's
testimony that Barrett kept brushing his teeth with a brush that was
hidden in a plastic bag. Roger Waters however claims that Barrett only
took sweets out of the bag. As usual different witnesses tell different
stories.
The toothbrush myth is one Chapman doesn't know how to demystify but
recently Mark
Blake may have found a plausible explanation.
The 'toothbrush' and 'bag of candies' may have come out of the story I
heard from somebody else that was at Abbey Road that day. They claimed
Syd Barrett had a bag filled with packets of Amplex. For those that
don't know or remember, Amplex was a breath-freshener sweet that was
popular in the 70s. This eyewitness claims that Syd Barrett was
nervously stuffing Amplex sweets into his mouth... another story to add
to the pile... but you can see how the story of 'breath-freshener
sweets' could turn into a 'toothbrush' and/or 'a bag of candies'. (Taken
from May
5, 2010 Roger Waters TV interview at Late
Night.)
Update August 2011: according to Mark Blake in Mojo 215 the
Amplex story comes from journalist Nick Sedgwick, who was writing an
(unreleased) Pink Floyd related book at that time and author of the
novel Light Blue With Bulges, that describes his beatnik adventures in
Cambridge in the early sixties. More info: The
Case of the Painted Floorboards (v 2.012).
The Madcap Laughs
Another mystery Chapman can't solve is the exact time frame of the
shooting of The Madcap Laughs album cover. He still situates this
between August and November 1969 although there is a slightly obscure
website on this world that maintains that the pictures date from the beginning
of that year.
Chapman does a good, what do I say, a great job by describing
Syd's later years. He still can't say a lot about Syd's lost weekend
between the mid-Seventies and the early Eighties, although there must be
people around who knew or even visited him. Perhaps that insane Holy
Church of Iggy the Inuit should try to locate some of them.
In 1982, in the midst of Wall-mania,
Barrett left his Syd-character behind by walking the distance between
London and Cambridge. For the remainder of his life he would prefer to
be known as Rog or Roger.
Chapman managed to talk to Rosemary Breen, Syd's sister, and it
is through her that we know a great deal of Barrett's later life. It is
a sad story, but one with many laughs, as Rosemary remembers mainly her
brother's latter-day sense of humour. That and the story of Syd's life
as an adolescent, thanks to the many letters that Libby Gausden
has kept for all these years, are the strongholds of this, his,
biography.
Pink Fraud
Just when you thought this review was finally going to end it is time to
get personal.
I started reading this biography and was genuinely intrigued by the
author's style, his wit, his knowledge, but also his unhealthy habit of
demeaning anyone who doesn't share his ideas. But I could live with it,
despite the odd tsk-tsk that would leave my mouth once in a while.
The passage that made me loose my marbles can be found halfway the book
on page 213. It describes how Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd legally split
up. Peter Jenner and Andrew King stayed with Barrett, the rest of the
band had to choose a new agency, a new manager and a new recording
contract. The rest of the band's history, so writes Rob Chapman, is accountancy.
The Early 70 Tours with the Embryo suite: accountancy? Meddle
(with Echoes): accountancy? Dark Side Of The Moon: accountancy? Wish
You Were Here: accountancy? Animals: accountancy? The
Wall: accountancy?
Update October 2010: When Barrett and Pink Floyd split up there
was the small matter of a 17,000 British Pounds debt that the band had.
The Abdab accountants didn't burden Syd Barrett, nor Peter Jenner
and Andrew King with that.
On page 317 Chapman infuriates me a little bit more by writing that
Waters, Mason, Wright and Gilmour sound like a firm of chartered
surveyors. I find this remark as insulting as deliberately mistaking
Rob Chapman for Mark
David Chapman.
His opinion that, on Wish You Were here, Pink Floyd uses sixth-form
imagery to describe their former bandsman (and friend) didn't hurt me
anymore. By then Rob Chapman had already become something I usually pick
out of my nose.
In Chapman's opinion an entire generation of musicians (in the
Seventies) began to make music 'more appropriate to the rocking chair
than to the rocket ship'. The man has a way with words, that I have to
admit.
I had heard of these Pink Floyd haters before, people who really think
that the band died when Barrett left the gang. The problem is that most
of these people are aware of Syd Barrett thanks to the fame and glory of
a dinosaur called Pink Floyd.
Without Syd Barrett no Pink Floyd, I agree (although it was Roger Waters
who invited Barrett to join the band, not the other way round). But
without Pink Floyd most of us, myself included, would never have heard
of Syd Barrett either.
Thanks to the success of the classic Pink Floyd concepts EMI kept the
Barrett solo records in their catalogue. The 1974 vinyl compilation Syd
Barrett was a direct result of the interest for early Floyd, after A
Nice Pair (1973) had proven successful. Poor Barrett earned 'two and
a half million quid' in one year thanks to the Echoes compilation alone.
The backside is that due to Dark Side, Wish You Were Here and The Wall
fans from all over the globe started to look for Barrett, hoping he
would explain them the meaning of life. Probably Syd would have
preferred to be left alone even if it meant not to have all those
millions on the bank. But if there is one thing we can't do, it is to
change past history, although Chapman tries, more than once, to do so.
Conclusion
Until finally Julian Palacios comes up with a revised edition of Lost
in the Woods, Rob Chapman deserves my sincere felicitations for
writing one of the most readable Barrett biographies ever. But for
constantly exposing himself as an infallible Barrett-prophet,
pooh-poohing all those who don't think like him and deliberately
ignoring facts that don't fit in his gospel, he deserves nothing more
than a good kick on the nose.
Update: some of the anoraky points mentioned in the above article
(Octopus lyrics, 1968 sessions) have been further examined in Mad
Cat Love (2011).
Sources: (other than internet links mentioned above): Belbin,
Paul: Untangling the Octopus v2, 2006. PDF
version, hosted at the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit with Paul Belbin's
permission. Blake, Mark: Pigs Might Fly, Aurum Press, London,
2007, p. 95, p. 231. Mason, Nick: Inside Out: A personal history
of Pink Floyd, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2004, p. 94-95. Miles,
Barry: Pink Floyd The Early Years, Omnibus Press, London, 2006,
p.111. Parker, David: Random Precision, Cherry Red Books,
London, 2001, p. 136, p. 138.
Mandrax & Brylcreem drawing taken from thepiperatthegatesofdawn.co.uk
(site no longer available).
A quite nice (promotional) interview with Rob Chapman can be found at Youtube.
A couple of weeks ago this blog published excerpts
from Meic Stevens' autobiography Hunangofiant
y Brawd Houdini (in Welsh, but awesomely translated by Prydwyn)
describing how the Cymry
bard encountered Syd Barrett in the late Sixties.
These meetings, as far as the Church is aware, have never been mentioned
before, not in any of the four main Syd Barrett biographies and not on
any website, blog or forum dedicated to the Pink Floyd frontman. It is a
bit weird, seen the fact that the biography already appeared in 2003.
Normally Syd related news, regardless of its triviality, is immediately
divulged through the digital spider web tying Syd anoraks together. The
Church does not want to take credit for this find, it is thanks to Prydwyn,
who contacted the Church, that we now have this information, and we hope
that it will slowly seep into the muddy waters of the web. (Strange
enough the Church post was almost immediately detected by (Welsh) folk
music blogs but completely ignored by the Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett
communities. Is the rumour true that there is a general Syd Barrett fatigue
going on?)
The psychedelic London Underground was not unlike the rapid
transit system that listens to the same name. The counterculture wasn't
really an organised movement, but constituted of many, independent
stations with tubes going from one station to the other. Some
persons travelled a lot, switching from line to line using intersecting
stations as apparently Syd Barrett's Wetherby Mansions flat was one,
much to the dismal of Duggie Fields who wanted to produce his art in
peace.
Spike Hawkins.
Syd meets Spike Hawkins
In a YouTube
interview Rob Chapman, author of the Syd Barrett biography A
Very Irregular Head, recalls how he found out that beatnik and poet Spike
Hawkins was an acquaintance of Syd Barrett. He was interviewing Pete
Brown for his book and when the interview was over he remarked that
some Barrett lyrics had a distinct Spike Hawkins style. At that point
Pete Brown remarked: "I think Spike Hawkins knew Syd Barrett." Without
that lucky ad hoc comment we would (probably) never have known
that the two artists not only knew, but also met, each other at
different occassions, although it was probably more a Mandrax
haze that tied them rather than the urge to produce some art together.
Syd meets Dominique
The Church already mentioned the names of Meic Stevens, Jenny Spires,
Trina Barclay, Margaretta Barclay and her friend, painter and musician
Rusty Burnhill (who used to jam with Barrett), Iggy (or Evelyn, who is
rather reluctant to talk about the past) and the French Dominique A.,
who was - at a certain moment - rather close to Barrett.
Dominique is, like they say in French, un cas à part.
Unfortunately nobody seems to know what happened to her, but if the six
degrees of separation theory is accurate it might not be too
difficult to find her. The problem is that nobody remembers if she
stayed in Great Britain or returned to France. But if you read this and
have a granny, listening to the name Dominique A., who smiles
mysteriously whenever you mention the name Pink Floyd, give us a call.
Update May 2011: thanks to its many informants, the Church has
traced the whereabouts of Dominique. She currently lives in a small
village, close to Bayonne, near the Bay of Biscay (French: Golfe de
Gascogne). Unfortunately she doesn't want to talk about the past.
Update June 2018: Iain Moore, aka Emo, uploaded a picture, taken
in the mid-Seventies. From left to right: Dominique, Gala (Gaylor?)
Pinion, Lyndsay Corner.
Dominique, Gala and Lindsay, mid-Seventies. Picture by Iain (Emo) Moore.A
mysterious brunette.
Syd meets Carmel
Church member Dark Globe compared the English version of Meic
Stevens' biography Solva
Blues (2004) with the excerpts of the Welsh version we published at Meic
meets Syd and found a few differences. Apart from the fact that Meic
Stevens also had an Uncle Syd who appears quite frequently in the book
there are some minor additions in the English version, absent from the
original Welsh.
The Welsh version notes fore instance that 'Syd Barrett from Pink
Floyd came to see us in Caerforiog':
Syd Barrett o Pink Floyd fydde’n dod i’n gweld ni yng Nghaerforiog.
The English version adds a small, but in the life of a Barrett anorak,
rather important detail. It reads:
Syd Barrett from Pink Floyd who used to visit us at Caerforiog with
his girlfriend Carmel.
It is the first time the Church (and Dark Globe) hears from this lady,
and she is probably one of those two-week (or even two-day) girlfriends
Mick Rock and Duggie Fields have been talking about.
(Warning Label: The picture just above has been taken from the
Mick Rock movie Lost
In The Woods, nobody knows for sure who is the mysterious brunette.
This blog does not imply she is Dominique A. or Carmel, for that matter.)
Drug problem
The second reference (about Syd visiting the Outlander
sessions) also has one addition in the English version. Solva Blues adds
the line:
I wouldn't have thought he had a drug problem - no more than most
people on the scene.
If there is one returning constant about the underground days it is its
general tunnel vision. In the brave new psychedelic world every move,
the crazier the better, was considered cool and there was a
general consensus to deny any (drug related) problem that could and
would occur. Rob Chapman is right when he, in his rather tempestuous
style, writes:
What do you do if your lead guitarist is becoming erratic / unstable /
unhinged? Simple. You send him off round the UK on a package tour
(…) with two shows a night for sixteen nights.
Nick
Mason acknowledges this illogical (not to use another term)
behaviour:
If proof was needed that we were in denial about Syd's state of mind,
this was it. Why we thought a transatlantic flight immediately
followed by yet more dates would help (Syd) is beyond believe.
R.D. Laing
Syd almostmeets R.D. Laing
Of course looking for professional psychiatric help in those crazy days
wasn't that simple either. Bluntly said: you could choose between the
traditional cold shower - electroshock therapy or go for anti-psychiatry.
Although it is impossible to turn back the clock it still is the
question if experimental anti-psychiatry would have helped Barrett. In a
previous post we have given the example how an experimental therapist
administered LSD to a Cantabrigian
friend of Syd as an alternative way of therapy and R.D. 'I like
black people but I could never stand their smell' Laing was no
exception to that.
Pink Floyd's manager Peter Jenner made an appointment for Syd with R.D.
Laing, but Syd refused to go on with it, but this didn't withhold Laing
to make the following observations as noted down by Nick Mason:
Syd might be disturbed, or even mad. But maybe it was the rest of us
(Pink Floyd, note by FA) who were causing the problem, by
pursuing our desire to succeed, and forcing Syd to go along with our
ambitions.
This is the main theory that is overzealously, but not always
successfully, adhered by Chapman in his Syd Barrett biography. R.D.
Laing ended his Barrett diagnosis, who he never met, by saying:
Maybe Syd was actually surrounded by mad people.
Although some biographers may think, and there they are probably right,
that the other Pink Floyd members may have been an ambitious gravy
train inspired gang, there was also the small matter of a 17,000
British Pounds debt that the architectural inspired band members
still had to pay off after the split. They didn't burden Syd Barrett,
nor Peter Jenner and Andrew King with that. Now that is what the Church
calls accountancy.
We now know that giving Syd Barrett the time and space, outside the
band, to meddle at his own pace with his own affairs and music was not
entirely fruitful either. In the early to mid Seventies Syd Barrett
entered a lost weekend that would almost take a decade and that
is a blank chapter in every biography, apart from the odd Mad Syd
anecdote.
Mini Cooper (based upon a remark from Dark Globe)
It is also interesting that Meic Stevens mentions Syd's Mini Cooper:
He was a very good-looking boy, always with a beautiful girl on his arm
when he was out or driving his Mini Cooper.
Presumably this is the same car Syd drove all over England in, following
the band, when he was freshly thrown out of the Floyd.
Syd swapped this Mini Cooper for a Pontiac
Parisienne (and not a Buick as car fanatic Nick Mason writes,
although Buick and Pontiac were of course closely related brands) with
T-Rex percussionist Mickey Finn in the beginning of 1969, which would
date the first meetings between Stevens and Barrett prior to the Mick
Rock photo sessions.
But that photo session has been discussed here ad nauseum already
so we won't get further into that. So, my sistren and brethren, bye,
bye, till the next time, and don't do anything Iggy wouldn't have done.
Especially at this warm weather.
(This article is a (partial) update from this one: Meic
meets Syd)
Many thanks go to: Dark Globe for checking the English version of Meic
Stevens' autobiography. Prydwyn for checking and translating the Welsh
version of Meic Stevens' autobiography.
Sources: (other than internet links mentioned above):
Chapman, Rob: A Very Irregular Head, Faber and Faber, London,
2010, p. 201, p. 227. Green, Jonathon: Days In The Life,
Pimlico, London, 1998, p. 210. (R.D. Laing quote) Mason, Nick: Inside
Out: A personal history of Pink Floyd, Weidenfeld & Nicolson,
London, 2004, p. 87-88, p. 95, p. 129. Stevens, Meic: Hunangofiant
y Brawd Houdini, Y Lolfa, Talybont, 2009, p. 190-191, p. 202. Stevens,
Meic, Solva Blues, Talybont, 2004 (English, slightly updated,
translation of the above).
A couple of months ago a new Syd Barrett compilation was announced and
EMI (Harvest) was proud to proclaim that Syd Barrett had joined the
league of Jimi
Hendrix or Marc
Bolan, meaning that the man has got more compilation albums written
on his name than genuine albums.
Let's make a quick sum, shall we? Barrett, who was the founder of the
mythical band Pink
Floyd, was overtly present on their first album The
Piper At The Gates Of Dawn. On the second album A
Saucerful Of Secrets he had already taken a sabbatical, and although
present on 3 tracks (out of 7) he only takes the vocal lead (and writing
credits) on the testamentary coda Jugband
Blues.
There are at least 7 Pink Floyd compilations that have Barrett's
(sometimes unreleased) work on it and the last one Echoes
(2001) turned Syd Barrett into an overnight millionaire. The fortieth
anniversary edition of Piper (2007) has (in the deluxe edition)
an extra CD containing some alternative versions and the Pink Floyd's
early singles as well.
Barrett's solo output in the early seventies is limited to two albums, The
Madcap Laughs and Barrett,
and that is all there is, give or take 5 or 6 compilations. The count
depends whether one catalogues the Opel
(1988) record as a compilation of alternative takes and unreleased
material or as a real 'third' solo album.
The most recent compilation 'An
Introduction To Syd Barrett' boasts that this is the first time in
history that Barrett's Pink Floyd and solo tracks have been compiled on
one disk. This is true, but… so what?
On the other hand a quick glance at the list
of unreleased material shows that there are about a dozen Pink Floyd
studio tracks from their Syd Barrett era, but alas this compilation
still doesn't contain any of them.
So what could possibly be the added value of this album, one might ask?
Storm Damage
Not its cover, that doesn't show Syd Barrett at all but that has been
created, as usual, by Storm
Thorgerson. Thorgerson, and more particularly his Hipgnosis
studio, made some landmark record sleeves in the Seventies and Eighties,
but he seems not able nowadays to sell his creations to influential
bands, unless you call the freaky weirdoes of The Mars Volta
influential of course. Thorgerson's contemporaneous work flirts a bit
too much with cheap kitsch and luckily there is still Pink Floyd Ltd
that keeps him away from the unemployment office. I'm quite fond of
Thorgerson's work and I do like the cover although most Syd Barrett fans
I frequent compare it with visual diarrhoea so I leave it to you to make
up your own mind.
Tracks Revisited
As a Barrett anorak I am not interested in the regular songs on this
compilation - as a matter of fact I didn't even listen to those - but I
jumped immediately on top of the so-called enhanced tunes. The
compilation boasts that 4 tracks have been remixed and one track has
been 'upgraded' with additional bass from David Gilmour who also
supervised the mixes. (The following review has been largely influenced
by Blade's
comments on the NPF
forum and MOB's
comments on the A
Fleeting Glimpse forum.)
Dominoes: the new mix has been so subtly done that there is
hardly any difference. The vocals are more emphasized and the backwards
guitar sounds a trifle clearer. Some corrections may have been done,
because on the original versions several (drum) parts were out of
'synch'. These errors have miraculously disappeared on the 2010 mix.
Octopus: this track is 7 seconds longer, due to the fact that a
'false' start has been added at the beginning. The "isn't it
good to be lost in the woods" vocals have been clarified and brought
to the fore and it could even be that its first part has been taken from
an alternative take (also a few drumbeats have been added that weren't
there on the 1970 version). Overall the muddled sound of vocals and
guitars have been cleaned.
She Took a Long Cool Look: this track has always been
called She Took A Long Cold Look in the past, but the
title has now been changed. This is one of so called 'live' bits from
Barrett's first album. These included false starts, bad guitar playing,
unstable singing and Barrett generally loosing it… David Gilmour said he
included these demos in 1970 to reveal Barrett in all his fragility, but
later regretted his choice…
The 2010 version snips some of the unnecessary background sounds
(Barrett turning some papers) and the guitar breakdown in the middle of
the song is replaced by some strumming from another take. And - as with
all of these remixes - Barrett's voice sounds more crisp than before and
with less disturbing echo.
Matilda Mother (Pink Floyd): the 40 years anniversary edition of Piper
already had this alternative take but in a much shorter version. This
one takes 50 seconds longer and has benefited from a real mix. Probably
the 2010 version is a sound-collage of several outtakes.
Here I Go: this little dance hall tune has always been my
favourite Barrett track. For over 40 years I have wondered how this song
really ended and now the ditty lasts 5 seconds longer. Gilmour has done
a fine job by adding extra bass and after my second listen I already
felt that this was the way it should always have been. (There is also a
tiny rhythm correction - compared with the original version - at 01:46.)
Personally I find it a bad judgment from Gilmour & Co to keep the fade
out but the closing chord I had been waiting for can still be heard. And
I know it's starting to sound repetitive, but Barrett's vocals have been
upgraded as well and sound crispier than ever. You don't need to buy the
album to listen to this track as a promo video has been put on the web
as well: Here
I Go (official video).
Update December 2019: Peudent, over at Late
Night, had some fun remastering the 2010 version of Syd Barrett’s Here
I Go. This version has got no fadeout and the ending can now be
heard at full volume. URL: https://voca.ro/3O3YGCsdWT7
The few remixes on this compilation are subtle, have been done with
great care and love for the original material so that my initial anoraky
opinion of 'don't touch the originals' has now been switched over to
'why didn't they simply enhance all tracks'?
But the real revelation of the album can't be found on plastic. The CD
contains a key to download the mythical Rhamadan track from the official
Syd Barrett website and this is what the next chapter is all about.
R(h)amadan
I won't get into the old story, legend or myth, of Rhamadan as it is all
old news by now. The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit wrote a bit about it
in Anoraks
and Pontiacs and Rob Chapman in A
Very Irregular Head describes it as a 'conga-heavy jam session
lasting eighteen minutes and of little merit', although it is highly
doubtful that the biographer could get hold of the piece.
The only person, apart from some EMI alumni, who could listen to the
track in its full glory was David Parker, author of Random
Precision. In order to get EMI's permission he had to sign a 'scarily
draconian declaration', so scarily draconian that he even had to
delete a forum post wherein he had simply admitted it had been 'scarily
draconian'. The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit sometimes threatens with
the Holy Igquisition but apparently that secret service is
peanuts compared to the EMI 'unlimited supply, there is no reason why'
storm troops.
David was the only author who could write, in detail, how the piece
sounded and as it is so damn accurate I see no point of trying to give
my own description.
Peter Bown announces Rhamadan take 1 over some bass and organ
noises. He pronounces the title Rarmardarn like a 1950's BBC
newsreader. The piece itself begins with the conga drums (probably Steve
Took from Tyrannosaurus Rex).
The bass comes in and immediately takes the lead role (whoever the bass
player is they are extremely proficient) with some very fast Stanley
Clarke style runs and slides in places. The vibes then begin to come in,
along with some disjointed organ chording (mostly on one chord). This
then continues for a couple of minutes with the bass leading over the
conga beat, vibes and organ chords. A piano then enters playing a loose
boogie rhythm, and someone starts playing some very staccato mellotron
notes as well. Things settle into a groove, and a second drummer joins
in, mainly on cymbals. After about 5 minutes Syd's guitar starts to
appear, playing muted chords to fill out the sound. The bass falls back
slightly, and the piano takes the lead, Syd's guitar feeding back
momentarily as he begins to play solo notes. (…)
The piece eventually starts to fizzle out with some mad staccato
mellotron, the ever present organ chord and a lot of bass improvisation
with a sprinkling of piano notes. Syd plays some open chord plucking and
everything gets rather free form with Syd letting his guitar build-up
feedback and then fades it out. (…)
Syd starts another riff but it begins to fade until the bass player
picks up on it, and everyone begins following along. Another crescendo
of feedback builds up as Syd picks out what sounds like the Close
Encounters three note theme (!). (…)
Things build up yet again, with everyone in random improvisation, then
everyone stops except the organ chord. The bassist begins a strident
riff, giving the vibes a chance to solo (with staccato mellotron
accompaniment). The bass rockets off into a hyper-drive riff, then
everything finally falls to bits, ending with our old friend the organ
chord drone, the mad mellotronist and a few bass notes.
We don't really know who are the players on Rhamadan, but Steve
Peregrin Took is a name that appears in almost all biographies.
Biographer Julian Palacios, however, seems to disagree now:
Talking to my friend GH today, he wrote: 'I don't think that Steve Took
is the conga player on these sessions. I knew Steve and discussed Syd
with him on a few occasions, he said that Syd had jammed with him round
at his flat and that he had recorded it, but there was never any mention
of going into a recording studio with Syd. My understanding was that
Steve didn't get pally with Syd until after his split from Marc (Bolan).
Back in 68 Tyrannosaurus Rex where gigging like crazy and still very
much a going concern.' (Taken from Late
Night Discussion Forum.)
Rhamadan isn't half as bad as everyone, who had never heard it, claimed
it to be. Especially when one remembers that the same biographers and
journalists tend to praise AMM, The Soft Machine or The Third Ear band
for their revolutionary musical approach. Rhamadan is of course a highly freakadelic
experiment, almost free-jazz in its approach, a genre Syd Barrett was
not unfamiliar with.
Rhamadan MP3 properties.
If you have bought the CD, Rhamadan can be downloaded (legally) from the
official Syd Barrett website, but unfortunately only in the MP3 format
with a rather cheapish 152kbs bitrate. But its bitrate is not the only
amateurish characteristic. While millions of people all over the world
have discovered MP3 tags, EMI is of the opinion that this invention is
way over their heads. The tags are all empty and reveal that the track
is untitled (Track 1), comes from an unknown album,
is from an unknown artist and from an unknown year. Not
even the Publisher and Copyright data are filled in. My 8-years old
godchild can rip MP3 tunes better than EMI does, she at least knows how
to attach a (sleeve) picture to the file. (Although I worked this out by
myself, Jen D at madcapslaughing
beat me by a day by publishing the same findings before me. As I haven't
got an irregular head I'll give this bloke the credits.)
While EMI has been nagging us for years that copying is killing music
a closer look on the MP3 tags reveals us that the file has been
converted with FreeRIP.
Here is the biggest music company in the world and it uses a freeware
version of a (quite good, I agree) MP3 converter to spread around a
track belonging to the founder of their second most commercially
successful band, next to The Beatles.
I know of the bad financial situation of the music company but I wasn't
aware that EMI was that close to bankrupt that they can't even afford a
29,75 dollar software program anymore.
Conclusion
None really. The best thing is to decide for yourself if the 5 remixes
and the 1 download are sufficient to buy the album. As a Barrett anorak
myself, I simply had no choice.
Sources: (other than internet links mentioned above) Chapman,
Rob: A Very Irregular Head, Faber and Faber, London, 2010, p. 215. Parker,
David: Random Precision, Cherry Red Books, London, 2001, p.
132-133.
Perhaps that is not entirely true, but at least we've got your attention.
Terrapin 9.
Terrapin
Terrapin
was a Syd Barrett fanzine appearing from the early till the
mid-Seventies. The alternatively wired Bernard
White was one of the few who used to run the legendary magazine
although it has mainly acquired this status through the amnesic mist of
time. The magazine was badly written, badly styled, badly distributed
and, to add insult to injury - somewhere in between - the different
editors used the scarce pages of their own magazine to fight out some
internal editorial wars. Call it a Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit avant
la lettre, quoi.
But of course Terrapin occasionally had its peak moments. A young Robert
Chapman, whom we all know from his excellent work of fiction A
Very Irregular Head, debuted in Terrapin number 2 with his review
of the February 1972 Stars gig at the Corn Exchange in Cambridge. He had
it mainly wrong, so he was already creating a habit there.
A smart trip
The most intriguing piece in Terrapin did not come from Rob Chapman, nor
Bernard White, but from the mad bard himself. Issue 9 (July 1974) had a
previously unpublished poem, written by Syd Barrett, titled: A
Rooftop Song In A Thunderstorm Row Missing The Point. Several weird
theories have surfaced about it and one of them goes that the starting
letters of its title form the witty anagram 'a smart trip'. Not all
Barrett fans believe the poem was written by Syd, but - and otherwise
this article would have no reason at all - let's assume he did. The
poem, as it appeared in 1974, can be found in our Rooftop
gallery. It is in Bernard White's handwriting, as are most pages of
Terrapin, because there was no typewriter around when he created the
fanzine.
A Syd Barrett poem, circa late 60s/early 70s, signed, in black ballpoint
on a small piece of paper, entitled 'A Rooftop Song In A Thunderstorm
Row Missing The Point', thirteen lines, beginning, 'With yellow red and
foomy food, and quivered / crouching on a golden cushion / Undressed
himself to dissapear (sic) through an infinity of pleasure...', the
reverse with part of a question/answer piece, one side covered in tape,
12.5 x 13cm (5 x 5in) approx. Estimate: £2,000 - 3,000, EUR 2,300 –
3,500. (Note: a facsimile
can be found at our Rooftop
gallery.)
But what was most interesting, intriguing and salivating was the
footnote at the bottom of the Bonhams page:
This will feature in a book
about Syd to be launched in March 2011, with an exhibition at Idea
Generation, and the Barrett family have confirmed this is in
Syd's hand.
See Emily Play lyrics (Syd Barrett).
Almost immediately the allusion that the piece was in Syd's handwriting
was questioned by some fans. At the left side there is a snippet of Pink
Floyd's See Emily Play and that is how Syd Barrett's handwriting
looked like. Late
Night member Dark Globe did a fine job by comparing Barrett's
and White's handwriting and concluded:
To me, the handwriting on the Bonhams poem itself looks closer to BW's
handwriting than to Syd's. (Syd's handwriting tended to slope to the
left all throughout his life). I'd guess that the Bonhams item is
actually a draft written in a looser hand by Bernard White for the final
version which appears in the fanzine. (Taken from: Rooftop
for Sale.)
Brettjad at Madcaps
Laughing remarked: “I don't get it. If it's Syd's, then why did he
write that interview on the reverse?”
A pertinent question indeed. The Anchor took the liberty of taking a
closer look at the backside of the document (see gallery).
One of the first assumptions the Anchor can make is that the sold
snippet was cut out of a larger piece of paper as the top of the
backside horizontally slits a sentence in half. But that is not all
there is to see.
Giovanni Dadomo
The backside text contains a Syd Barrett interview, taken by GiovanniDadomo,
probably in 1971, but only published three years later in Terrapin. And
still that is not all.
The backside transcript is (partly) page 5 of Terrapin 10. In other
words: here is the original page, in Bernard White's handwriting,
before it was printed and distributed to its subscribers in August 1974.
The underneath illustration hopefully proofs that both are identical
(first line: Terrapin 10; second line: Bonhams poem - back side).
Comparing Terrapin with Bonhams.
Missing the point
Let's digest this for a while, while we have a go at the poem itself.
According to Bonhams, Barrett's family has confirmed it is in Syd's hand
although they fail to produce a certificate of authenticity or to simply
name the family member who has testified this. If they can't it is
hearsay, to say the least.
For the sake of argument, let's believe the poem is in Syd's
handwriting. Why then did super-fan & collector Bernard White prefer to
publish a copy of the poem in his handwriting rather than to
publish Syd's original? Surely someone must have been missing a point?
In Terrapin 9 White thanks 'Hypgnosis for the poem and photos'. Still
following Bonhams train of thought this means that Po (Aubrey Powell) or
Storm (Thorgerson) gave Bernard White an original Syd Barrett document
without asking for a receipt. That's not how we know them, especially
not in 1974.
Anoraks have of course spotted the mistake in the previous paragraph.
Bernard White thanks Hypgnosis, not Hipgnosis. As
legendary as his fanzine are his spelling errors (in one issue he
jokingly described himself as 'Bernard M White: spelling mistakes and
all other errors'). The Rooftop paper has got two: 'your writting'
and 'to dissapear'. White's spelling errors are as unique as his
handwriting and the 'dissapear' error is repeated in both
versions of the poem. Oops!
Bonhams' Barrett vs Terrapin's White
To end the discussion, once and for all, let's have a look at the two
known Rooftop copies: blue is Bonhams (Syd Barrett), red is Terrapin
(Bernard White). Hmmm...
Comparing Terrapin with Bonhams.
It is in a book, ergo it must be true
Not only does Bonhams claim that the poem is in Barrett's handwriting,
they also maintain that their version is going to be published 'in a
book about Syd to be launched in March 2011, with an exhibition at Idea
Generation'.
Who could be better situated to acknowledge this than Russell
Beecher, the editor of Barrett,
The definitive visual companion to the life of Syd Barrett.
Unfortunately he told the Anchor:
We also thought that the poem wasn't written in Syd's hand so we haven't
included it in the book. I am not sure about the family authentication
but I think, as you and we have worked out, that point is irrelevant as
we know it's not Syd's writing. (…) A shame though - would have been a
great find!
Indeed, there must still be a third version of the Rooftop poem
somewhere, the one - (perhaps) in Syd's handwriting - that Bernard White
copied in the Hipgnosis headquarters. But that is not the one that was
recently auctioned.
It's a gas!
On the 15th of December of 2010 a collector paid 2,160 £ for
this original piece of Bernard White's handwriting, probably believing
that it was Syd's. (Some information has now been removed from the
Bonhams website but the Anchor has a screenshot.)
It was then when the Anchor decided to contact Bonhams
to ask them if, perhaps, an eeny weeny teeny meeny mistake had
been made.
An automated reply from Leonora O. learned us that she was out
until the 5th of January and that for all queries we should try another
mail address, that happened to be exactly the same address than the one
we had send our questions to. So we waited, until the year was finally
over...
In January we contacted Bonhams a second time. We got a reply from Katherine
B. who was so friendly to inform us that Stephanie C. was
going to answer us immediately.
Just before this article went into print (or should we say: upload) we
informed again if Stephanie C. finally had any comments. Alas, she was
too busy waiting for the ink to dry on a recently found Apple iPod that
has John Lennon's signature on it and couldn't come to the phone.
Bernard White and Syd Barrett, sharing a Guinness at the great gig in
the sky, are probably laughing their arses off.
The Anchor wishes to thank: Russell Beecher, Dark Globe who made
an excellent comparison of Barrett's and White's handwriting at Late
Night. Further analysis shows that the letter d in 'seasoned'
(from the Bonhams poem) and the letter d in 'Bernard' (as in
White's signature) are coming from the same person (post
#9).
The Anchor is the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit's satirical
division, intended for people with a good heart, but a rather bad
character. More info: The
Anchor. Read our legal stuff: Legal
Stuff.
Barrett,
the definitive visual companion to the life of Syd Barrett, by Russell
Beecher & Will Shutes arrived at Atagong Mansion on the
second day of its release, Friday the 18th of March, but I have to
admit, I didn't really look at it, apart from some glancing through its
pages.
The reason is simple, the book is a visual biography collecting
many (unseen) photographs of Syd Barrett and his band The Pink Floyd,
facsimiles from letters to Libby Gausden and Jenny Spires and the very
first detailed catalogue of Syd's paintings, and I am more a man of
words, too many words some people say (and perhaps there is a a yet
undiscovered trail of prudence in me, as I am a bit reluctant to read
Syd's letters written to Libby and Jenny).
I care for Syd the musician but I don't get overexcited when a new
Barrett (or vintage Pink Floyd) picture appears on the web. First: this
has been happening on a regular basis since Barrett's death when people
suddenly remember that they have got an exclusive picture lying on their
attic. Second: these pictures will arrive, in due time, on the more than
excellent Have You Got It Yet? v2.0 Vol 11 Photo/Info DVD-Rom from Mark
Jones that can be freely downloaded at several places on the web, but I
prefer Yeeshkul
as it is the 'official' home for Floydian audio & video collectors.
Although not entirely legal this picture DVD was asked for by the Pink
Floyd management who gave Mark Jones a copy of Oh
By The Way, the Pink Floyd 14 CD compilation, in return. I am quite
convinced that the pictures of the Barrett visual companion will, one
day, mysteriously appear on a new release.
Photographs (editor: Russell Beecher)
Barrett is roughly divided into three unequal parts. Part one #1 shows
many unseen and previously unpublished pictures of vintage Pink Floyd,
#2 has pictures from the Syd Barrett solo era, about 110 pages in total.
They are printed in big format (one photo per page or double page, many
pictures have been spliced), in high quality and 'digitally' restored.
Most of the pages have a description of the picture, the date it was
taken and an appropriate quote or anecdote from the Cambridge mafia
or the photographer in question.
A so-called signature or limited edition has got a third, separate,
photo series by Irene Winsby, but to acquire these additional 72
pages you have to cough up an extra 235 £ (282 €). Unfortunately for me
the signature issue is bound in leather and as a strict vegetarian it is
against my conscience to skin a cow to watch a Barrett picture. If you
find this silly just try to imagine what the master of Sant
Mat would have said to Syd Barrett about that.
(A short description of the picture section can be consulted at: Rockadolly.)
Barrett doodle.
Letters (editor: Russell Beecher)
Part two, the shortest one with 25 pages, is destined to letters from
Syd to Libby Gausden, Jenny Spires and ends with the famous little
twig poem to Viv Brans. Tim Willis already described some of these
letters in his Madcap biography, but didn't actually put these in
print (with one exception and about 4 times smaller in size).
Anoraks know that Syd decorated his letters with funny doodles and this
section is obviously more interested in the drawings than in the actual
letters. Libby and Jenny give cute explanations in what probably was a
very weird menage-à-trois (our quatre or quarante,
if we may believe the rumours about Syd's omnivorous female appetite).
Art (editor: Will Shutes)
Section three (over 90 pages) is what everybody has been waiting for,
for all these years. At least that is why I have bought the book for.
For ages fans have been drooling over Syd, the painter, but I never
really bothered. I did not put Syd Barrett in the same category as Ron
Wood and Grace
Slick who also smear paint on canvas (and that's about all that can
be said about them), but I adhered the theory that was written down by Annie
Marie Roulin in The Case of Roger Keith 'Syd' Barrett (Fish
Out Of Water, 1996).
The symmetries among the geometrical shapes painted by Barrett show an
embarrassing absence of 'concept', of hidden flaming which makes
doubtful the real artistic value of these works. As to the technique
they can compete only with works by low talented students of low
secondary school.
Untitled 15 (Cat. 20) lino print.
In other words, paintings of Barrett may have been slightly therapeutic
(and this can be debated: art sessions can also have the uncanny feature
of sliding a mentally unstable person further into regression) but - if
one can fully grasp Anne Marie Roulin's Italo-English - they
could certainly not be considered as art with a capital A. A daring
theory and certainly not liked by many Barrett fans, nor by his family,
and that is why journalist Luca Ferrari invented a female alter ego to
publish this controversial thesis (Luca's confession in Italian,
and an English translation on Late
Night.)
In the past, biographies have tried to convince the reader that Barrett
was an art-painterpur sang, but none of these could win
me over, basically because writing about paintings without seeing the
actual work (or only two or three foggy examples) is like talking about
music without listening to it. For the first time in history a book
publishes Syd's whole oeuvre or what is left of it, about 100 of
his paintings; and Will Shutes has written an impressive 25 pages long
essay about Barrett's canvas outings throughout the years. While reading
the excellent essay one is obliged to constantly switch from text to
illustration and luckily the book has two ribbon-markers to facilitate
this multi-tasking.
Shutes admits that Barrett's work lacks 'consistency', a remark
originally made by Duggie Fields and cited in Rob Chapman's A Very
Irregular Head, but he immediately turns this into a plus factor.
Will concludes:
"The variety this implies is at the core of his originality."
, but one could use exactly the same reasoning to deduce that Barrett's
artwork isn't original at all.
Just like Julian Palacios
in Dark Globe has tracked down musical influences in Syd
Barrett's discography, Shutes cites several examples for Barrett's
graphical work. If there is one work of Barrett that stands out (in my
opinion, FA) it is the 1964-ish Untitled 15 (Cat. 20) lino print
with its evaporating crosses, but Barry Miles (also in A Very Irregular
Head) explains it has been clearly influenced by Nicolas
Staël, although Shutes reveals that there must have been some
secret Paul
Klee ingredient at work as well.
Rosemary Breen told Luca Ferrari that Barrett could make ten paintings a
day, and even if this was exaggerated the one hundred in the Barrett
book only represent a small percentage of his output. Although nobody
actually witnessed Barrett destroying his work, it is assumed he burned
them or threw them in the rubbish bin. Some have said that Barrett
destroyed only those paintings that weren't perfect to him, but actually
he destroyed them all although some seem to have survived for a couple
of months before disappearing. The few exceptions are those he gave away
to family or visiting friends. Beecher & Shutes could trace 49 surviving
artworks by Syd Barrett and were lucky that Rosemary found some photo
albums of Syd's art. For most of his life Roger Barrett had the weird
habit of photographing his work before destroying it, as if he wanted
the destruction to be a bit less final. Opinions differ as well why
Barrett did this, and range from a mental disorder to an artistic
concept. Will Shutes:
Like Rauschenberg's
erasure
of a drawing by de
Kooning in 1953, Barrett's act of destruction is not a negation – it
achieves something new. Barrett is doing something when he destroys what
he has done, not merely erasing it.
Arnold Layne Ad not by Syd."
Even a Barrett scholar can have it wrong sometimes, the author describes
an Arnold Layne flyer, allegedly dating from March 1967, as designed by
Syd Barrett, unaware of the fact that it is fan-art, dating from the
late seventies, early eighties, and published in a Barrett fanzine. A
quick glance on Mark Jones' HYGIY picture DVD would have settled that
once and for all (remarked by Mark Jones at Late Night: Barrett
Book).
What intrigues me is that Roger Barrett continued to make abstract and
realistic paintings, as if he was afraid to make an irrevocable choice.
Personally I find his water-coloured landscapes or florals
uninteresting, although they do show some métier, especially
compared with the abstract works of the seventies or eighties that are
visually more compelling but technically mediocre. I'm quite fond of Untitled
67 (2005) that represents a pie chart of the summer and winter
solstices, although some
will of course recognise it as a pastiche of the Wish
You Were Herecover
art. That's the main deviation of the maniacal Pink Floyd and Syd
Barrett fan, seeing links that (perhaps) aren't really there.
Untitled 67.
This book contains the best descriptions and illustrations of Syd's
artwork, it is a collector's dream, but in the end Will Shutes can not
convince me that Barrett was a graphical artist in the true sense
of the word. It's a matter of personal opinion and I'm not sure if
Barrett knew it himself or if he even cared.
Conclusion
I hope the authors will not hold it against me if I tell that this book
is not destined for the average Floyd or Barrett fan. It contains no
juicy stories of feeding Syd biscuits through a closed locker door. Its
sole purpose is to ease the hunger of the Barrett community that is
easily recognised by its general daftness and its deep pockets.
Despite the blurb that states the opposite Barrett is not essential for
the music loving fan, but the book is no waste of time for those that
want to acquire it either. Barrett has been made with love, caring and
respect for its subject, is a work of art and quality and has been
authorised by the Estate of Roger Keith 'Syd' Barrett. But at 90 £
(108 €) for the classic edition (including delivery) it is also pretty
expensive, perhaps not overpriced, but still a lot of money.
Introduction
In his witty introduction Russell Beecher writes that over the years
there was "a need for a well-researched, intelligent, and
well-thought-through account of Syd's life and work". I completely
agree. He then continues by stating that this was fulfilled with the
publication of "Rob Chapman's excellent An Irregular Head in 2010".
Thank you, Russell Beecher, but I prefer to make up my own mind. In my
humble opinion Chapman's biography fails against at least one of the
qualities you have mentioned above. Those in need for an independent
opinion can consult Christopher Hughes's Irregular Head review at Brain
Damage, by and large the best Pink Floyd fan-site in the world.
Russell Beecher proceeds:
An Irregular Head is the definitive textual work on Syd. What you now
hold is the definitive visual work on Syd's artistic life. The two
books compliment one another.
Did I just pay 90 £ for a vaguely concealed commercial, wished for by
the Barrett Estate? The Barrett book is quite exceptional and possibly
'the definitive visual work on Syd's artistic life' indeed, but linking
its destiny to An Irregular Head, way off definitive if I am
still allowed to express my opinion, undermines its own qualities. This
feels like reserving a table at Noma
in Copenhagen to hear René
Redzepi announce that the food will reach the level of the local
McDonald's. Can I have some ketchup on my white truffles, please?
Some will find me overreacting again, but I had to get this off my
chest. Although a bit superfluous, and destined for the capitalist über-Syd-geek
alone, Barrett is far too luxurious and well-researched to have its
image tramped down.
The Church wishes to thank: Dan5482, Mark Jones, PoC (Party of Clowns)
and the beautiful people at Late Night.
Sources (other than internet links mentioned above): Beecher,
Russell & Shutes, Will: Barrett, Essential Works Ltd, London,
2011, p. 10, 11, 145, 162, 163, 170, 175. Chapman, Rob: A Very
Irregular Head, Faber and Faber, London, 2010, p. 49, 232. Ferrari,
Luca & Roulin, Annie Marie: A Fish Out Of Water, Stampa
Alternativai, Rome, 1996, p. 31, 95, 97.
The Mad Cat Laughs (Felix Atagong variation from The
Kitten Covers).
Yesterday, on Friday the 11th of June 2011, the Reverend of the Holy
Church of Iggy the Inuit was waiting on a bench at the central bus
station when a man addressed him in French, but he soon switched over to
Dutch.
"I see you are reading a nice book about Pink Floyd. I used to be a Pink
Floyd fan myself. Syd Barrett, the madcap loves."
At least it sounded like 'the madcap loves' in my ears and not 'the
madcap laughs', but perhaps the man had just a small problem with
English pronunciation. Never have made that link myself, I can only
smilingly agree that the madcap loves is one of the better
Floydian slips ever.
The madcap loves, I love it.
But perhaps I just misheard the thing, my ears aren't any more what they
used to be, after having been mistreated by Iron Maiden on my iPod for
the last lustrum.
Mad cat's something you can't explain
A trademark rhyme in Barrett's Octopus
song is the line that named the album:
The madcaplaughed at the man on the border Heigh-ho,
Huff the Talbot.
But Rob Chapman, in an interesting YouTube interview
about his biography A
Very Irregular Head, is of the opinion that Barrett did not sing mad-cap
but mad cat. In that case the title of Barrett's first solo
album is based upon a misunderstanding from producer David
Gilmour.
The mad cat laughed at the man on the border Heigh-ho,
Huff the Talbot.
Since Paul Belbin's excellent cyber-essay 'Untangling
the Octopus' (2005), hosted at the Church with the author's
permission, we know that the Octopus song (also titled Clowns
and Jugglers in an earlier stage) is packed with obscure literary
references, disclaiming the rumour that Barrett wrote his songs in a
drug influenced frenzy. One of the characters ripped by Syd Barrett
comes from an anonymous nursery rhyme called 'Huff
the Talbot and our cat Tib':
Huff the talbot and our cat Tib They took up sword and
shield, Tib for the red rose, Huff for the white, To fight upon
Bosworth field.
For the adherers of the mad cat theory it is perhaps of importance here
that the dog's adversary in the battle of Bosworth
just above is not a mad-cap but a cat called Tib.
Rob Chapman also mentions nonsense poet Edward
Lear as a further influence on Barrett but he didn't catch the
following poem:
There was an old man on the Border, Who lived in the
utmost disorder; He danced with the cat, And made
tea in his hat, Which vexed all the folks on the Border.
You don't need to be a genius to reconstruct how the dancing cat from
Lear's man on the border and Tib, the warrior cat at Bosworth field,
amalgamated into the mad cat character in Octopus.
But, as with all things Syd, things aren't always that simple. The
madcap believers have a point as well as a madcap galloping chase does
appear in an early incarnation of Clowns and Jugglers:
Sit up, touching hips to a madcap galloping chase "Cheat"
he cried shouting “Kangaroo!”
The wind one morning sprang up from sleep, Saying, “Now for a frolic!
now for a leap! Now for a madcap, galloping chase! I’ll
make a commotion in every place!”
In that case David Gilmour mistook one line for the other and the
album's title may have been taken from a quote that didn't make it on
the album.
Salvation Came Lately
But the above has got absolutely nothing to do with today's article and
the Reverend duly apologises for the confusion.
Sitting on a bench at the bus station he was addressed by a man who had
found a common point of interest: Pink
Floyd. To prove that the traveller wasn't talking bollocks, the
sharp-dressed man suddenly sang the following lines from Jugband
Blues.
I don't care if the sun don't shine and I don't care if nothing is
mine and I don't care if I'm nervous with you I'll do my loving in
the winter...
Asked to sing a favourite line from a Floyd tune (luckily that never
happens) I would never quote an early song, so the choice of this man
was quite interesting, to say the least. Unfortunately, the strophe was
followed by the announcement that he didn't listen to the Floyd any
more, only to religious music.
To my shame I have to admit that the Reverend didn't see it coming that
another Reverend was trying to lure him into the tentacles of another
Church... Coincidentally we had to take the same bus and we talked like
close friends until it was time for the ambassador of god to leave the
ambassador of Iggy.
Vibrations.
Good Vibrations
The 'book' I was reading wasn't a book but a special 82 pages issue from
the French rock magazine Vibrations,
entirely dedicated to Pink Floyd (7,90 €). Printed on luxurious glossy
paper it assembles articles (translated in French) from well known Q,
Mojo and NME journalists, such as Martin Aston, the Church's partner in
crime Mark
Blake, Pat Gilbert, Chris Salewicz and the French Aymeric Leroy, who
apparently has written an acclaimed biography on the band: 'Pink Floyd: Plongée
dans l'oeuvre d'un groupe paradoxal'.
The times are long gone when I bought everything that was from far or
nearby Pink Floyd related, I even resisted buying Pink Floyd coffee mugs
a couple of week ago, something that would have been impossible for me
in the past millennium, so here is a biography I wasn't aware of. Not
that I am planning to buy it. There isn't one single French Pink Floyd
or Syd Barrett biography that doesn't clash with my personal beliefs of
what a good biography should be.
Update 2011 06 20: Unfortunately the Internet isn't the safe
place any more where you can insult someone without being noticed.
Aymeric Leroy got hold of this post and wanted to set a few things
straight.
Thanks for mentioning my book on your blog. I'd just like to point out
that it isn't a "biography", more like a critical assessment of the
band's entire discography, which does include background info of a
biographical nature, but primarily an analysis of the music and lyrics.
The stuff I wrote for the special issue of "Vibrations" is expanded from
the more biographical passages of the book, but the book isn't an
"expanded" version of those. There are other people who did a great job
telling the band's history, and I relied on their work, but my reason
for adding yet another book to the impressive PF bibliography was to try
and do something different - write about the actual music for at least
75% of the book.
Duly noted, Aymeric, and perhaps the Church will have a go at your book
then, one of these days...
The Ultimate Music Guide.
Uncut and uncombed
It promises to be a hot Pink Floyd year, this year, and the makers of Uncut
magazine have issued a 146 pages Pink Floyd special in their The
Ultimate Music Guide series. It isn't such a classy edition as the
French Vibrations, but of course the good news is that it
contains at least twice as much information. With at least one article
or interview per Pink Floyd record this obviously is the 'better buy' of
the two, although the initial set-up is more or less the same. The Uncut
special assembles old articles and a few new ones and promises to be an
enjoyable read.
That an enjoyable read isn't always the same as an accurate read proves
Allan Jones' The Madcap Laughs & Barrett article on pages 32 till 35. He
starts with mentioning that Syd Barrett entered Studio 3 on the 6th of
May 1968, for the first of six sessions that would follow. I don't know
what it is with this 6-sessions-myth but Rob Chapman claims exactly the
same in his biography. As I always seem to have recalled 9 sessions
instead of 6 it is time for yet another anoraky investigation.
So not for the first time in my career as Reverend of the Holy Church of
Iggy the Inuit I have counted the 1968 Madcap recording dates, as
noted down in David Parker's excellent sessionography Random
Precision. It all starts in the beginning of May.
1968 05 06 – In the morning EMI engineers had been transferring
two Pink Floyd tracks 'In the Beechwood' (aka 'Down in the
Beechwoods') and 'Vegetable Man' for Syd Barrett to work on, but when
Barrett finally arrived he decided to record two new songs instead:
'Silace Lang' (aka 'Silas Lang') and 'Late Night'. Session One.
According to the Allan Jones article Barrett recorded the rambling
'Rhamadan' the day after. Wrong. The next day would have been the
seventh of May, but Barrett only re-entered the studio one week later.
1968 05 13 – 'Silas Lang' (take 1) and 'Late Night' (take 6),
were worked on / transferred by Peter Jenner. It is not clear if Syd
Barrett was present in the studio or if this was merely a technical
session. Of course this could have been one of those 'chaotic' sessions
where Barrett simply didn't show up, with Peter Jenner trying to salvage
the furniture by using the spare time for some producer’s work. Session
Two.
1968 05 14 – 'Rhamadan', 'Lanky' (Pt. 1&2), 'Golden Hair'.
Obviously Barrett and three session musicians were in the studio,
although nobody seems to remember who the backing band members really
were. Session Three.
1968 05 21 – 'Late Night', 'Silace Lang'. This was the day when
Syd Barrett forgot to bring his guitar to the studio and Peter Jenner
had to rent one for £10.50. Always a kind of a joker, our Syd. Session
Four.
1968 05 28 – 'Golden Hair', 'Swan Lee' (aka 'Silace Lang'),
'Rhamadan'. This session also included (the same?) three session
musicians. Session Five.
1968 06 08 – Superimposition of titles recorded on 6th, 14th,
21st & 29th [wrong date, FA] of May, 1968, so read the red
form notes. Peter Jenner made a provisional tracklist for what could
have been Barrett's first album:
Silas Lang Late Nights (sic) Golden Hair Beechwoods (originally
recorded with Pink Floyd) Vegetable man (originally recorded with
Pink Floyd) Scream Your Last Scream (sic, originally recorded with
Pink Floyd) Lanky Pt 1 Lanky Pt 2
Looking like a Barrett's fan wet dream the above track listing debunks
the story - still popular at certain disturbed Barrett circles - that
the band Pink Floyd and its members deliberately boycotted their former
colleague.
Barrett was apparently present at this session as some guitar overdubs
were recorded for 'Swan Lee' (the right title of that track still wasn't
decided). Session Six.
1968 06 14 – cancelled session
1968 06 20 – tape transfers and overdubs on 'Late Night' (noted
down as 'Light Nights'), 'Golden Hair', 'Swanlee' (again another way of
naming this track). Syd Barrett probably did some vocal overdubs. Session
Seven.
1968 06 27 – 'Swanlee', 'Late Night', 'Golden Hair'. Tape
transfers and possible (vocal) overdubs. This is a bit of a mystery
session as the archives of EMI aren't clear what really happened. Session
Eight.
1968 08 20 – 'Swan Lee', 'Late Nights', 'Golden Hair', 'Clowns &
Jugglers'. First appearance of the track that would later be named
Octopus. Session Nine.
Session nine is where Peter Jenner decided to pull the plug, and unless
you believe in the conspiracy theory that Jenner was a spy for the Pink
Floyd camp, there must have been a valid reason for it.
So there we have it, the nine chaotic Madcap sessions of the year 1968.
Of course it is clear where the six sessions explanation comes from, if
one omits the second session where Barrett probably never cared to show
up and some tape transfer and overdub sessions you have successfully
diminished nine sessions into six.
It all is a matter of interpretation: at one side you have those who
argue that Barrett recorded a nice collection of great dance songs in
only six sessions, at the other side you have those (including producer,
manager and personal friend Peter Jenner) who claim that nine sessions
weren't enough to produce three decent demos. As always the truth lies
somewhere in the middle.
So the six session myth, as noted down by Allan Jones in the Uncut Pink
Floyd 'Ultimate Music Guide' might not be so far off the truth.
Storm shot by Mick during the TML photo shoot.
Camera Kids
Another misty myth hangs around the cover shoot of the album. Allan
Jones bluntly states, more out of ignorance, I presume, than of
knowledge, that Mick Rock was responsible for the cover. The official
version goes that the pictures, used for the cover, were taken by Storm
Thorgerson, who happened to be at the same place at the same time
(as the picture at the left side proves). The Holy Church of Iggy the
Inuit has already spilled lots of bits and bytes about The Madcap Laughs photo
sessions (in plural), so we won't go further into that.
Iggy 'Eskimo' Rose revealed to Mark Blake that other shots were taken as
well:
I don't think Storm and Mick were very impressed by them. If you've ever
seen the cover of the Rod Stewart album, Blondes Have More Fun, they
were a bit like that... Of me and Syd. There were others of me and Syd,
as well, which remind me of the picture of John and Yoko [on Two
Virgins] which came out later. I'd love to see those pictures now.
(Taken from: The
Strange Tale Of Iggy The Eskimo Pt. 2)
Nowadays it is not that certain any more if these shots were taken by
Storm Thorgerson or by Mick Rock. There might even have been a third
photographer at play. It seems that the flat of Syd Barrett was crowded
with people that day and that they all brought a camera. Unfortunately
the naughty Syd & Iggy pictures seem to have disappeared...
Maybe it was because there was too much frontal. Poor Syd, I remember
getting carried away, pulling and pushing him about, getting astride
him. He was in fits of laughter....which of course is not what they [the
photographers] where after. (Iggy Rose, 30 May 2011.)
Riding the Octopus
Allan Jones is of course not a Barrett anorak like yours truly (and most
of the readers of this blog) and thus he has to confide upon other
anoraky people. So he probably doesn't see any harm in the following
quote:
Rob Chapman's close reading of the remarkable 'Octopus', for example,
revealed the craft of which Syd was still capable. The song's cleverly
accumulated lyrics drew on diverse literary sources, folklore, nursery
rhymes, and the hallucinatory vernacular of dream states to create a
wholly realised, enraptured universe, halcyon and unique. (p. 35)
This is all true and very beautifully written, but only – and this
brings us back to the starting point of this article – it was Paul
Belbin's essay (compiled with the help of a dozen of contributors) that
revealed the Octopus' hidden lyrics to begin with and that roughly five
years before Chapman's Irregular Head biography. No wonder that Julian
Palacios, a Syd Barrett biographer in his own right, calls it the
Rosetta stone for decoding the writing inspirations for one of Syd
Barrett's most beloved songs.
But all in all Uncut's 'The Ultimate Music Guide' to Pink Floyd seems to
be an essential (and rather cheap, only £5.99) overview of the band and
its records and I like all the articles that I've read so far. I think
it's a gem and a keeper.
The Church wishes to thank: Paul Belbin, Mark Blake, Julian Palacios and
the wandering anonymous Pink Floyd lover from the Embassy of God.
Top picture: variation on a theme from The
Kitten Covers. ♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥
Sources: (other than internet links mentioned above) Belbin,
Paul: Untangling the Octopus v2, 2006. PDF
version, hosted at the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit. Belbin, Paul &
Palacios, Julian: Untangling the Octopus v3, 2009. PDF
version, hosted at the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit. Update
April 2015: same article hosted at Late
Night. Parker, David: Random Precision, Cherry Red Books,
London, 2001, p. 126-138.
Despite the fact that the sixties children of the revolution all wanted
to express their individualism and refused to be a part of the square 9
to 5 world they all managed to show up at the same places, dress
virtually the same and take the same chemical substances.
This also applied for their holidays. Although they had been seeing each
other the whole year in old rainy England, in summer they would pack
their bags and flee – en masse – to the same cool (but
sweaty) locations, following the so-called Hippie
Trail.
The Hippie Trail extended to the Himalayas and several Cantabrigian
hipsters made it to the Indies, looking for a guru who would teach them
things a local vicar couldn't teach them. Paul Charrier, one of the
Cantabrigian mods, beats or whatever denomination they liked that week,
was one of the first to witness this. When he returned to England and
opened his bag of tricks, he managed to convert a few others to the
narrow path of Sant
Mat, but others, like Storm
Thorgerson and Matthew
Scurfield, opposed to this 'wave of saccharine mysticism hitting our
shores' (see also: We
are all made of stars).
India and Pakistan were long and hazardous journeys and for those who
only had a few weeks to spend there were always the Balearic islands
where they would meet at La Tortuga or La
Fonda Pepe.
Some 700 hippies arrived in Formentera in 1968 and by the summer of 1969
there were already 1,300, almost one for every 2.5 islanders. They
didn’t stay all year round but were usually university students spending
their holidays on the island. In 1970, Franco’s regime threw all 3,000
of them off Ibiza and Formentera. According to the regime, the hippies
gave the place a bad name, but the islanders didn’t agree – for them the
hippies were simply tourists. (Taken from: Thinkspain.)
Of course the islands of Formentera
and Ibiza
(Balearic Islands) already had some reputation of their own. The place
not only gained popularity by (American) writers and artists after the
second world war for its mild climate, but also because it was a central
drug smuggling point. The heroes of Beat literature not only liked the
bohemian's life, but in their quest for nonconformity they also actively
sought contact with 'the perilous margins of society - pimps, whores,
drug dealers, petty thieves'.
Quite some Dutch artists visited the place, for one reason or another.
The proto-hippie-folk singing duo Nina
& Frederik (Dutch-Danish, in fact), who had some hits in the
fifties and early sixties, lived there. In his later life Frederik
Van Pallandt attempted a career as drug smuggler and his murder in
1994 may have been a direct result. Other artist included poet Simon
Vinkenoog, author Jan
Cremer and Black & Decker trepanist Bart
Huges. The sixties saw visits from the Beatles, the Stones and in
their wake some beautiful people from London (for a more detailed list: Ibiza
in the beatnik & hippie eras.)
1963
David Gale, his girlfriend Maureen, Dave Henderson, Storm Thorgerson and
John Davies went to Ibiza in 1963 for their holidays where they visited
Formentera island for a day. Back at home they all decided to have
another holiday there.
1965
Mary Wing (and her friend Marc Dessier) found Formentera so beautiful
that in 1965 they decided to stay there.
Syd Barrett, Formentera 1967.
1967
Nick Mason acknowledges that after the '14
hour technicolour dream' (29 April 1967) the band was very tired and
that Syd showed more severe symptoms than the others. Despite all that
the continuous, eight days a week, gigging went on with the mythical Games
For May concert two weeks later (12 May), the memorable Hans
Keller BBC interview (14 May) and the See
Emily Play recording session (18 May). There were nearly daily
concerts or recording sessions between May and June of that year, but
little by little cracks started to appear in their overcrowded agenda.
June, 11: two cancelled concerts in Holland June, 18: public
appearance on a bikini fashion show for Radio London, cancelled June,
24: two cancelled concerts in Corby and Bedford June, 25: two
cancelled concerts in Manchester
On Thursday, July the 27th 1967, the Pink Floyd mimed (for the third
time) on the Top Of the Pops show although Barrett was rather reluctant
to do it. The next day they had a recording session for the BBC, but
apparently Syd was seen leaving the block when it was their turn. This
time the band and its management took Syd's behaviour seriously and
decided to cancel all August gigs (with the exception of some studio
recording sessions).
Update September 2012: one of these cancelled gigs was the 7th
National Jazz, Pop, Ballads and Blues Festival that was visited by Iggy
the Eskimo: Iggy
- a new look in festivals.
Now what would you do when the lead singer of your band has got mental
problems due to his abundant drug intake? You send him to a hippie, drug
infested, island under the supervision of a psychedelic doctor who
thinks that LSD has been been the best invention since masturbation.
Sam [Hutt, aka Smutty] was the underground's very own house doctor,
sympathetic to drug users and musicians: as Boeing
Duveen And The Beautiful Soup and later Hank
Wangford, Sam was able to introduce a performer’s perspective. (Nick
Mason)
In 1969 Smutty would have his medical office at Jenny
Fabian's apartment: “I did find it a bit weird though, trying to lie
around stoned listening to the sounds of vaginal inspections going on
behind the curtain up the other end of the sitting-room."
After a first attempt in the studio on Scream
Thy Last Scream, Pink Floyd finally went on holiday for the second
half of August. Syd Barrett, Lindsay Corner, Rick Wright, Juliette Gale
(Wright), Dr. Sam Hutt, his wife and baby went to Formentera while Roger
Waters and Judy Trim (Waters) headed for Ibiza. They all had a good
time, except for Barrett who – during a storm - panicked so hard he
literally tried to climb the walls of the villa, an anecdote that is so
vehemently trashed by biographer Rob
Chapman that it probably did happen.
In retrospect the decision to take a hippie doctor on holiday wasn't
that stupid. One of the underlying ideas was that he would be able to
communicate with Syd on the same level. The band, conscientiously or
not, were also aware that 'there was a fear that sending Syd to a
[traditional] doctor for observation might lead to his being sectioned
in a mental hospital'.
In those days most care centres in Great Britain were still Victorian
lunatic asylums where medical torture was mildly described as therapy.
At least these were the horrid stories told by the people who had been
so lucky to escape.
He showed me to the room that was to be mine. It was indeed a cell.
There was no door knob on the inside, the catch had been jammed so that
the door couldn't be shut properly, the window was high up in the wall
and had bars over it, and there was only a standard issue bed and locker
as furniture. (William Pryor)
Nobody wanted this to happen to Syd, but a less prosaic thought was this
would have meant the end of the band, something that had to be carefully
avoided. “The idea was to get Syd out of London, away from acid, away
from all his friends who treated him like a god.”, Rick Wright explained
but in reality Dr. Hutt, and the others, merely observed Syd Barrett,
catatonic as ever and still 'munching acid all the time'. Nick Mason, in
his usual dry style: “It was not a success.”
Whoever thought that giving Barrett a few weeks of rest was going to
evaporate the demons from his brain must have been tripping himself and
on the first of September the agenda was resumed as if nothing had
happened. The first 6 days were filled with gigs and recording sessions.
Three days later a Scandinavian tour with the legendary Gyllene
Cirkeln and Starclub gigs, followed by an Irish Tour and later, in
October, the disastrous North American Tour...
Although the previous paragraphs may seem harsh they are not meant to
criticise the people nor their actions. It is easy to pinpoint what went
wrong 45 years ago, but as it is impossible to predict an alternative
past we will never know if any other action would have had a different
or better effect. The Reverend is convinced that Syd's friends, band
members and management tried to do their best to help him, but
unfortunately they were running in the same insane treadmill as he was.
Syd wasn't the only one to be exhausted and at the same time the
atmosphere was imbibed with the 'summer of love' philosophy of
respecting someone's personal freedom, even if it lead to
self-destruction...
1968
In 1968 Aubrey
'Po' Powell (Floydian roadie and later Hipgnosis member) visited the
Formentera island together with some friends.
I first came here forty-one years ago [interview taken in 2009, FA] with
David Gilmour, and then the year afterwards with Syd Barrett. The first
year I came to Formentera I stayed about four months living like a
hippie, and I just fell in love with it. (…) Also it was kind of
difficult to get to. You had to get the plane to Ibiza and then the
ferry which at that time was the only ferry that went between Ibiza and
Formentera and that took about two hours to get across and it only went
twice a day. So it was an effort to get there, you know, it was a rather
remote place. But a lot of writers, painters and musicians gravitated
there. (Taken from: Aubrey
Powell: Life, light and Formentera’s influence on Hipgnosis.)
A smile from a veil.
1969
Shortly after Syd Barrett watched the first moon-landing
(that had been given a Pink Floyd soundtrack on the BBC) he panicked
when he found out that his pal Emo (Iain Moore) and a few others (Po,
John Davies) had left Albion for sunny Formentera. He literally grabbed
a bag of cash and dirty clothes and headed to Heathrow, driven there by
Gala Pinion.
The story goes that Syd tried to stop an aeroplane taxiing on the
tarmac. In at least one version the plane actually stopped and took him
on board, but other say he had to wait for the next departure. Again it
is biographer Rob Chapman who categorises this anecdote as
'unsubstantiated nonsense', on the weird assumption that it failed to
make the newspapers, but other biographies have also omitted this story
for simply being too unbelievable.
Anyway, somewhere in July or early August 1969 Syd arrived in Ibiza and
met Emo who was on his way to San Fernando (Formentera). The biographies
Crazy Diamond (Mike Watkinson & Pete Anderson), Madcap (Tim Willis) and
Dark Globe (Julian Palacios) all add bits and pieces to that particular
holiday.
Iain Moore: “He had a carrier bag of clothes that I could smell from
where I was standing.”
Emo says Syd's behaviour was pivoting like a see-saw. One moment he
could be seen laughing, joking and singing with the gang; the next
moment he could snap into an emotional freeze. It was useless to warn
him for the blistering sun and in the end his friends 'had to grab him,
hold him down, and cover him from head to toe in Nivea'.
At Formentera Syd stayed with Mary Wing, who had left Great Britain in
1965 to live on the island with Marc Dessier. According to them Barrett
was a gentle soul but 'like a little brother who needed looking after'.
Barrett was in good form and to an audience of European hippies he
claimed he was still the leader of Pink Floyd.
Barrett borrowed Dessier's guitar: “Then he sat there, chose a letter of
the alphabet and thought of his three favourite words starting with the
same letter. He wrote them on three bits of paper, threw them in the air
and wrote them again in the order that he picked them up.” This
technique was not uncommon for beat poets and Syd may have been inspired
by Spike Hawkins who showed Barrett his Instant Poetry Broth book the
year before.
One Formantera picture shows Syd with an unknown girl who hides her
nudity behind a red veil. The (copyrighted) picture can be found on John
Davies MySpace page (image link)
and has been published in the Crazy Diamond biography and on A
Fleeting Glimpse.
For Pink Floyd buffs the picture shares a resemblance with the red veil
picture on the Wish
You Were Here liner bag, that actually exists in a few different
versions. Storm Thorgerson has used the past from the band and its
members for his record covers, backdrop movies and videos on several
occasions, like the Barrett vinyl compilation that had a cover with a
plum, an orange and a matchbox.
Hipgnosis collaborator 'Po' Powell was with Syd in Formentera in 1969,
but what does Storm Thorgerson has to say about it all? He reveals that
the idea for the veil came from John Blake, and not from Po:
John Blake suggested using a veil – symbol of absence (departure) in
funerals ans also a way of absenting (hiding) the face. This was the
last shot (…) which was photographed in Norfolk.
And in Mind Over Matter:
The red muslin veil is an universal item, or symbol, of hiding the face,
either culturally as in Araby, or for respect as in funerals. What's
behind the veil?
Sarah Sky, Formentera 1969.
Formentera Lady
According to Nick Mason a female nude can be seen on the Wish You Were
Here inside cover but of course this doesn't say anything about the
unknown woman on Formentera. Who is she?
Nobody knows. And that secret remained a secret for over 40 years.
Now let's suppose a witness would show up who remembers she has been
seen walking near Earl's Court. And that she was called Sarah Sky
although that probably was not her real name. And that she spoke with
a foreign accent and lived in London. And that Sarah Sky vanished
around the late 1970's and has never been heard of since.
Partially solving a problem only makes it bigger. A new quest has begun.
Updates
Iain Moore
Update 2012.05.26: According to Emo (Iain Moore) Sarah Sky may
have been one of the girls who went with them to Formentera. The Syd
Barrett Archives (Facebook) have the following quote:
Actually, I spoke to Emo last night and he said she was just another
person who was staying at the house they rented. It was a nudist beach,
lol. At least Syd kept his pants on this time! (…) Anyway, Emo
said they didn't know her and he couldn't remember who she was with.
(...) The girl in this photo is name unknown. She was American and
staying in a house in Ibiza. She was visiting Formentera for the day.
Iain has, since then, reconfirmed that the Formentera Girl was an
American tourist. He has also posted a new picture of Syd and the girl.
Nigel Gordon
Update August 2012: Author and movie maker Nigel
Gordon does not agree with a quote in the above text, taken from
Matthew Scurfield:
I just want to respond briefly to your article on Formentera etc where
you wrote or quote that Santmat is ‘saccharine mysticism’. I don’t agree
with you. Santmat recommends that we meditate for two and a half hours a
day. It’s pretty ‘salty’!
Uschi Obermaier
Update February 2015: Some 'sources' on the web pretend the
Formentera girl is none other than German photo-model Uschi Obermaier.
Obviously this is not true and if you want to know how the Church came
to this conclusion you can read everything at Uschi
Obermaier: Proletarian Chic.
Many thanks to: Nina, Ebronte, Julian Palacios, Jenny Spires.
Sources (other than the above internet links): Blake, Mark: Pigs
Might Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2007, p. 90, 131. Chapman,
Rob: A Very Irregular Head, Faber and Faber, London, 2010, p.
228, 341. Davis, John: Childhood's
End, My Generation Cambridge 1946-1965. De Groot, Gerard: The
Sixties Unplugged, Pan Macmillan, London, 2009, p. 27. Gordon,
Nigel: Santmat, email, 18.08.2012. Green, Jonathon: Days In
The Life, Pimlico, London, 1998, p. 286. Green, Jonathon: All
Dressed Up, Pimlico, London, 1999, p. 255. Mason, Nick, Inside
Out, Orion Books, London, 2011 reissue, p. 95-97. Palacios,
Julian: A mile or more in a foreign clime': Syd and Formentera @ Syd
Barrett Research Society, 2009 (forum no longer active). Palacios,
Julian: Syd Barrett & Pink Floyd: Dark Globe, Plexus, London,
2010, p. 265, 353. Pryor, William: The Survival Of The Coolest,
Clear Books, 2003, p. 106. Scurfield, Matthew: I Could Be Anyone,
Monticello Malta 2009, p. 176. Spires, Jenny: The
Syd Barrett Archives, Facebook, 2012. Thorgerson, Storm: Mind
Over Matter, Sanctuary Publishing, London, 2003, p. 80. Thorgerson,
Storm: Walk Away René, Paper Tiger, Limpsfield, 1989, p. 150. Thorgerson,
Storm & Powell, Aubrey: For The Love Of Vinyl, Picturebox,
Brooklyn, 2008, p. 104 (essay written by Nick Mason). Watkinson, Mike
& Anderson, Pete: Crazy Diamond, Omnibus Press, London, 1993,
p. 90-91. Willis, Tim, Madcap, Short Books, London, 2002, p.
113-114.
Did Roger Keith Barrett send a Canadian fan a handwritten
message, somewhere in 2003? It might be true, or not, depending from
your point of view.
Food and drink
The story of Syd turning into an involuntarily hermit may be correct to
a certain extent, but this doesn't mean the man didn't interact with the
world around him.
Now and then some anecdotes sip through, almost accidentally, like MvB
who told the Church that Syd Barrett had dinner at her parent's home one
day, probably in 1970. These were strange psychedelic days and her
parents, journalists who must have been groovy folk, allowed her to go
on her own to Syd's apartment afterwards. She wasn't really impressed
with what was happening there, which is slightly understandable, as she
was still more or less into Barbie dolls.
It's also weird how this Earth has changed for the past 40 years,
because sending a young girl into something that has been described by
others as a notorious free drugs & free sex den isn't something we would
approve of nowadays, unless that description was an exaggeration as
well. But like we said, these were different times.
We all know that Syd Barrett liked a good beer or two. So from time to
time he would jump on the tube from Earl's
Court, pass Gloucester
Road and get off at South
Kensington, where he would walk to a pub nearby. All highly
irrelevant stuff that Sydiots like to collect, like Panini
trading cards.
It is because there is this Barrett's lost weekend which, in his case,
took three decades. That is why we cling to every little detail we can
get hold of and extrapolate it as being emblematic for his entire life.
Sometimes an anecdote gets to lead its own life like the story that
Barrett was writing The
History Of Art, a titbit that has been reheated by fans and books
and articles for nearly two decades, that can be traced back to a quote
from his sister and that was nothing more than a chronological list of
painters.
Radharani Krishna (intentionally blurred).
Radharani Krishna
Often we are simply willing to believe an unconfirmed anecdote because
it is the only thing we can relate to. Rob
Chapman in his Irregular
Head biography vehemently wanted to debunk the false rumours and
'unsubstantiated nonsense' about the man but quite a few readers feared
he might have created one himself.
On pages 365 and following, Chapman recites the charming anecdote of a
young child who ran into Barrett's garden to ask him a pertinent
question about a make-believe horse. Not only did Barrett patiently
listen to her dilemma, he also took the time to explain her that in
fairy tales everything is possible, even flying horses. (Taken from: The
Big Barrett Conspiracy Theory.)
Chapman didn't materialise this witness from his high hat though as she
was originally a Laughing Madcaps group member. Kiloh Smith
wittingly observes
that this is another proof that Rob Chapman was 'skimming off original
material' from forums and mailing groups for his biography. Nothing
wrong with that, of course, as long as you give a friendly nod here and
there. Radha's first message appeared on the 13th of March 2007:
My name is Radha, and I wanted to say a personal "hello" to everyone in
this group as I've just joined today. (Radharani, Laughing Madcaps, 13
March 2007)
Soon Radha (short for Radharani Krishna) added some pretty innocent
anecdotes:
I remember he used to walk to the shops in town and sometimes stopped to
tell us little kids some silly nonsense rhyme or listen to ours and
laugh with us. I never knew he was anybody other than a sweet older
fellow who lived up the road and never went to work! (Radharani,
Laughing Madcaps, 16 March 2007)
It's a pity really that Radharani's comments, about 40 in total, can
only be consulted by accessing the Yahoo
Laughing Madcaps group, that for one reason or another has been
declared a no tress-passing area for the Church. In 1998 she left
Cambridge for London to be 'rich and famous' and that is when she said
goodbye to Roger:
He said Cambridge'd be dull without me (…) and we had a long talk that,
knowing what I know now, really gives me the old throat-lump. I didn't
realise it at the time, but he was really giving me a lot of himself. I
think he must have done this with some of the other kids I grew up with
who left home the way he had done, with big dreams and not much
experience. I think it was his chance to be a dad. (Radharani, Laughing
Madcaps, 20 March 2007)
It was at this point when Radha was first accused, in the group's
typical cynical style, of being a fraud, she published less and less and
finally disappeared in 2008.
I think the myth of RKB as a mean-spirited old curmudgeon or some sort
of vacant-eyed schizo burnout is dreadfully one-dimensional and out of
touch with the reality and intricacies of human nature. I cannot speak
for his interaction with people who came in from the outside, but he was
always polite to people in town. Some days he had more time to give than
others, but he always waved or smiled as he passed our gate. (Radharani,
Laughing Madcaps, 21 March 2007)
When Rob Chapman was researching for his book Radha's existence was
confirmed to him by Ian Barrett, who may have met her and who confirmed
she had lived two doors away from Roger.
As in all good stories this isn't all. A nice overview of the Radha
controversy can be found on the Syd
Barrett Pink Floyd blog and if you really want to delve into the
sore details you can always check the Neptune
Pink Floyd forum.
It's awfully considerate
But people who are accustomed to the Church's customs probably know that
the previous was just a lengthy introduction to today’s sermon.
Did Roger Keith Barrett send a Canadian fan a handwritten message,
somewhere in 2003? Here is the story that is so unbelievable it could be
true.
10 years ago, at 15, Jonathan Charles was a bit Syd Barrett
obsessed. He would sit at the computer after school and do tons of
research on Syd & early Pink Floyd. Collecting photos, reading articles
and interviews, looking for items on eBay. Like the rest of the world he
also tried to find out where Syd lived, but Barrett's address was
impossible to find. But from time to time he would look for it again and
one day a certain Roger Barrett in Cambridge turned up.
I really can't remember exactly where I found it though it was not a
typical yellow pages or similar site. I searched the address on a map
online to check it out further. I'm pretty sure these were the days
before Google street view so I wasn't sure if it really was his place. I
decided to send a letter even though I thought I probably wouldn't get a
response. I did feel I should leave him alone but my curiosity got the
best of me I guess... (Taken from: I
sent a letter to Syd in 2003 - was returned with a note.)
In his letter Jon asked a number of things but he mostly wanted to know
details about Roger's current life and of course there was the
obligatory 'I'm a big fan' stuff. One day an envelope from the UK
arrived but with no return address on it. Inside was Jon's original
letter with a note added at the bottom. It read:
Note at the bottom of the letter.
DEAR JONATHAN, NOT ME – I AM NOT THIS MAN – I AM AN
OLD AGE PENSIONER – AND NOT HIM. SORRY TO DISSAPPOINT YOU.
The note, written in capitals and with several words underlined,
stressed several times that the man who had received the letter was not
Syd Barrett, all in all a strange way to react. At 15 Jon thought
nothing more of it and the letter landed in a drawer until it was
rediscovered a few weeks ago.
Jon decided to compare the handwriting of the note (also from the
address on the envelope) with that of Syd at a later age and concluded
there are some similarities, especially in the M's, N's and T's.
Jon's comparison.
As usual in these kind of matters there are opposite views. Alexander,
who has some originals from Barrett in his collection, remarked that the
capital 'D' is not at all the capital 'D' we know from Syd, but Younglight,
at the other hand, also discovered that, in this note, Barrett uses a
lowercase-type 'U', just like he had done in the sausage-thief
letter from 1963.
Barrett's sausage thief.
A quick check by the Church confirms indeed that Barrett often wrote a
lowercase 'U' in uppercase sentences. Examples can be found on a letter
to Libby from 1963 or on the 'deddly
dumpty' part of the Fart Enjoy booklet.
Although short, a lot can be told by analysing the message. Wolfpack
did this at the Late Night forum and returned with a couple of
observations.
1. For someone just getting a wrongly addressed letter, this answer
is quite long.
The return note is indeed not logical. A normal response would have
been: “Sorry Jon, you've send this letter to the wrong address so I am
returning it.” There are several stories of how Roger Barrett told
visitors that Syd wasn't there and this note surely reflects the same
style.
2. The word 'NOT' is used 3 times: two times underscored, the 3rd
time double underscored. The writer seems to put a lot of emotion in not
being this man.
The note is almost a distress call, all in capitals and stressing
several times he is not the man Jonathan thinks he is. But by denying it
once too many the author unwillingly admits the opposite.
3. The old age pensioner might hint at being an old retired rock star.
Probably Jon mentioned Syd the rock star in his letter and a logical
answer would have been: “Sorry mate, but I have been a bus driver all my
life.” Or a teacher, a farmer, an undertaker. But none of that in the
answer, an answer that seems to imply: I am an old age pensioner now and
not the young music god you take me for but who I once was.
4. The spelling of 'dissappoint' matches with another unverified
text, which is certainly in a fan's handwriting.
Wolfpack hints at the Rooftop In A Thunderstorm Row Missing The Point
poem where 'dissapear' is written with a double 'S'. Unfortunately an
original in Syd's handwriting didn't survive (or went missing) and we
only have two (handwritten) copies made by Bernard White, that can be
consulted in our Rooftop gallery: Rooftop
1, Rooftop
2.
It leaves us with the puzzling question: did Syd Barrett really write
'dissapear' or did the copier made an error? We will never know until
the original shows up that might still be in Storm Thorgerson's
psychedelic ordered archives.
Bonhams once tried to sell this copy as a genuine Syd Barrett piece and
when the Church revealed this (with the help of many Late Night members)
they didn't even thank us for pointing this out to them, read all about
that in Bonhams
Sells Fake Barrett Poem.
5. The writing style is poetic. The writing style is melodic. The
visual composition (text layout) is aesthetic.
This is entirely Wolfpack's point of view and you can check his ideas
and theories on the Late
Night forum, if you want.
Jonathan Charles .
I'm not here
The Holy Church asked Jon to get a closer look on the envelope, but all
we have obtained so far is that it had two 2 stamps, one of 1£ and one
of 5 pence. Jon further explains:
I ended up looking very closely at the post office ink stamp on the
envelope and found a date. It should be correct because there is another
stamp on the other side that says AU10P. The one on the front is 030810.
August 10th, 2003.
So is this note the real deal, or not?
A look at the handwriting seems to point to that direction and the
message itself is in accordance with the anecdotes of the mad bard as we
know him.
On the other hand this could all be an intelligent and very elaborate
hoax, done by someone who admits he was (and still is) somewhat of a
Barrett obsessed fan. The comparison of the letters (see image above)
could have been made as a 'visual aid' to imitate Syd's handwriting,
rather than to prove the opposite.
Adding the deliberate spelling error 'dissapoint' (thus repeating the
mistake on the Rooftop poem) could be an indication that the forger
thought this spelling error was Barrett's and not Bernard White's.
And then there is still a third possibility, as proposed by Alexander:
...there were not many Roger Barretts in Cambridge which is a small
city. And (it is) quite possible that Syd has asked somebody to write
something and send it back. It´s a male longhand, I´m sure. So, not
Rosemary, but a brother or the postman or a shop owner etc... etc...
What exactly is a joke
But at then end, does it really matter? If enough people believe this is
real, it is real, even if it isn't.
Did Roger Keith Barrett send a Canadian fan a handwritten message,
somewhere in 2003? It might be true, or not, but it makes a nice story
and adds to the kaleidoscopic viewpoint we have of the man who once was
Syd.
Notes: Radha went to America where she attempted a brief modelling
career. She has published some well written slash
fiction about the early days of Pink Floyd. Since 2008 she has
completely disappeared from the Barrett spectrum. Jonathan also send
a copy of the 'Barrett' note to Mojo where it was (apparently) published
in Issue 240, November 2013. Many thanks to Michael Rawding for finding
this. This seems to indicate, in our opinion, that a hoax can be ruled
out.
The Church wishes to thank: Alexander, Jonathan Charles, Late Night,
Laughing Madcaps, MvB, Psych62, Radharani Krishna, Michael Rawding,
Wolfpack, Younglight. ♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥
Sources (other than the above internet links): Barrett, Ian:
personal message on 11 March 2011. Chapman, Rob: A Very Irregular
Head, Faber and Faber, London, 2010, p. 365-366.
Is there really a Barrett revival going on, or are we just seeing more
Syd fans because our global village is getting smaller and smaller? I do
remember the early seventies when the only guy you could speak to about
Barrett was a freakish weirdo who smoked pot in the school toilets and
who was generally avoided by everyone, including the school teachers.
The vibrant Birdie
Hop Facebook group is sky-rocketing with over 1200 members and a
dozen new threads a day, but the traditional forum
has come to a standstill and survives on its three posters a day, so the
feeling is a bit ambiguous.
Facebook may be here to stay (but that was once said from MySpace
as well, remember?) but basically it sucks if you want to find
information and you are not employed by the NSA.
While traditional forums have this newbie rule to go looking in the
archives before asking a question this is virtually impossible on
Facebook, because their search system simply doesn't work and links are
automatically made redundant after a certain time. The whole 'group'
concept of Facebook is a laugh, especially for administrators.
Underneath is a screenshot of an actual search on Facebook, trying to
locate the thread
(Facebook link no longer active) this article is about...
Sausalito Facebook Search Results.
So, by design, Facebook groups are condemned to have a flow of
'continuous repetition' to paraphrase the wise words of Dr. Hans
Keller while the one interesting thread is floating down around the
icy waters underground. (Wow, this is a good cigarette.)
Waiting for the man
A couple of weeks ago Baron
Wolman's picture
of Pink Floyd toying around at the Casa
Madrona hotel in Sausalito
(CA) was posted again and as usual there was that one individual asking
if anybody knew who the bloke was standing behind the boys.
Picture: Baron Wolman, 11 November 1967.
As a matter of fact nobody remembers, not even Nick
Mason, who writes in the coffee-table edition of Inside
OutNote:
Tea on the terrace at our hotel in Sausalito on the hillside above San
Fransisco Bay (…) I have no idea who our tea-time partner was – the
hotel manager, an under assistant West Coast promotion man, or a vendor
of Wild West apparel? We eventually acquired enough cowboy hats for the
entire population of Dodge City, and Roger commissioned a six-gun
holster in which he carried his wallet.
So here was another quest for the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit,
that splendid non-profit organisation, lead by that fantabulous
mastermind Reverend Felix Atagong who has already solved several
Barrettian riddles in the past.
Hotel California
The obvious first step was to contact the hotel that doesn't hesitate to
put on its website
that it is a legend since 1885 and that it drew celebrities such as Dick
Van Dyke, Carol Burnett, Warren Beatty and the rock band Pink Floyd.
We got a very friendly answer from Stefan Mühle, the general manager,
that our guess was logical but that he didn't know either. Since 1967
the hotel changed hands a couple of times and the finer side of these
anecdotes, that only seem to bother the Sydiots in the world, got lost
in the mist of times.
Concert Poster 1967.
Before we continue with our quest, let's have a small history lesson.
In the summer of 1967 Syd Barrett suffered from something that
was euphemistically referred to as over-fatigue. The band scrapped some
gigs and send Barrett over to sunny Formentera under supervision of
doctor Sam
Hutt, the underground's leading gynaecologist. Unfortunately Smutty,
as he was invariably called by his female patients, was the kind of
doctor who rather prescribed LSD
than aspirin. After some holidays in the sun Syd (and the rest of the
boys) returned to England where the endless treadmill of gigging,
recording, gigging, recording started all over again. (You can read more
about the Floyd's holiday at Formentera
Lady.)
In retrospect this was the moment that someone should've grabbed Syd by
the balls, whether he wanted it or not, drag him back to Cambridge, cold
turkey him and give him some proper therapy, although that was kind of
non-existent in those days. William
Pryor, a Cambridge beat poet who descended from the underground into
a heroine maelström, describes the Cane
Hill drug rehabilitation centre as a 'redecorated ward of a huge
Victorian lunatic asylum village that had been given a coat of paint and
a fancy name' where it was almost easier to score H than in the outside
world.
This is not America
Pink Floyd's first American tour was planned between 23 October and 12
November 1967 but because there was a rather Kafkaesque bureaucratic
system to get work permits up till 15 possible gigs had to be cancelled
(according to Julian
Palacios 8 had already been booked, Mark
Blake sticks to 6 and Syd
Barrett Pink Floyd dot com counts 10).
The trustworthy biographies all have (slightly) different stories but it
is safe to say that the Floyd left for America with at least a week
delay. Unfortunately they still couldn't enter the country and had to
wait in Canada until their permits arrived while the management
frantically tried to reschedule the gigs that had already been confirmed.
Concert Poster 1967.
Pink Floyd had been nicknamed 'The Light Kings of England' by Tower
Records, but they had only played in small clubs up till now. When
the Floyd had their first gig at San Francisco’s Winterland
Auditorium on the 4th of November their light show was ridiculously
small and amateurish compared to Big
Brother and The Holding Company. But it was not only Janis
Joplin's whiskey breath that blew Syd away.
The 1967 American tour was disastrous, to say the least, and quite a few
gigs went horribly wrong. Luckily the natives were friendly, so friendly
that at least one band member had to visit a venereal disease clinic
back in the UK. Syd and Peter
Wynne-Willson learned the hard way that American grass was much
stronger than at home, leading to another ruined gig as Syd was
apparently too stoned to handle his guitar. It is an educated guess that
Syd tried some local drug varieties like DMT
and STP
that were much stronger than their British counterparts. DOM
or STP or Serenity, Tranquility and Peace allegedly gave synaesthetic
trips that could last for 18 hours and from testimonies by Pete
Townshend, Eric Clapton and Mick Farren it is known that it could take a
week for some (frightening) hallucinatory effects to disappear. Julian
Palacios, who dedicates 11 pages to the Floyd's first American tour in Dark
Globe, writes:
Associated with the downfall of Haight-Ashbury, on 11 November pink
wedge-shaped pills containing 20-micrograms of DOM hit the Haight.
Haight-Ashbury Medical Clinic treated eighteen cases of acute toxic
psychosis in five hours. When Barrett and Wynne-Willson took STP in San
Francisco, this was in all likelihood the same ‘pink wedge’.
Result: if Syd Barrett had been mad before, this tour only made
him madder. At the Cheetah club he received an electroshock from his
microphone and he reacted by looking around on stage for the next hour
and a half, not singing, not playing his guitar. He would be
incommunicado to the others for the rest of the tour, who weren't very
keen to talk to him anyway. It needs to be said that not all gigs were
catastrophic and some reviewers actually found the band interesting, but
we wouldn't go that far by calling Syd's erratic behaviour a cleverly
performed dadaist statement like Rob
Chapman suggests.
Rolling Stone 1.
On the cover of the Rolling Stone
A brand new music magazine, called Rolling
Stone, whose first issue had just appeared a couple of days before,
wanted to do a feature on the new English underground sensation. They
send over photographer Baron
Wolman to the Casa Madrona hotel in Sausalito who found the lads in
a good mood and joking around. But when the band performed at Winterland
that night, the 11th of November, Ralph
Gleason of Rolling Stone was so disappointed he decided not to
publish the cover article and just reviewed the concert saying that
'Pink Floyd for all its electronic interest is simply dull in a dance
hall'. This was also the gig where Syd detuned the strings of his guitar
until they fell off, de facto ending his contribution for the
rest of the show. The next day, on the last gig of the American tour,
the band saw Syd walking off stage and for the first time voices were
raised to kick him out.
In retrospect this was another moment that someone should've grabbed Syd
by the balls, whether he wanted it or not, and drag him back to
Cambridge, but the management insisted to immediately fly to Holland.
Thirty-seven years later, Nick Mason more or less apologises:
If proof was needed that we were in denial about Syd's state of mind,
this was it. Why we thought a transatlantic flight immediately followed
by yet more dates would help is beyond believe.
This is the house
William Barrett Plaque.
Casa
Madrona was build in February 1885 for (isn't it ironic?) William
G. Barrett, a wealthy Vermont born lumber baron and
Secretary-Treasurer for the San
Francisco Gas and Electric Company. He and his family lived high
above the town in his beautifully designed Italian Villa country home.
Architecturally, it was a mastery of craftmanship, a tall and stately
mansion which stood upon the hill-side. Its three stories, with handsome
porticos and verandas, projecting cornice with curved brackets, and
hooded windows, received prominent recognition from the community. This
resulted in an article in the Sausalito News in 1885, which praised Mr.
Barrett's "New Mansion... its fine appearance, magnificent view", and
called the Barrett place "one of the finest improved sites in
Sausalito." (Taken from the National
Register of Historic Places.)
In 1906 the house was sold to attorney John Patrick Gallagher who
converted it into a successful hotel. For the next three decades Barrett
House (and its four outbuildings) would be a hotel, a bar 'the Gallagher
Inn' and a brothel, but that last is something you won't find at the
hotel's website.
Barrett House.
During World War II, the property was used as temporary lodging for
military families in transit and for the labourers of the nearby
(military) shipyard. After the war it fell into disrepair and became
known as a crash pad for the city’s burgeoning beatnik population.
In February 1959 Robert and Marie-Louise Deschamps, who
had just immigrated from France, responded to an ad to run a 'small
hotel'. Their children Marie-France and 24-year old Jean-Marie
were there when they opened a nameless bar on the 27th of April 1959:
The building was in ruins. Mattresses on the floor, broken furniture -
and very little of that. It was not ‘bohemian’ - it was a flop house!
The Deschamps family had no hotel experience and were rather
unpleasantly surprised by the beatniks who rarely paid their bills. The
bar was not an immediate success either, they would often find that the
door had been smashed in at night and the beer stolen. The logical plan
was to close the hotel, evict the hobos and start all over again.
San Mateo Times, 1963-06-28.
When the renewed hotel, in exclusive French style, and an excellent
restaurant 'Le Vivoir' were opened about a year later Jean-Marie
left the parental home to sail the seven seas, working as a cook on
Norwegian and Swedish ships. He returned to the hotel around the
mid-sixties and moved into Cottage B. Several guests, from the
pre-sixties bohemian days, were still living in the 'attached' cottages,
including a Swedish baron who had served in the Waffen SS, an ex-CIA
agent who claimed to have been a spy in Vienna, a mostly drunk beatnik
writer and adventurer and, last but not least, a continuously depressed
crew member of one of the planes that dropped the atom bomb on Japan.
In 1973 Casa Madrona was damaged by a series of mudslides and scheduled
for demolition, but it was saved in 1976. Since then it changed owner
several times and went even bankrupt in 2009. With the opening of a spa
resort the hotel was, hopefully, given a new life and history.
Jean-Marie Deschamps
It is believed that Jean-Marie Deschamps, the owner's son, was
living and working at the hotel when the Pink Floyd stayed there in
November 1967, 2 months before his 32nd birthday. We contacted Baron
Wolman who told us:
While I'm not entirely certain that he was Deschamps himself, for sure
he was a principal in the hotel - owner, manager, chef, etc. Given the
look, however, I would say your educated guess is probably correct...
Comparing the Floydian picture (1967) with one from 2005 it seems pretty
safe to say there is a certain resemblance. Update January
2014: The Deschamps family have confirmed it is Jean-Marie standing
behind Pink Floyd.
Jean was born on January 20, 1936 and passed away on Tuesday, December
8, 2009. In a (French) obituary it is written how Jean-Marie was an
'incorrigible globe-trotting vagabond' whose home was always 'elsewhere'
and an anarchistic supporter of lost causes, like the rights of native
Americans. Later on, despising the Bush administration, he was an ardent
critic of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan...
But once a cook, always a cook. The night before he died he asked his
(fourth) wife Monica to note down the Christmas menu for his children
and grandchildren, probably knowing that he wouldn't be there to attend.
January 2010 saw a 'sumptuous feast' at the Barrel Room of the Sebastiani
Winery in Sanoma (CA) where 150 guests honoured their friend,
husband, father, grandfather. The place was a gathering of artists,
writers, businessmen, hosts, globetrotters and vagabonds.
If only someone would have had the guts to find out earlier who was the
man standing behind the band. It would've been swell to ask him about
his meeting with the Floyd in 1967, but unfortunately now it is too late
for that. We are pretty sure that it would have led to a tsunami of
anecdotes as Jean-Marie Deschamps had always been a sailor and a
vagabond at heart.
And we will never know what Syd thought of staying in Barrett House.
Alan Styles & Iggy. Picture: Mick Rock.
An Ending In Style (or not)
We need an addendum as the Pink Floyd in Sausalito saga isn't over yet.
When Pink Floyd roadie Alan Styles, who used to be a punter on the river
Cam, saw the house
boats community in Sausalito he fell in love with the place and
decided not to return home after the 1972-1973 Dark Side of the Moon
tour. Alan, who was some kind of celebrity in Cambridge before anyone
had heard of Pink Floyd, can be seen on the rear cover of the Ummagumma
album and makes out the bulk of the 'musique
concrète' on Alan's
Psychedelic Breakfast (Atom Heart Mother).
In 2000 a short
movie was made about Style's life in Sausalito, but it was only
released after his death in 2011. It is the story of a man wanting to be
free in a world that keeps on abolishing freedom. In a nice gesture to
their old friend Pink Floyd Ltd cleared the copyrights for the movie, as
told by Viper:
Nick Mason messaged me on FB as I'd been asking on his site about
permission to release the video about my uncle. Nick gave me PF's
management details and in turn David Gilmour gave us permission to
release the video as it contains original PF music.
But when the Reverend visited Jon Felix's YouTube
channel this is all he got, apparently EMI (and a lot of other acronyms)
don't give a fuck about what Nick Mason or David Gilmour are deciding or
what friendship, compassion, remembrance and especially respect is all
about:
Blocked Youtube movie.
In some kind of weird Floydian cosmic joke Alan Styles died on the same
day as Jean-Marie Deschamps, but two years later, on the 8th of December
2011.
Somewhere we think we should try to make a point, but we can't think of
anything right now.
Note: The memoires of Nick Mason's Inside Out are (90%)
identical between the different editions. However, the hardcover
'deluxe' edition contains hundreds of photos that aren't in the cheaper
soft-cover versions. These pictures all have funny and informative notes
that aren't present in the paperback editions. Back to top.
Many thanks to: the Deschamps family, Jon Felix, Yves Leclerc, Stefan
Mühle (Casa Madrona Hotel & Spa), Viper, Baron Wolman, USA National
Register off Historic Places. ♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥
Sources (other than the above internet links): Blake, Mark: Pigs
Might Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2007, p. 95-96. Chapman,
Rob: A Very Irregular Head, Faber and Faber, London, 2010, p. 198. Leclerc,
Yves: Bum Chromé, Blogspot, 9
décembre 2009, 10
janvier 2010. Mason, Nick: Inside Out: A personal history of
Pink Floyd, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2004, p. 93. Mason,
Nick: Inside Out: A personal history of Pink Floyd, Orion Books,
London, 2011 reissue, p. 98-102. Mühle, Stefan: JM Deschamps
on Baron Wolman picture?, email, 21.10.2013. Palacios, Julian: Syd
Barrett & Pink Floyd: Dark Globe, Plexus, London, 2010, p.
289-290, 298. Povey, Glenn: Echoes, the complete history of Pink
Floyd, 3C Publishing, 2008, p. 45-46, 69. Pryor, William: The
Survival Of The Coolest, Clear Books, 2003, p. 106. Wolman,
Baron: Casa Madrona - Pink Floyd + unknown man, email, 14.10.2013.
NSFW warning: this article contains pictures of naked b⊚⊚bs which
may result in temporary blindness for minors.
On the 5th of March 2009 the Syd Barrett Trust received Fart
Enjoy, a one-off book, created and illustrated by Syd Barrett,
believed to be made late 1964 or during 1965. It was donated by Syd's
school friend Andrew
Rawlinson who had kept it all these years. The day after it was put
for auction
on eBay. On Monday the 23rd March the highest bid reached £27,323 but
this was rejected and brought back to £12,100. Eventually the book sold
for £12,600.
Black Holes
The Trust published all the pages of the (f)art-book and a moving essay
of Andrew Rawlinson about his friend. Unfortunately this has all
disappeared. The trust was constructed around Barrett's heritage,
estimated at about one
million seven hundred-thousand pounds. Barrett's household
articles and furniture made £119,890 for charity, the Two
Warriors mosaic went for £10,700 and three (big) Mick
Rock prints were auctioned as well, half of the proceedings going to
the Fund. (Mick Rock always needs to have a slice of the pie.)
And yet, 12 pounds a year to keep their website running was too much to
ask, http://www.syd-barrett-trust.org.uk
now points to a Japanese website trying to find nurses in Saitama
city. (Update 2017: it now simply points to a blank page.)
All related websites (and organisations) seem to have vanished: Syd
Barrett Trust, Syd Barrett Fund (the change of name
took place at the request of the Barrett family), Interstellar, The City
Wakes, Escape Artists,... We came across the rumour that Escape Artists
was, and we quote: 'a financially incompetent group'. The Syd Barrett
Fund was probably conned by 'useless PR men and bullshitters', but as we
can't verify this we'll leave it like that. Eventually Escape
Artists dissolved and Rosemary Breen, Syd's sister, teamed up with Squeaky
Gate that seems seemed to be a more reliable charity.
Update 8 April 2014: The metaphorical ink on this page wasn't
even dry or we were informed, on 30 March 2014, that Squeaky Gate may
need to close the books. While chief executive Simon Gunton told the Cambridge
News (on the 7th of April) that the fundings, coming from the
government, were running dry, the rumour pit in Cambridge has a slightly
more salient story of several ten thousands of pounds disappearing from
its bank account. Syd Barrett & charity: it's no good trying. Update
9 April 2014: We have had confirmation that Squeaky Gate is now history.
Well not exactly. Page 13 was missing and replaced by the following
cryptic text:
This particular page has been left blank for legal reasons For
further details see www.pinkfloyd.com
For many fans the abundance of the 'fuck' word (9 times) and the
presence of a pin-up might have had something to do with that.
Especially in America big chains do not like to sell records that may
potentially besmirch the frail American psyche with swear words and
naked boobs. Going to the official Pink Floyd website obviously didn't
explain anything at all, so Keith Jordan of Neptune
Pink Floydcontacted
the band's management:
Pink Floyd's manager told me earlier that the page is missing from the
album booklet because of copyright issues. EMI are not willing to face
unlimited litigation against them for including it! So it's not about
censorship at all!
Which is weird as the missing page had been published in Tim Willis's Madcap
book before and it can be still found on the NPF website
(and numerous others) as well.
Fart Enjoy Pin-Up.
Scribbled Lines
Should you not know what all this hassle is about, at the left is the
picture in question. It surely gives the impression that Roger Keith
Barrett, like most pimpled adolescents, had a rather debatable sense of
humour and was overtly sexist, putting raunchy graffiti (FUK, SUK, LIK,
TIT, NIPL and a hard to find CUNT), including a stylised penis, all over
the picture. Rob Chapman describes it as:
a porn-mag photo of a topless woman encrypted with toilet-wall graffiti
daubs.
And Julian Palacios adds that the page reveals Barrett's:
misogynistic adolescent fear and a fascination with naked women.
In Will Shutes' excellent Barrett essay, that like all art essays
meanders between the sublime and the slightly ridiculous, he cleverly
remarks that the BOYS FUCK GIRL word permutations - on the same page -
form 'two tip-to-toe penises'.
BOYS FUCK GIRL
BOY FS UCK GIRL
BO FYUS CK GIRL
B FOUYCS K GIRL
F BUOCYK S GIRL
FU BCOK YS GIRL
FUC BK OYS GIRL
FUCK BOYS GIRL
FUCK BOY GS IRL
FUCK BO GYIS RL
FUCK B GOIYRS L
FUCK G BIORYL L
FUCK GI BROL YS
FUCK GIR BL OYS
FUCK GIRL BOYS
As if two penises isn't serious enough he has also the following to say
about the pin-up:
The voyeuristic theme evident in Fart Enjoy relates to the omnipresence
of the sexualized image, and is humorous in its deliberate childishness.
In Barrett's most prominent foray into Pop Art, he illustrates the
anatomy of an anonymous topless model with tears and glasses, snot,
spiders, a cyclist ascending her left breast, and some sort of discharge
from her 'NIPL'.
Shirley Anne Field by David Bailey, Playboy March 1966.
Beat Girl
For another observer the snot under her nose could also be a moustache,
the nipple discharge could be some sort of surrealistic fart (enjoyed or
not) and the anonymous topless model could be someone who ran for miss
Great Britain in 1955 and who played roles in the cult-horror movie Peeping
Tom (1960) and in the ultimate sixties sex comedy Alfie
(1966).
In 1963 Playboy
called this actress a sex siren who was:
for years exploited as English grist for run-of-the-mill pin-up roles,
until her portrayal of Sir Laurence Olivier's mistress in The
Entertainer proved she could deliver lines as well as show them.
She must have left an everlasting impression because in the March 1966
issue this 'perky, pretty Lancashire lass' was portrayed by none other
than the British photographer of the stars, David
Bailey. One of these pictures
is the one that was massacred by Syd Barrett for his Fart Enjoy booklet.
As a movie star Shirley
Anne Field disappeared in the mid seventies but eventually she
returned in My
Beautiful Laundrette (1985), stayed for 42 episodes in the Santa
Barbara soap (1987) and was last seen on the silver screen in the
2011 comedy The
Power Of Three. IMDB
lists her impressive career, Shirley Anne Field starred in 70 different
movie and TV productions (not counting individual episodes) in nearly 6
decades.
Time Lord Syd. Artwork: Felix Atagong.
Time Lord
Andrew Rawlinson writes
the Fart Enjoy booklet is probably from 1965.
I’m not sure about the exact date. I know where I was living, so that
places it between the end of 1964 and the summer of 1965. He was in
London (Tottenham Street I think, not Earlham Street) and I was in
Cambridge.
But unless somebody unequivocally proves that Syd Barrett really was a Time
Lord (now here's a daring subject for our satiric The
Anchor division, we might say) we seem to have a problem as the
David Bailey pictures of Shirley Anne Field date from March 1966 and not
from the year before.
How on Earth did Syd Barrett happen to insert a picture from a March
1966 Playboy into a 1965 (f)artwork?
All seems to turn around the exact moment in time when Syd Barrett moved
from Tottenham Street to Earlham Street. Mark Blake and others put this
in 1965 but Rob Chapman in A Very Irregular Head writes:
During the summer of 1966 Syd moved out of Tottenham Street and with his
new girlfriend, fashion model Lindsay Corner, took up residence in the
top-floor flat at 2 Earlham Street, just off Shaftesbury Avenue.
One chirping biographer doesn't make spring, especially not this one, so
isn't there another way to date Fart Enjoy?
Actually there is.
"Dear Roge" letter, Fart Enjoy.
Rogue Roger
Page 10 in the booklet has a transcript from a letter (postcard?) from
Syd's mother to her son. Some biographers call it a spoof although this,
nor the authenticity, can be proven. But made up or not, it contains
three interesting sentences.
I hope you are having a nice weekend. How did the group get on at
Essex? Shall we reckon to set off – Devon-wards – on Sat. 26th?
Let's start with the last line, the one that carries a date. Browsing
through calendars from nearly 50 years ago we can see there have only
been a few Saturdays the 26th between 1964 and 1966: two in 1964
(September and December), one in 1965
(June) and three in 1966
(February, March and November).
1964 Syd Barrett, as a member of The Hollerin' Blues, didn't
have that many gigs in 1964, and these were all around Cambridge. In the
autumn of that year he joined the proto-Floyd, who where probably still
called The Spectrum Five, but they only had about 3 concerts in London.
1965 Pink Floyd and/or The Tea Set had a slightly busier
schedule in 1965, but all in all there were only a dozen of gigs. None
of these were in Essex or happened around the only Saturday the 26th of
that year.
Playboy March 1966.
1966 "By early 1966 Pink Floyd's fortunes were taking a
dramatic turn for the better", writes Glenn Povey in Echoes, but frankly
their career only started to mushroom end of September. The Tea Set's
first claim for fame was when they were billed, thanks to Nick
Sedgwick, for three sets on a two-days festival on Friday the 11th
and Saturday the 12th of March 1966, next to real FAMOUS people and
bands. Nick Mason remembers:
The only gig that might have brought us to wider attention had been at
Essex University. At their rag ball, we shared the bill with the Swinging
Blue Jeans, who did appear, and Marianne
Faithfull who was billed as appearing – if she managed to return
from Holland in time. It didn’t sound hopeful. We were still called Tea
Set at the time although we must have given the impression of being in
transition to psychedelia, since in spite of having ‘Long
Tall Texan’ in our repertoire, where we all sang to the
accompaniment of acoustic guitars, somebody had arranged oil slides and
a film projection.
Roger Waters (as quoted in Palacios' Dark Globe):
‘We’d already become interested in mixed media,’ recalled Roger Waters.
‘Some bright spark there had given this paraplegic a film camera and
wheeled him round London filming his view. Now they showed it up on
screen as we played.’
The avant-garde movie lovers at the Church sometimes wonder if this
cinematographer wasn't an American who had recently moved to England.
Later he would play an important part in the London's Film-Makers'
Co-op, that grew out of film screenings at Better
Books. But looking into that would take us too far, actually.
The Essex University Rag Ball was the Floyd's first event to be
proud of and something Syd would have been bragging about to his mother
and friends. Not only was this their only Essex gig in the 1964 –
1966 period, but it also perfectly matches the 'spoof' letter in Fart
Enjoy.
I hope you are having a nice weekend.
Refers to the week after the Essex gig when Syd hypothetically received
the letter (around 19 March 1966).
How did the group get on at Essex?
Syd's mum asks about the concert of the week before, when The Tea Set
had their first breakthrough (12 March 1966).
Shall we reckon to set off – Devon-wards – on Sat. 26th?
Points to a date in the immediate future, Saturday the 26th of March
1966.
Bob Dylan in Playboy, March 1966.
Bob Dylan Schmooze
It's a shame EMI couldn't track down the owner of the copyright of the
woman with her boobies out which Barrett cut from a magazine. EMI chose
not to include it in the reproduced Fart Enjoy book in PATGOD.
So writes Neptune Pink Floyd on their Facebook
page, about a year ago. Well, now that the Holy Igquisition has
settled this matter, once and for all, EMI will have no excuse any more
not to include the complete Fart Enjoy booklet in - let's say - a 50
years anniversary Immersion set of Pink Floyd's first album.
We think we have gathered enough evidence to bring back the creation
date of the Fart Enjoy booklet from a two-years period to roughly one
week in 1966. The Church managed to identify the pin-up Syd Barrett drew Kilroy
on, as well as the photographer and the magazine it appeared in.
The only question that stays unanswered is: Why did Syd Barrett have
this particular Playboy?
Easy.
The Playboy of March 1966 not only had topless pictures of Shirley Anne
Field. Pages 41 to 44 and 138 to 142 make room for a 'candid
conversation with the iconoclastic idol of the folk-rock set'. Syd
Barrett, like all Cantabrigian beatniks, admired Bob Dylan and discussed
his records, he had written a parodic song
about him, and took Libby Gausden to the Royal Festival Hall on 17 May
1964 to see him.
If we can be sure of one thing, it is that Syd Barrett really
bought this Playboy for the interview.
Many thanks to: Anonymous, Giulio Bonfissuto, Mick Brown, Warren
Dosanjh, Rich Hall, Alexander Hoffmann, Keith Jordan, Göran Nyström,
Neptune Pink Floyd Forum, Vintage Erotica Forum. Update July
2017: images and some text. ♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥
Sources (other than the above links): Atagong, Felix: Fasten
Your Anoraks, The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit, 8
September 2007. Beecher, Russell & Shutes, Will: Barrett,
Essential Works Ltd, London, 2011, p. 165. (This book has the complete
Fart Enjoy.) Chapman, Rob: A Very Irregular Head, Faber and
Faber, London, 2010, p. 62, 111. Mason, Nick: Inside Out: A
personal history of Pink Floyd, Orion Books, London, 2011 reissue,
p. 35. Palacios, Julian: Dark Globe, Plexus, London, 2010, p.
92, 98. Povey, Glenn: Echoes, the complete history of Pink Floyd,
3C Publishing, 2008, p. 32, 48. Rawlinson, Andrew: Syd Barrett -
His Book @ Syd Barrett Research Society, 15 March 2009 (forum no
longer active). Rawlinson, Andrew: Syd
Barrett - His Book, 20 March 2009 (mirror). Willis,
Tim, Madcap, Short Books, London, 2002, p. 53-55. (This book has
a few pages of Fart Enjoy.)
November 2005 was a pretty busy month for Floyd aficionados. John
Harris' eagerly awaited book 'The Dark Side of the Moon, The Making Of
The Pink Floyd Masterpiece' was published, but it failed to fulfil the
high expectations of those nerdy Floyd fan who already knew more about
the album than any author could ever write (for a short critical review,
go here: John
Cavanagh, so much to do, so little time). Rick Wright missed the UK
Music Hall of Fame ceremony, because he had a cataract operation.
However, David Gilmour and Nick Mason were there. Roger Waters gave a
small speech on video from Rome, where his Ca
Ira opera was premièred, with much acclaim from those who managed to
stay awake. The French Rock 'n Folk magazine causing something of a stir
by revealing the first dates of a 2006 European David Gilmour tour...
An incredibly rare recording of Syd Barrett, performing live on 27th
January, 1972, with the Last-Minute Put-Together Boogie Band, at a show
in Cambridge, has recently been unearthed, and plans are underway for a
release!
The article further stated that Alan Barrett (on Syd's behalf) had
contacted Pink Floyd Music Publishing to have this tape released. But
the full story behind this story was, to say the least, an intriguing
one and could be found on the – now defunct – blog of FraKcman
and the (since then renewed) website of Spaceward
Studios.
Legend
On 27 January 1972 a music festival was organised in Cambridge called Six
Hour Technicolour Dream. It was organised at the Cambridge Corn
Exchange, was advertised with an almost unreadable poster (orange on
brown, yuck!) and had the following bands: Pink Fairies, Hawkwind and
the Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band (or LMPTBB or Boogie
Band, for short), featuring Bruce Paine, Twink, Jack Monck, Fred Frith
and a certain Syd Barrett.
The entire festival was taped, then forgotten, then (in 1985) found
back, then seized by Pink Floyd Ltd., then forgotten, then (in 2005)
found back and then shelved for 9 years with various people and
companies trying to resolve copyright issues.
This article (in a LMPTBB series
that will culminate in an interview with Mohammed Abdullah John 'Twink'
Alder and perhaps some others) will try to reconstruct these steps. We
warn you that it is not always an easy read, where we quote FraKcman and
others we have not altered their testimonies, so Sydiots will find some
irregularities and mistakes here and there in dates, group names etc..
2005
In September 2005 Mark Graham, aka FraKcman,
works on a 'recently rescued tape archive' from the Cambridge Spaceward
Studios, trying to reconstitute their discography, set up a database and
eventually re-release some of their hidden gems. What he finds is interesting
indeed, to say the least:
Spent yesterday in the studio with Gary Lucas making a 96kHz, 24
bit digital transfer of Spaceward's first recording which I found in
Gary's attic recently. It's a recording of a concert held at the
Cambridge Corn Exchange on 27/1/72. The bands were Hawkwind, Last Minute
Put-Together Boogie Band (featuring Syd Barrett) and Pink Fairies. Much
to our amazement the tape sounded just as good (or bad) as it did when
last played 33 years ago - and no gunk left on the tape heads!
Gary Lucas tells about this discovery on the Syd Barrett Under Review
DVD:
FraKcman is aware that the Barrett Boogie Band recording is an important
one and wants to include at least one track on a compilation album. On
17 October 2005 he notes, not without irony:
I just got a phone call from Le Grand Fromage at Pink Floyd
Music Publishers Ltd in response to the message I had left 3 weeks
ago. I pitched my idea of releasing an improv from the Last Minute
Put-Together Boogie Band's set at the Cambridge Corn Exchange, 27/1/72
on a putative Spaceward Studios retrospective album on Gott Discs. I'd
been expecting him to say "Cease & Desist" but... he bought it! He said
he'd sanction it on behalf of Syd provided the other musicians accept
equal terms :) Yippee!!!
It is in November, and after the Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett communities
have digested the news and bombard him with questions, that FraKcman
tells the full story.
On the 27th January 1972, Mike Kemp, Secretary of the Cambridge
University Tape Recording Society, received a telephone call from Gary
Lucas, CUTRS member and undergraduate at Pembroke College, requesting
microphones. He'd been seen earlier in the day unloading a Revox tape
recorder from his car into his lodgings (it happened to be the start of
term) and had been asked if it could be used to record a concert that
was taking place later in the Corn Exchange.
Mike agreed to
help, went along to the concert and thus met Gary Lucas for the first
time. Their collaboration that night was the start of what would become
Spaceward and, fifteen years later, a business with a turnover of £5m, a
staff of over 100, and offices in 6 countries. (...)
The
line-up (in order) for the concert was Hawkwind, Last Minute
Put-Together Boogie Band (featuring Syd Barrett) and Pink Fairies.
Hawkwind played first - 7 or 8 songs including "Silver Machine".
Next
on was LMPTBB. It should be noted that this was NOT a "Stars"
or "Syd Barrett All-Stars" gig - the line-up is different.
There were several gigs by Stars at around this time including (I think)
one at the Cambridge Corn Exchange with Eddie "Guitar" Burns. (...) The
line-up was: Bruce Paine (vocals & guitar), Jack Monck (bass), Twink
(drums), Fred Frith (guitar) and Syd Barrett (guitar). The set lasts an
hour. Syd is introduced on stage after 30 minutes. He plays on 5 songs,
4 of which are blues numbers and there is one 9 minute jam
(improvisation) which is fairly loose and free-form.
Pink
Fairies played last and perhaps benefit from the best sound.
At
one point there was a fight and, more than once, one mic or another
became disconnected from the mixer.
Note: a Syd Barrett All Stars group never existed, although this
name will be used several times by FraKcman. The Eddy
"Guitar" Burns gig (that had Syd Barrett jam on stage with
Twink and Jack Monck) was held on the previous day, the 26th of January
1972. This was not a Stars gig, but a LMPTBB one who were also Eddy
"Guitar" Burns' backing band. Some info posted here could already be
found in a 2010 Syd Barrett Pink Floyd (aka Laughing Madcaps) article: Syd
Barrett Stars - Everything (So Far).
The tape is found back... and disappears
Mark Graham, aka FraKcman, continues:
After the gig, copies of the 'master' were made and distributed. Mike
and Gary each retained a copy for personal use. I did not know this - I
wasn't even at the gig. I don't come into the story until 1985 when
(what turns out to be) Mike's copy is found. Here's what I wrote (in
2003) about the finding of it.
"I think it was during the
Summer of 1985 when we were clearing out the space above the Control
Room roof that I came across the Syd Barrett All Stars tape. It was just
one among hundreds that were languishing there, pretty much forgotten
that Owen Morris and I were sorting through - our task was to phone the
bands or record labels concerned and get them either to collect their
tapes or allow us to wipe them.
I admit that it was with a
trembling hand that I descended the ladder clutching the tape and then
threaded it on the Revox. We listened to it once, all the way through,
and, though it pains me to say so, it was an absolute load of old shite.
It
was awful. Truly. The sound itself was poor and the onstage tuning was
non-existent. It was painful to listen to. Stoned, out-of-key noodlings
- remarkable only for how dreadful it was. If I remember correctly parts
of the Pink Fairies and Hawkwind sets were also on the tape.
What
my response would have been had the recording been brilliant, or even
good, of course we'll never know (might I have stolen a copy?) but it
was clear to me that this could only ever be of historical (or forensic)
interest - you'd NEVER want to actually listen to it - so, not having
Syd's phone number to hand, I rang EMI.
The very next day a
big car swished into the yard and out stepped a suit. I don't remember
the gentleman's name - only his suit. He was from EMI and he'd come to
listen to the Syd Barrett tape. I explained the history to him, made him
coffee and then played him the tape.
He said nothing until
the end.
"This recording can add nothing to Syd's legend -
it can only detract from it. It must never be made public".
He
took the tape away in his big car and, as far as I know, no copies
exist."
Regrets, we have a few
But was the 1985 really that bad, FraKcman reconsiders:
By 2003 I was thinking that I'd been somewhat dumb in 1985. For example,
take my description: "Stoned, out-of-key noodlings" I realise now that,
in 1985, I simply did not 'get' what Fred Frith was doing. Today, with
perhaps greater insight and, setting aside vested interest, I might
perhaps better describe Fred's playing as "extemporising atonally" - in
other words, free improvisation. I didn't understand it and I didn't
like the sound of it at all. Also, and please forgive me, It wasn't
exactly in my best interest, looking back in 2003, that the tape might
or could have been of any interest or quality since I'd voluntarily
surrendered it to the MIB. I didn't want to go down in history as
someone who'd dumped a treasure. But, in truth, I bitterly regretted
having given it away.
The tape is found back (reprise)
Anyway, let's move the story on to 2005...
On the 8th
September, as is told in my blog for that date below, I climbed into
Gary Lucas' loft/attic and recovered around 50 tapes, including the one
in question, though I didn't know this at the time. Later, when I did
discover it, I immediately booked a studio session to make a 96khz,
24bit digital transfer.
Mick, the studio engineer for the
digital transfer, judged the audio quality to be variable but better
than most bootlegs. He thought that with time spent on restoration and
sweetening he could certainly produce something 'release-able
technically' if not of ideal quality. Gary Lucas, also present, agreed.
I was beginning to think my judgement of 1985 may have been coloured by
the fact that, at that time, the engineers at (and clients of) Spaceward
were all dedicated perfectionists and audiophiles (E.G. Ted Hayton, Owen
Morris, Dave Stewart etc etc). Nowadays things like "The King Crimson
Collectors' Club" have shown what it is possible to achieve with old
recordings. Technology changes everything.
My own aim was
to tell the Spaceward Story - it's a good story and deserves to be told
(as the discography attests) I could imagine this as part of a series of
releases on Gott Discs - all compilations of various artists - Psyche
Folk, Punk etc etc. Gary and Mick preferred the idea of the presenting
the whole gig - as an event with all 3 bands' sets (or as much of) - and
Gott Discs were of the same opinion.
Permission found and granted
We decided that I should set about trying to contact everyone involved
and at least ask them nicely for permissions. What was there to lose?
After a week of diligent searching and a lot of help from person or
persons unmentionable, I managed to acquire the contact details for all
the relevant parties, except Syd. So I wrote to them all, explaining who
I was, what I'd got and what I wanted - I.E. to release it (or parts of
it) as "The Spaceward Story - Volume 1- the Corn Exchange, Cambridge -
27/01/72". To my surprise and delight, no-one objected outright though
all wanted to hear it first and agree terms before granting permission.
It is fortunate that at least one song/number is an improvisation as
this means that, in addition to a fee, all performers are entitled to a
fair share of composers' royalties as administered by PRS/MCPS Alliance
licencing in the UK. I also spoke with Twink (for the Pink Fairies) and
Dave Brock (for Hawkwind) and it was the same story for them - no
immediate objections but they want to hear it first.
Note: asking John 'Twink' Alder was actually not the right move.
In 1972 he was no longer a member of the Fairies (but of LMPTBB).
In search of Syd
So now it was time to contact Syd's people. The first thing I did was to
ask my friends for help - who should I call? I was given a number and a
name: Alan Barrett, Syd's brother. So, rather nervously, I rang Alan and
I pitched my story in a open and (I hope) courteous way that seemed to
get his approval - anyway he told me to leave it for a few days and then
call Pink Floyd Music Publishing Ltd and ask them. When I rang them and
explained myself again, I was told that the project had already been
green-lighted - provided only that the other musicians agree "equal
terms".
So that's where we are now. I must go back
into the studio and produce something that I can send to all the
performers (along with a contract) that sounds good enough to persuade
them all to grant permissions for a release.
The tape
The tape of the Cambridge Technicolour Dream gig.
The two tapes
Interesting in FraKcmans' story is that two Barrett tapes were
unearthed at Spaceward. The first in 1985, now safely in the hands of
EMI (or perhaps Pink Floyd, his story will change underneath) and one in
2005. It is not certain if the content of the two tapes are different,
but FraKcman certainly thinks
so (20 August 2006):
It seems obvious now, but it's taken me a long time to get to the point
when I feel absolutely sure that there were two Syd Barrett live
recordings made by Spaceward in early 1972.
Recording One
was the Last Minute put-Together Boogie Band featuring Syd Barrett, Fred
Frith and Eddie Guitar Burns at the Cambridge Corn Exchange on 27/1/72.
Recording
Two was Starz at the Cambridge Corn Exchange on either 24/2/72 or
26/4/72. [Note from FA: should be 26/2/72, probably a typo] This I
believe was the tape that I handed to Pink Floyd Management in
1986.
There are some serious memory holes and contradictions in the blogpost
above, what is understandable after all these years. On top of that it
needs a certain amount of Sydiocy to immediately recognise these.
First: Eddie Guitar Burns did NOT play on the Six Hour Technicolour
dream, he played the day before (but also with Syd Barrett on stage,
hence the cockup). Second: if the 1985 tape was a Stars (not Starz)
one, why then did FraKcman note before that it contained 'parts of the
Pink Fairies and Hawkwind sets'? Third: if the 1985 tape was a Stars
one why then did FraKcman note that he did not 'get' what Fred Frith was
doing on it. Fred Frith never played with Stars, although he rehearsed
with them, was asked to join even, but declined.
'Rehearsals were difficult, because Syd had pretty much lost any
capacity to focus,’ says Frith. ‘Everyone was in awe of him, and we
wanted him to lead us in a way, but he couldn’t. Jack kind of took
charge and we did the best we could, but at the only concert that I
did with them, Syd played “Smokestack Lightning” or variations
thereof in every song, and didn’t really sing at all. To say I was
hugely disappointed is maybe the wrong way of putting it. I was shocked,
angry, devastated, that it had come to that. I didn’t know what to do or
how to be in that situation. I always had a lot of difficulty being
around “famous” people and especially famous people who I really looked
up to, and this was even by my own standards of social ineptitude, a
painful experience, and overwhelmingly sad.' (Fred Frith as quoted in
Rob Chapman's A Very Irregular Head, Faber and Faber, London, 2010, p.
284.)
In a previous post FraKcman writes he contacted EMI about the tape, but
here he says someone of Pink Floyd confiscated it, although this could
not be contradictory if EMI contacted the band. But this whole story is
a bit dodgy, to say the least, it smells. Handing over a tape (that, by
the way, also contained a Hawkwind and Pink Fairies concert) to a
competitor, without even asking for a receipt? It seems that not only
Syd Barrett fried his brain on drugs.
The recording
Back to the Six Hour Technicolour Dream recording. Mike Kemp is the man
who engineered it (Spaceward
Studios):
The recording of the concert was organised at the last minute and the
equipment was poor as all that was available was a rather poor mixer so
we just stuck a stereo mic pair across the stage for drums/backline and
mixed in some PA mix for front. We were positioned on the top of a sort
of cloakroom arrangement in a corner near the stage (in about an inch of
thick dust) but had a bad view of the stage from the equipment area due
to columns in the building. I spent most of my time with headphones at
the troublesome mixer so saw little.
The whole affair was a
shambles with a fight breaking out around the stage at one point
destroying at least one of the mics. I was pretty naive at the time and
can not say I saw Syd Barrett but everyone was saying he was there.
There were a number of rambling untogether acts and I am pretty
convinced that the Syd Barrett All Stars was mentioned at the
time, as well as "The last minute put together boogie band".
There we have that Syd Barrett All Stars band again! Jim Gillespie was
present at the two Boogie Band gigs with Barrett (July
24, 2005):
The Cellar at King's College was always a venue for jamming and always
had lots of people there from the Town and not just University. I played
there myself lots of times between November 1969 and June 1971.
I
was present at Kings Cellar on 26th January 1972. Last Minute Put
Together Boogie Band played a first set with Twink on drums, Syd Barrett
on guitar and Jack Monck on bass. Then Eddie "Guitar" Burns played and
at end there was a jam with Eddie, Twink, Jack Monck and a guy called
Bruce on guitar (sorry I have no other information on who this is apart
from his first name but I wrote this down the next day so I figure it is
correct).
I also went to what was billed as "Six Hour
Technicolor Dream" at Corn Exchange in Cambridge the next day 27th
January 1972. Hawkwind definitely played as did Pink Fairies and also I
can confirm, as I wrote it down, that Fred Frith did indeed play guitar
alongside Syd and Twink as part of Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band
at that gig.
I also saw an outdoor gig in streets of
Cambridge with Twink and Syd and this took place on 12th February 1972.
The mysterious Bruce is probably Bruce Paine who had to gig with LMPTBB
the next day anyway. So the jam might have been some kind of an on stage
rehearsal.
The sound of silence
Then it became silent around the tape. We suppose that clearing the
copyrights wasn't as easy as expected and that the project was
continuously postponed until the owner got enough of it. In June 2010
the reel was up for auction
at Bonhams but the minimum
bid (of 5000£, so was rumoured) was not reached and the auction was
withdrawn.
We may only be happy that Pink Floyd, nor EMI bought it, as they were of
the opinion they already had it (and probably they were right). This is
just a theory but they were pretty certain they could delay this release
forever. On top of that they were so parsimonious they didn't find it
necessary to buy the second copy and have the opportunity to bury it,
once and for all.
Anyway, good news for us, the fans!
Easy Action
In January 2011 there was again some hope when it was found out that Easy
Action had bought the Six Hour Technicolour festival tape. They are
are a (small) record company, specializing in rare and alternative
recordings, demos, live versions and anything that falls in between the
chairs of the big music publishers, but that can still be legally
published. Looking at their catalogue you will find releases that seem
to be destined for completists alone, like Marc Bolan home recordings or
interview discs.
For a while they put up the following cryptic message on their website:
Easy Action has purchased a number of reels of master tape capturing a
performance by Hawkwind, Pink Fairies and a band hastily assembled
featuring Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett NOT Stars!
Recorded in
Cambridge in January 1972, we will be investigating further copyright
clearances and one day hope to produce the whole lot for your listening
pleasure!
That Easy Action wanted to have a return on their purchase was proven in
August 2011 when the Hawkwind concert was published as Leave
No Star Unturned.
On 27th January 1972, Hawkwind, their comrades in Notting Hill /
Ladbroke Grove psychedelic proto-punk agitprop The Pink Fairies, and
what would be labelled as The Last Minute Put-Together Boogie Band
featuring the elusive Syd Barrett were brought together at The Cambridge
Corn Exchange under the title The Six Hour Technicolor Dream by local
music promoter and ‘Head Shop’ proprietor Steve Brink.
If
we’d had the technology of today way back then, then for such a line-up
we’d most certainly have on our shelves the DVD with its 5.1 stereo
soundtrack, the CD box set, and the Blu-ray package.
Instead,
what we have is something previously shrouded in mystery and rumour;
quarter-inch ReVox open reel sourced recordings that have been whispered
of in the circles of those who know.
One of only two known
copies of this show surfaced in the mid-80s, promptly to vanish into the
vaults unheard and unreleased. Thankfully, the other finally emerged
from a forgotten loft space in 2005 and made its way into the hands of
Easy Action Records via a circuitous route which included an appearance
at the famous Bonham’s auction house in London’s affluent Knightsbridge
- what a contrast to the anarchic ‘peace and love’ characters decrying
the evil tentacles of ‘The Man’ who play on these recordings.
Did you notice that Easy Action also thinks that there is only one
recording, but two tapes? They have probably contacted EMI and/or Pink
Floyd Ltd and did the comparison.
Slow & easy
However, releasing the Boogie Band album seemed much more difficult than
the Hawkwind gig (but easier than the Pink Fairies one, apparently). The
album was announced a couple of times, first for 2013, then for 2014.
Here is what a music industry insider once told us:
Carlton (from Easy Action) has been burned before by putting things out
prior to getting all the clearence needed to do such a project. He has
learned a very "valuable lesson" in that.
Green light or not, it would take until 2014 to get things settled, and
finally, here it is... the Syd Barrett recording everyone has been
hoping for since nearly a decade.
(End of part one of our LMPTBB
series, part two will have more of the same: Syd's
Last Stand. You have been warned.)
Many thanks to: Mohammed Abdullah John 'Twink' Alder, Rick Barnes, Easy
Action, FraKcman (Mark Graham), Jim Gillespie, Alexander P. HB, Mike
Kemp, Gary Lucas, Spaceward Studios and the Wayback
machine. ♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥
One of the Reverend's great advantages of his Pink
Floyd adoration, somewhere in the mid-seventies, was the start of a music
collection. Barry
Miles' excellent Visual Documentary (first edition: 1980) had
a separate discography with Floydian collaborations and once the
Reverend had a job, in the early eighties, he also had the dough to buy
Floyd - and later: Hipgnosis
and Harvest
- related records at the local second-hand record shops thus creating a
musical spiderweb with Pink Floyd at its centre.
After the Reverend had joined an illegal local university radio station
his weekly excursions to the record shop resulted in an even bigger
appetite for vinyl. At Saturday afternoon he would arrive home with the
catch of the day, open his Who's Who in Rock Music, look for the
records he had just bought and underline all personnel (band members and
session players) he found in the alphabetical listing. The book came in
very handy for making the playlist for a weekly rock, blues, jazz and
folk show he co-produced, trying to find connections from one record to
the other. The world-wide web, dear children, didn't exist yet in those
days and links weren't just one click away as they are now.
(The Reverend's heavily damaged record collection can be admired at the Record
My Cat Destroyed Tumblr blog.)
Mr. Smith goes to London
This last remark is one Norman
Hurricane Smith could have made (actually, does make) in his
autobiography John Lennon Called Me Normal. The book was first
issued as a limited edition at a 2007 Beatles Fan Fest but, as we found
out this year to our amazement, it can also be found at Lulu
where it is sold for a healthy 25$ a piece. If you don't know for sure
who Norman Smith is you can read this excellent obituary, written by Syd
Barrett biographer Gian Palacios, hosted at the Church: John
Lennon called him 'Normal'....
Norman Smith.
Invasion Force Venice
Smith was a pilot during world war II but he never saw any real war
action, making the chance of being killed nearly zero. He was part of a
secret missions squadron, so secret that military bureaucracy didn't
give them any. When the European side of the war was over, and most
soldiers were sent home, Smith and his colleagues were stationed in Venice
of all places to await further secret invasion plans, but apparently
they were forgotten after Japan's surrender as there were no more enemy
countries to secretly invade.
While England was on ration books, Norman sunbathed on Venice beach,
dining on espresso, grappa, Parma ham and stuffed mushrooms, longing for
the woman he had married in May 1945. In the evening he would go to the
Excelsior hotel for a Cinzano soda where he sat in with the twelve-piece
jazz band. It took British headquarters two full years to locate (and
dismiss) the secret squadron, probably by following the trail of
limoncello and sambucca bills, and back home - in 1947! - Smith decided
for a weird career change and became a refrigerator repair man.
The Beat is on
But his heart had always been with music and Norman's second lucky
strike came when he managed to bluff himself in at EMI where he became
an apprentice sound engineer in 1959. No two without three and Smith's
third chance of a lifetime came when some Liverpudlian lads auditioned
for a record deal, supervised by his boss George
Martin.
And here is where Smith's autobiography, that was in fact ghost-written
by Neil Jefferies who is called 'Research' throughout the book, becomes
foggy. The audition, so remembers Smith, did not take place as George
Martin professes, repeated in every Beatles biography since. Norman
hints that something smelly was going on from the beginning and that
shady deals were taking place in the dark corners of the studio,
something to do with song-rights. Each individual Beatle earned only one
thousand of a pound per single while others had their greasy hands in
the till. He repeats this several times in the book, but he never
actually directs his accusations at someone, although George Martin,
coincidentally, always seems to blend in the background.
You can read between the lines that Norman Smith and George Martin
weren't best pals, especially since the one didn't find it necessary to
mention the other in his memoirs despite the fact that Smith had
engineered and produced about a hundred Beatles songs. When George, who
has acquired something of an infallible status, got hold of the news
that Norman was writing his side of the story, Smith was summoned to an
informal meeting in the EMI gardens that is a bit described like Galileo
Galilei having to explain heliocentrism
before Pope
Paul V and the Roman
Inquisition.
Pink: the Colour of Money
But this blog is not about the true story of The
Beatles but about (early) Pink Floyd. George Martin may have done a Don
Corleone on Norman Smith, but when it comes to his own financial
matters the Hurricane is overtly discreet as well. So you will find only
one flimsy reference in the 501 pages book that Smith once had a solid
financial share in Pink Floyd (12,5% as was leaked out by Neil Jefferies
in a Record Collector article). About his financial share in the Beatles
catalogue (and all the other bands he recorded and produced): not a word.
It was destroyed by the production. It is a fucking good song.
his reaction is likewise:
There might be no L's in Waters, but there are two in 'Bollocks'.
Smith is too much of a realist and doesn't adhere the romantic or
conspiracy viewpoints many fans have of the downfall of Barrett:
Syd wasn't anybody else's fault. Syd was Syd's bloody fault.
At one point Norman Smith, Parlophone head suit after George Martin had
left EMI with doors smashing, got a phone call from Bryan Morrison
bragging about a new fantastic band he wanted to promote. They met at
UFO:
I found myself having a pint with him in the filthiest,
foulest-smelling, shittiest dive that I'd ever been to in my life so
far. (…) I thought: Maybe I should just go home?
But there,
deep in the bowels of the Tottenham Court Road, in the overpowering pong
of Patchouli oil, dope, and incense and sour ale that would have a tramp
gagging but maybe not your average music-biz exec, I suddenly found
myself listening to some great sounds and also being propositioned by
some starry-eyed chicks.
Of course Norman also met the Pink Floyd managers:
Andrew King and his friend Peter Jenner were not hippies and certainly
not mohair-suited wide-boys out on the make. (…) They were about as
middle-class as you could get. They both attended Westminster School (…)
and both their fathers were clergymen! - Yes! (…) Two vicar's sons
managed Pink Floyd!!!
Norman 'Hurricane' Smith.
Unfortunately that's about all there is to find in the 500 pages book
and while every fan was eager to read some revealing stories about
Smith's involvement with The Beatles and Pink Floyd the biography never
goes further than occasional cocktail party small talk. Some anecdotes
are literally repeated five time throughout the book and it would have
benefited to be two-thirds shorter. To add insult to injury most
anecdotes seem to be about... Elvis
Presley, a man Norman Smith never met, nor recorded, but thoroughly
admires.
Fish Report with a Beat
The DVD Pink Floyd: Meddle - A Classic Album Under Review is one
of those rather redundant, take the money and run, documentaries where
people – who have nothing to do with Pink Floyd whatsoever – claim to
make an in-depth analysis of the band or one of its albums, but it has
an interesting ten minutes Syd Barrett featurette with Peter
Banks (Syn, Yes) and Norman Smith. (Direct link: Syd
Barrett - The Early Days Of Pink Floyd.)
In the interview Norman Smith tells Syd didn't come over as the 'musical
director' of the Floyd:
He spoke through his songs.
Instant Salvation
The featurette tells more about how Jugband
Blues came into place (and we will not try to find out what this has
got to do with Meddle).
It was actually Norman Smith's idea to add 'some kind of a brass band'
at the end of the song and Barrett suggested to ask the Salvation
Army for that.
Through his many contacts Norman managed to hire several International
Staff Band musicians, 12 to 14, he recalls, but it was probably
closer to 8. Random Precision author David Parker assumes these
musicians were 'moonlighting' as the International Staff Band itself has
no trace of this session in its archives, besides that the complete
troupe had over 30 members.
Syd Barrett showed up in the studio an hour too late, that 19th of
October 1967, and Norman asked him what he had in mind. As legend goes
Barrett didn't have any ideas and suggested that they could play
anything they liked. Then he left the studio. Smith adds somewhat wryly:
He not only left the studio, he left the building.
We can imagine this was not the kind of behaviour Norman Smith liked,
for several reasons.
First he was perhaps too much of a musician and so he did fully
understand that classical trained performers need a score in front of
their noses before they blow their horns. Pink Floyd would have about
the same problem, a couple of years later, with Atom
Heart Mother, when the orchestra refused to play the score the way Ron
Geesin had written it. The composer had to be removed from the
studio seconds before he wanted to punch one of the musicians in the
face.
Second, Norman Smith also had a financial responsibility towards EMI,
and the bookkeepers wouldn't have liked the idea to pay an eight man
brass band to sit on their chairs for tea and biscuits.
So he played the tape in front of the session players and when they
couldn't come up with an improvisation, these guys were not rock
musicians who can fabricate a lick in seconds, Norman wrote a score he
was rather embarrassed with, but it ended up on the record anyway.
You have those hardcore Sydiots, with the emphasis on the last part, who
find the idea to have a brass band play anything they like one of those
genial flashes half-god Barrett had. Hagiographer Rob
Chapman is one of them:
Once again Syd’s wilfully anarchic approach was in direct conflict with
the regimented working methods of an unsympathetic producer.
Actually Smith's testimonial shows it was exactly the contrary. Syd was
the one who acted unprofessional by first arriving too late and then by
leaving the studio when he was asked to direct the session. Smith was
obliged, back against the wall, to deal with the problem, which he did
splendidly in the short time that was left to him. One thing is for
sure, Normal really earned his 12,5% on this one...
The 'satanic' Purple Gang.
Gangsters
It is generally believed that Jugband Blues is one of the songs Barrett
wrote in the second half of 1967, together with Vegetable
Man and Scream
Thy Last Scream. This trilogy is regarded by some as being highly
introspective songs where Syd, in an exceptional state of clarity,
describes his own vulnerable and frail psyche.
However, in a recent autobiography from Chris
Joe Beard, Taking The Purple, a remarkable (and until now
untold) story has been put forward.
Chris Joe Beard is lyricist / songwriter from the band The Purple Gang
who had an underground novelty hit in 1967. They started as a
traditional jug
band and changed their name from The Young Contemporaries to The
Purple Gang, forced by their manager, a roaring 1920’s aficionado, who
thought a clean-cut Chicago gangster style would be cool. Looking for a
scene to make some promo pictures they stumbled upon a shop in Kings
Road, where they accidentally met Paul
McCartney.
The shop's name Granny
Takes A Trip inspired Joe Beard to write an innocent and funny song
about a rich old lady wanting to meet movie-star Rudy
Vallée in Hollywood, adding it to a catchy melody that had been
composed by piano player Geoff Bowyer. The song was a cross-over between
traditional jug and pop and as such producer Joe
Boyd preferred it to their more traditional repertoire à la Bootleg
Whiskey (that has John
'Hoppy' Hopkins on piano, by the way).
Boon Blues
Incidentally The Purple Gang wasn't the only band Joe Boyd was producing
that week in January 1967. On Sunday, the 29th, a band called Pink
Floyd, then still without a contract, had recorded Arnold
Layne at Sound Techniques studios. Syd Barrett had listened to
Granny Takes A Trip and had humorously remarked it would become #2 after
the Floyd's soon to be number one. But Joe Boyd had other important news
as well:
There’s a tape of some of his [Syd Barrett, note from FA]
songs and we think a good, quick follow-up to Granny is on there. Syd
thinks Boon Tune is the one for you. There are several. There’s
one called Jugband Blues but he’s still working on that.
Unfortunately Nathan
Joseph from Transatlantic Records objected, saying that they
didn't want to pay out any royalties to someone from outside the band.
Boon Tune was shelved, although it would surface as Here
I Go on a Barrett solo album. Joe Beard took the reel-to-reel demo
home where it was promptly forgotten and it has never been found back
since.
While the UFO
crowd accepted The Purple Gang in their midst, the BBC did
otherwise, and for exactly the same reasons.
Granny's Satanic Trip
The title of The Purple Gang's first single Granny Takes A Trip was
tongue in cheek and ambiguous enough to please the psychedelic crowd. By
then the band did not like the gangster outfits they had to wear from
their manager and opted for a more alternative look. Singer Pete Walker,
nicknamed Lucifer, was a member of a coven, an actual warlock, and used
to wear a red robe with a big upside down cross while gigging. During
the Wizard song he would do the odd pagan routine on stage, much
appreciated by the psychedelic crowd (see also: Arthur
Brown). However, for the BBC, the word 'trip' in the lyrics
and the satanic outing of the singer was enough reason to ban the song.
The BBC boycott dwindled the chances for The Purple Gang to get into the
charts, to get their (only) record sold, to find gigs and they
eventually disbanded. If this proves one thing, dear sistren and brethren,
it is that selling your soul to the devil will not automatically
guarantee you chart successes.
The first half of the biography, from the start to the psychedelic years
of the band, is interesting, funny, packed with anecdotes and deserves a
5 star rating. The fact that the BBC banned Joe Beard's only chance to
have a million-seller has left its marks though and unfortunately the
author feels the need to repeat that every few pages. The later years,
with Chris Beard as a solo-artist and struggling to get The Purple Gang
back on the road are a bit tedious. But the Kindle
edition is only 5$, cheaper than the latest Pink Floyd interview in Q,
Mojo or Uncut, so it is money well spent. For the first half, the book
is a real treat to read.
Two Of A Kind
Eventually, in 2006, Joe Beard and a reincarnated Purple Gang covered Boon
Tune in a jug band way.
At a book signing / reading in 2007, Joe Boyd talked about the lost demo
tape Syd Barrett gave him in early 1967... He said Syd described the
tape's contents as 'songs the band didn't want to do' (Source: timeline
of songs). According to Julian Palacios that tape had 6 tracks and
Boyd and Jenner even discussed the possibility of Syd Barrett doing a
solo record, next to the Pink Floyd's first, with skiffle or music-hall
style songs. (By the way, did you know we have a Peter Jenner interview
on this blog? An
innerview with Peter Jenner)
It is not sure if there have been one or two Barrett demo tapes floating
around as both men claim they took a tape home and lost it. Joe Boyd
received his from Syd Barrett and remembers it had six whimsical tunes.
Joe Beard, who got his from Boyd, only remembers two songs: Boon Tune
and Jugband Blues.
Jugband Blues turned up, heavily re-arranged, on [A] Saucerful of
Secrets – still with the kazoos.
Jugband Blues was recorded by Pink Floyd in October 1967 and as also
Vegetable Man was made during the same session it has always been
assumed these songs are somewhat related. In Nick Kent's 1974 article The
Cracked Ballad of Syd Barrett Peter Jenner is quoted:
Y'see, even at that point, Syd actually knew what was happening to him.
(...) I mean 'Jug Band Blues' is the ultimate self-diagnosis on a state
of schizophrenia. (Source: The
Cracked Ballad of Syd Barrett)
But if the song had already been written earlier than January that year,
this comment doesn't make much sense, does it? What if Jugband Blues is
just one of those songs where Barrett copies and juxtaposes 'sampled'
messages from other sources, like he did in Octopus
(See also: Mad Cat
Love).
Jug Band Blues, Sara Martin (1924).
Still got the Blues for You
Sara
Martin began her career in 1915 as a vaudeville singer and in the
twenties she became one of the popular female blues singers, next to Bessie
Smith and Ma
Rainey. In September 1924 she recorded some tracks with jug player Earl
McDonald and fiddler Clifford Hayes and one of those was
called Jug
Band Blues.
At first sight that song has nothing in common with Barrett's version.
Sara Martin's song is a variation on the popular blues theme of the
person who wakes up in the morning and sees that her daddy
(lover) is gone. In the first decade of the twentieth century a 'daddy'
in African American slang was still a pimp, but later on the term was
generalised to a male lover.
Did you ever wake up, find your daddy gone? Turn over on your side,
sing this lonesome song I woke up this morning between midnight and
day You oughta see me grab the pillow where my daddy used to lay (Source:
Jug
Band Blues Sept. 16, 1924.)
One riddle is how Barrett came up with the title 'Jugband Blues'. The
chance is small he could find it (mentioned) on a compilation album like
he did with Pink
Anderson and Floyd
Council. (The origins of the Pink Floyd name is extensively
discussed at Step
It Up And Go.) Sara Martin's Jug Band Blues was only issued as a
B-side on two different 78-RPM records from 1924, perhaps in two
different versions: Don't You Quit Me Daddy (Okeh 8166) and Blue
Devil Blues (Okeh 8188, not to be confounded with the Walter
Page track from a few years later). Her 'complete recorded works'
(1996, Document)
do not include the 'Jug Band' track and probably there weren't any
compilations around in the sixties including that track.
Jug Band Blues can (now) be found on a 1994 Clifford Hayes compilation.
He had several bands in the twenties, with Earl McDonald on jug, and
issued several songs under different names for copyright reasons. Earl
McDonalds also had several bands in the twenties, with Clifford Hayes on
fiddle, which doesn't make it simpler to find any accurate information.
The jug band / skiffle revival resulted in at least three compilations,
between 1962 and 1967, but none of these have Sara Martin's Jug Band
Blues. We checked.
Skiffle
had been very popular in the UK and was not unknown by the Pink Floyd
members. Rick Wright had a brief flirtation with skiffle, before
converting himself to to trad jazz and Syd Barrett's brother Alan played
sax in a skiffle group in Cambridge.
Cambridge had its own deal of skiffle bands, or groups that had started
as skiffle units but moved to R&B or rock'n roll later on. The
Scramblers, who turned into The Phantoms, The (Swinging) Hi-Fi's, The
Black Diamonds, who evolved into The Redcaps, with Tony Sainty on
bass (see: RIP
Clive Welham: a biscuit tin with knives). Tony Sainty was also in
The Chequers, as was Ricky Wills who would later appear on David
Gilmour's first solo album. Willie Wilson, who played with Quiver
and on the first Gilmour album as well, had been a (replacement) drummer
for The Zodiacs, whose roots had also been in skiffle. You can read all
about them in the excellent, awarded (and free) I
Spy In Cambridge book The
music scene of 1960s Cambridge.
Blue Devil Blues by Sara Martin and her Jug Band (with its flip side:
Jug Band Blues) has been nominated to be the very first recorded jug
band number in human history and that fact may well have been known in
Cambridge jug band and skiffle circles. Syd Barrett may have been well
aware of this as well.
A Dream within a Dream
Deconstructing Syd's Jugband Blues.
1
It's awfully considerate of you to think of me here and I'm most
obliged to you for making it clear that I'm not here
Detail from 'An Introduction to Syd Barrett'. Picture: Storm Thorgerson.
Slightly amended by: Felix Atagong.
Rob Chapman is right when he describes the opening lines from Jugband
Blues as 'cultivated sarcasm' and refuses to see this as a declaration
of schizophrenia like Peter Jenner does or did. David Gilmour, and
others with him, see Jugband Blues as a transitional song, between his
earlier work with Pink Floyd and his later solo songs, that are more
mature and experimental in their lyrics.
Actually this opening is just an (awkward) introduction like in so many
skiffle songs, including Here I Go.
This is a story about a girl that I knew She didn't like my songs and
that made me feel blue.
Of course Here I Go is pretty conservative and lends its intro from
trademark skiffle à la Lonnie
Donegan:
Well, this here's the story about the Battle of New Orleans. (Battle
of New Orleans) Now here's a little story. To tell it is a must. (My
Old Man's A Dustman) Now, this here's the story about the Rock Island
line. (Rock Island Line)
Syd Barrett transforms the traditional skiffle opening line into a dark
and mysterious setting.
2
After the introduction the anecdote is usually explained or elaborated
on, although the enigma in Jugband Blues only gets bigger.
and I never knew the moon could be so big and I never knew the moon
could be so blue
A big moon, or super-moon
(a popular term dating from 1979), happens when the full moon and the
earth are at its closest distance, sometimes resulting in a so-called perigean
spring tide. We had one at the 9th of September 2014 and they happen
about every 412 days. So it is an event that only happens once in a
while.
An astronomical blue
moon, or the second full moon in the same month, happens about once
every two or three years. Blue
Moon is also a standard, from 1934, that has been performed by
countless bands and singers, and that has a romantic connotation.
Blue moon You saw me standing alone Without a dream in my heart Without
a love of my own
The title of that song (and Syd's lyric) is taken from the saying 'once
in a blue moon', meaning a rather rare occasion and Wikipedia
learns us that the term 'blues' may have come from 'blue devils',
meaning melancholy and sadness.
3
and I'm grateful that you threw away my old shoes and brought me here
instead dressed in red
Louder Than Words. Artwork: Hipgnosis (2014).
Just like the 'head / down / ground' symbolism is used several times in
Syd songs (see: Tattoo
You) so does 'shoes / blues'. Apples and Oranges has a dedicated
follower of fashion who alliteratively goes
shopping in sharp shoes
, while Vegetable Man walks the street
in yellow shoes I get the blues.
Earlier in his songwriting career, Barrett was much influenced by an
American folkie:
got the Bob Dylan blues, and the Bob Dylan shoes.
Of course shoes and blues has always been something of a nice pair as
was already proved by Robert Johnson in Walking
Blues (1936):
Woke up this morning I looked 'round for my shoes You know I had
those mean old walking blues
Incidentally the Pink Floyd latest (and last?) song Louder
Than Words, with its (horrible) lyrics written by Polly
Samson, reflects the same:
an old pair of shoes your favorite blues gonna tap out the rhythm
In the ballad 'Blue Moon' (see point 2) the protagonist who was lost /
alone has been helped / cared for by someone. In Jugband Blues we seem
to have the same situation. At this part of the song a second actor is
introduced who tries to assist the first one.
4
and I'm wondering who could be writing this song
Barrett almost describes an out-of-body experience in the first part of
the song. Pete Townshend claimed he had one once using STP, a drug that
also Barrett was familiar with. This is another variation on a theme of
absence as the narrator is present and absent at the same time. Make
your name like a ghost, suddenly seems more autobiographical than ever.
5
I don't care if the sun don't shine and I don't care if nothing is
mine and I don't care if I'm nervous with you I'll do my loving in
the winter
I don't care if the sun don't shine, Patti Page (1950).
This apparently happy refrain is a pastiche on Patti
Page's 1950 hit I
don't care if the sun don't shine, directly paraphrasing two of its
lines. Elvis Presley and Dean
Martin also covered this song (and all three of them also did Blue
Moon, by the way):
So I don't care if the sun don't shine I'll get my lovin' in the
evening time When I'm with my baby
Syd's 'I'll do my loving in the winter' makes the refrain fairly darker
than in the original though. It is as if Barrett is indefinitely
postponing the happiness that could be waiting for him.
6
During the refrain some kazoos make the point that this is a jug band
song after all, and then a psychedelic Salvation Army band (perhaps Syd
did see the contradiction before everybody else) jumps in. Then it is
the time for one of the weirdest codas ever:
And the sea isn't green and I love the queen
At first sight this is just a nonsense verse. There was a song called The
Sea Is Green, written by The
Easy Riders, an American calypso and folk-song trio and used in the
1958 Windjammer
travelogue documentary, but this is a long shot. In the song a sailor
expresses his hope to find his family back when he returns home. By
implying that the sea isn't green, Barrett loses all hope to see
his loved ones back.
6.1 A possible Beatles connection (Update: 1st of November
2014)
At the Late
Night forum, Wolfpack came with another explanation, that
seems far more plausible than ours, he remembered that The Beatles' Yellow
Submarine has 'a sea of green' in its lyrics. Actually the term is
used twice in that song. It comes up at the first strophe where the
story is told about a man who travels in a yellow submarine:
So we sailed up to the sun Till we found a sea of green
The term shows up again in the third strophe where it is told that the
sailors live a life of ease:
Sky of blue and sea of green.
Revolver - Piper cover mash-up. Artwork: Felix Atagong.
The song is not originally from the 1968 animated movie,
but from the 1966 Revolver
album, where it was the obligatory Ringo Starr track. Paul
McCartney wrote it with Ringo in mind, hence the simplicity of the
melody and the nonsensical subject. McCartney had a little help from his
friends John Lennon and Donovan,
who actually came up with the green sea lines.
Barrett, in a much darker mood than McCartney, who had a children's song
in mind, declares there is no such thing as a sea of green. The sailors'
unburdened life has been based on a dream.
There is a second similarity between Yellow Submarine and Jugband Blues.
Although Norman Smith was not involved in the recording it has a (short)
interruption by a brass band, just after the line 'and the band begins
to play'. Engineer Geoff
Emerick, who is on backing vocals with George Martin, Neil
Aspinall, Pattie
Boyd, Marianne
Faithfull, Brian
Jones and Brian
Epstein, used a 1906 record of a military march, altering it a bit
to avoid copyrights. Several sound effects were used for the song,
including the cash register sound that would later be used by Pink Floyd
on Money. There is another Floydian connection, although bit stretched,
Echoes (1970) has the Roger Waters line 'and everything is green and
submarine', but that last is used as an adjective, not as a noun.
Unfortunately we will never know if Norman Smith thought of Yellow
Submarine when he proposed Syd Barrett to add a brass band in between
the strophes.
7
and what exactly is a dream and what exactly is a joke
Dreamcatcher, courtesy LoveThisPic.
The 'Carrollesque quality of the closing couplet', to quote Rob Chapman
again, is omnipresent. In Lewis
Carroll's 'Through
The Looking Glass', on a cold winter evening, Alice climbs through a
mirror where chess pieces are alive. Alice meets the White and Red Queen
and the 'joke' subject is briefly spoken about:
Even a joke should have some meaning—and a child's more important than a
joke, I hope.
Dreams are discussed more often in the book, even the surreal
possibility that Alice is nothing but a 'thing' in the Red King's - so
somebody else's - dream:
If that there King was to wake,' added Tweedledum, 'you'd go out — bang!
— just like a candle!' (…) When you're only one of the
things in his dream. You know very well you're not real.
At the end, with Alice back in her house, she still isn't sure what
really happened and in whose dream she had landed.
Let's consider who it was that dreamed it all. (…) You see,
(…), it MUST have been either me or the Red King. He was part of my
dream, of course — but then I was part of his dream, too!
As we now know that Jugband Blues might have been written before Barrett
had his apparent breakdown, all speculation about this being an intense
self-description could be wrong, unless of course Syd altered the lyrics
between January and October 1967.
We'll never know for sure.
Ever drifting down the stream— Lingering in the golden gleam— Life,
what is it but a dream?
≈≈≈ THE END ≈≈≈
Other Meaningful Articles
While you’re at it, why don’t you read the articles about the auctions
in 2022 and 2023 or the Rich Hall / Felix Atagong / Birdie Hop interview
with Peter Jenner, dating from 2014?
Many thanks to: Baby Lemonade, Syd Wonder, Wolfpack and all participants
from the Jugband
Blues thread (started in 2008) at the Late Night Forum. ♥ Iggy ♥
Libby ♥
Sources (other than the above internet links): Beard, Chris
Joe: Taking The Purple. The extraordinary story of The Purple Gang –
Granny Takes a Trip . . . and all that!, Granville Sellars (Kindle
edition), 2014, location 858, 1372, 1392. Blake, Mark: Pigs Might
Fly, Aurum Press Limited, London, 2013 reissue, p. 18. Carroll,
Lewis: Through
the Looking Glass, Project Gutenberg. Chapman, Rob: A Very
Irregular Head, Faber and Faber, London, 2010, p. 191. Dosanjh,
Warren: The
music scene of 1960s Cambridge, I
Spy In Cambridge, Cambridge, 2013, p. 32, 40, 44, 50. Jefferies,
Neil, Dartford's Finest Band, Record Collector 417, August 2013,
p. 54-55. Mason, Nick: Inside Out: A personal history of Pink Floyd,
Orion Books, London, 2011 reissue, p. 21. Manning, Toby: The Rough
Guide To Pink Floyd, Rough Guides, London, 2006, p. 34. Palacios,
Julian: Syd Barrett & Pink Floyd: Dark Globe, Plexus, London,
2010, p. 25, 298, 314. Parker, David: Random Precision, Cherry
Red Books, London, 2001, p. 99. Smith, Norman 'Hurricane', John
Lennon Called Me Normal, Lulu (self-published), 2008, p. 218, 373,
397. Unnumbered section: #8.
The Church closed its door at the end of March 2015, but promised to
keep an eye open for all things relatively Syd-and-Iggy-related.
Obviously serendipity meant that, from that moment on, Syd-and-Iggy
related matters would regularly smash against the Church's closed
windows at the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow, making this one
of our busier seasons.
Iggy Rose was a guest on American Dazed (talk) Radio, her first
radio-interview ever. The condensed version still is 47 minutes but what
an intense 47 minutes they are: Iggy
Rose Radio Interview.
In June Iggy was invited to the biennial, second and probably last Birdie
Hop Cambridge meeting where she met with Libby Gausden, Jenny Spires
and a bunch of Barrett-fans: Iggy
Rose in Cambridge.
And then, when you're least expecting it, there is a brand new Iggy
picture that make our hormone levels go crazy.
This article follows the same steps as that other one of 2012 that
published the discovery of Iggy's 'Pocahontas' picture, that has been an
inspiration for so many Iggy fans and their fanart creations: Iggy
- a new look in festivals.
The 1967 Festival of the Flower Children
Festival of the Flower Children. Poster: courtesy Oscar Wilson."
Two weeks after Iggy had visited the National Jazz, Pop, Ballads and
Blues Festival at the Royal Windsor Racecourse, where she had her
picture taken for Music Maker magazine (see: Iggy
- a new look in festivals), there was the first Woburn festival with
an equally appealing title: Festival of the Flower Children.
Wanting to cash in on the Summer of Love (and the Bank Holiday Weekend
of 26-28 August) it tried to be a direct competitor for the first one
that was already well established and in its seventh edition. Flower
Children also went on for three days but its bill was less abundant,
less adventurous and clearly directed at the general public or 'weekend'
hippies, rather than the underground elite. The host, the Duke
of Bedford, one of those examples the French invented the guillotine
for and the living proof that the posh establishment will temporarily
adhere an alternative lifestyle if there is a buck to earn, sneered:
Only flower children are allowed in. They are nice peaceful young people
who like beat music and coloured lights. They are very different from
hippies who take drugs and make trouble. Hippies will definitely be
barred.
Dancing Flower Children (The Australian Women's Weekly).
The Duke of Bedford apparently grabbed 10% of the entrance money
estimated at £50.000, according to an article in The
Australian Women's Weekly, but the promoters, the Seller brothers,
apparently weren't that happy and the financial debacle may have
quickened the demise of their mod nightclub Tiles,
where Jeff
Dexter was the house DJ. The Daily Telegraph, however, wrote that
the festival made the nice profit of £20.000. (Much of the information
and some of the pictures in this article come from the excellent UK
Rock Festivals.) For snobbish left-elitist underground circles and
their affiliated magazines is was all a sell-out. Peter Jenner:
Gradually all sorts of dubious people began to get involved. The music
business began to take over. (…) There were things like the Festival of
the Flower Children.
That the Seller brothers were thinking more in the terms of profit than
music or mod culture was perhaps proven by their nightclub Tiles that
was described by Tom
Wolfe as the 'Noonday
Underground'. In the middle of the day, during lunch hour, the club
opened and was visited by 'office boys, office girls, department store
clerks' and teenagers who had left school at fifteen, for their daily
dose of mod music and a Coca-Cola. Tiles aimed for an easy-going public
and although it lacked style and personality it did have a proper bar, a
good dance floor, a fancy stage and an excellent sound system.
Sleeping Flower Child (The Australian Women's Weekly).
With the exception of perhaps Dantalian's
Chariot (another band led by Zoot Money) and Tomorrow
(with drummer Twink) the bill wasn't really underground, nor
psychedelic. Pink Floyd was never considered to appear at the festival,
although Rob
Chapman pretends the opposite in his immaculate biography. Not that
the band would've come as they had already cancelled the Windsor
Racecourse gig due to Barrett's erratic behaviour.
For the press the festival was gefundenes fressen and news
photographers seemed to outnumber groovers. And now we let you guess,
who can be found on one of those pictures, you think?
Flower Mother and Child (The Australian Women's Weekly).
Inside heroes
On the 21st of September the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit was asked the
following by Jacinta Storten:
Hi there, do you know if Iggy attended the Festival of the Flower
Children love-in at Woburn Abbey in 1967? I have some photos of
attendees and one of them looks just like her, on the other hand the
photo could be from the Woburn Festival that Fleetwood Mac headlined
which I think Pink Floyd were also billed from memory it was 67 or 68. [Note
from FA: for the record, at the 1968 version of the Woburn Abbey
festival, Fleetwood Mac never showed up, although they were billed. Pink
Floyd never played the festival either as they were touring North
America on that day.]
Such a mail obviously has the same effect on the Church as a red rag to
a bull. We immediately contacted Iggy Rose who wasn't aware of ever
being at the festival, but you know the saying 'if you remember the
sixties, you weren't there'. We wrote back to Jacinta, asking for a copy
of the picture so that we could send it over to Iggy, but due to the
quirky way Facebook messaging works sometimes (or should we say: not
works) that was ignored. (We have that effect on many people.)
Luckily on the fifth of November the picture appeared on the HeroInSight
Tumblr blog:
Iggy the Eskimo, Festival of the Flower Children, 1967.
'Iggy ”The Eskimo” Rose at Festival of the Flower Children Love-in,
Woburn Abbey UK, 1967.
As soon as we got hold of the picture we send it to Iggy who confirmed
it was indeed her:
My goodness, where did you find that? I look stoned. Haha. I can't
even remember being there. Lol xxx.
An internet search revealed that the picture
is currently hosted at Photo Inventory France, that seems to be owned by
an Ebay seller called Photo
Vintage France. The picture (30 x 19.5 cm) was put several times on
sale before, between June 2012 and August 2015, for the price of 159
Euro, but apparently no buyer has ever been found. Lucky for us,
otherwise the picture had perhaps never been found.
We contacted the owner of the Ebay shop, Bruno Tartarin, asking if he
could give us more information about this picture. We got a reply pretty
fast, but it didn't really give us info we didn't know already:
Cette image vient des archives Holmes-Lebel. Flower Children, Hippies
Rally, Woburn Abbey, Angleterre, circa 1967. RE2173 Tirage argentique
d'époque tamponnée.
Translation: This image comes from the Holmes-Lebel archives. Flower
Children, Hippies Rally, Woburn Abbey, Angleterre, circa 1967. RE2173 Authentic
gelatin-silver photography, stamped.
Internet searches for the Holmes-Lebel company didn't lead to anything
substantial apart from the fact that they created / sold pictures for
advertisements, movie posters, record and book covers and magazines in
the sixties. Also the photographer who took Iggy's picture is a mystery
as the agency had several internationally renowned people working for
them like Rona
Jutka, Raymond
Voinquel, Inge
Morath, Christian
Simonpietri...
Update 2015 12 22: Meanwhile the picture has mysteriously landed
at Atagong Mansion, and for once, the Reverend isn't interested in the
front of the picture, but wants to study the different marks on the
back. There are four in total: 1. a blue stamp of the Holmes-Lebel
company with the remark that the document has to be returned after
publication: 'document à rendre'. 2. another stamp with the
warning that four times the copyright amount will be asked if the
document gets lost or damaged: 'en cas de perte ou détérioration des
documents il sera perçu quatre fois le prix de cession des droits'. 3.
a sticker describing the picture in English:
HIPPIES RALLY (THE FLOWER CHILDREN), WOBURN ABBEY, ENGLAND Hippy girl
dressed in the Indian way. Copyright HOLMES-LEBEL/I.M.F. n) 3008
4. a remark written in pencil, reading 'woodstook'.
Scans of the stamps, stickers and marks on the back can be found on our
Iggy Tumblr page: Hippy
Girl.
Jean Straker (taken from Oz 6, 1967).
Porn and the Englishman
A photographer who certainly was present at the Flower Children festival
was Londoner Jean
Straker whose photo studio was in Soho and who was interviewed in
the 6th issue of Oz
because his pictures were considered pornographic in the prude
interpretation of the English law.
In 1951 he founded the Visual Arts Club where he gave lectures, sold his
pictures and where he would have 'photographers, amateur and
professional, studying the female nude'. Straker's pictures were
considered pornography under the Obscene
Publications Act and in 1961 over 1600 of his negatives and 233 of
his prints were confiscated. While Straker claimed his pictures were of
artistic value the judge didn't follow this explanation. In appeal,
Straker got many of his negatives back, but this was forced on a
technicality, using a loophole in the law, and the official
interpretation was still that his pictures were obscene.
This situation lingered on with Straker trying to fight censorship and
in 1967 Jean Straker noted (in Oz 6):
Now, as most lawyers know, I been through all this jazz before; apart
from a few thousand motorists, and a few hundred barrow boys, I must be
the most prosecuted non-criminal in town.
Jean Straker also visited the Festival of the Flower Children were he
might have taken over 220 pictures. Harper's
Books currently sells a (partial) archive of 39 different 5 x 8 inch
black and white photographs. However, at 3.000 USD for this collection,
it is a bit expensive just to find out if the Iggy picture is part of it.
At 165 Euro the Holmes-Lebel piece is almost a bargain.
Flower Child by Jean Straker.
The who, the what and the where?
There is a big chance we will never know who took Iggy's picture at the
festival of the Flower Children. It could've been one of Iggy's froody
friends, as we know she knew quite a few free-lance photographers,
including the one who took her picture two weeks earlier at the National
Jazz, Pop, Ballads and Blues Festival. If only she could remember his
name! At the other hand, she could've been invited to the festival by
Jeff Dexter, who had developed some interest in her and tried to record
her in the studio.
Update 2023: There is the possibility this picture was taken by
Feri Lukas. See: Feri
Lukas, photographer.
It is possible that the picture was bought by the Holmes-Lebel agency in
order to publish it in a French magazine. It would be nice to find that
article back, if there ever has been one.
But the good news is that a new Iggy picture has been unearthed and that
is was found – again – by one of her many fans. For that the Church (and
Iggy Rose) will be eternally grateful to Jacinta 'HeroInSight' Storten...
The quest continues... good hunting my sistren and brethren...
and don't do anything that Iggy wouldn't do...
Many thanks to: HeroInSight, Jacinta Storten, Iggy Rose, Bruno Tartarin, UK
Rock Festivals. ♥ Iggy ♥ Libby ♥
Some pictures and articles, used for this post, will be published at the
Holy Church's Tumblr blog under the Festival
of the Flower Children-tag.
Sources (other than the above internet links): Chapman, Rob: A
Very Irregular Head, Faber and Faber, London, 2010, p. 179. Green,
Jonathon: All Dressed Up, Pimlico, London, 1999, p. 43, 221. Green,
Jonathon: Days In The Life, Pimlico, London, 1998, p. 112. Palacios,
Julian: Syd Barrett & Pink Floyd: Dark Globe, Plexus, London,
2010, p. 246. Photo Inventory France: http://photoinventory.fr/photos/RE2173.png Pullen,
Bob: Photography and Censorship: The Photographs and Ideals of Jean
Straker, Photography and Culture, Volume 1, Issue 2, 2008 (online
pdf version).
We ended the first season on a low note because it seemed that the
entire Iggy story had been told in a handful of articles. It seemed that
she had disappeared and that she would not be found back.
How wrong we were, but we were not the only ones. Duggie Fields (to Mark
Blake):
I have no idea who Iggy was or even what her real name was. (…) I
saw her not long after Syd left the flat and she was looking more like a
Sloane Ranger. I heard she’d become involved with one of the voguish
religious cults at the time.
(As a matter of fact, this was not that far from the truth, but of
course we didn’t know that in 2009. For a while Iggy was signaled in Scientology
circles, one of those incredible stories we might tell you one day.)
Here is an overview of the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit’s tumultuous
second season (August 2009 -July 2010).
Iggy in Space by Felix Atagong (2009).
Fille de l’espace
We celebrated our first birthday with the publication of a brilliant
poem written by Dr.
Denis Combet, professor at Brandon University, Manitoba, Canada, who
specialises in French literature of the 17th and 18th centuries, but he
has also written lyrics for the pretty awesome stoner rock band Rescue
Rangers. In 2006 – 2007 he published a Syd Barrett inspired
multimedia project under the title Guitars and Dust Dancing (that
is unfortunately no longer online, but archive.org has a partially saved
backup: Guitars
and Dust Dancing).
The Church could exclusively issue the French version of the poem ‘De
Quétesh à Bastet’, dedicated to Iggy the Eskimo, and would
later publish Crystal Blue Postcards, a digital booklet with
(mostly) new poems, dedicated to Syd and Iggy. It can still be found
here:
Crystal Blue Postcards, exclusively hosted at the Holy Church of Iggy the
Inuit.
Iggy was moved to tears when she found out that someone in Canada had
written a poem for her and she kept on repeating that on our weekly
phone-calls. Thanks Denis!
The Iggy story, so we thought, was a dead end street or at least a slow
lane. In absence of our subject of adoration we started a series about
the legendary Cromwellian club, bar and casino. We also looked deeper
into The Bend dance craze, a clever marketing scheme started to twist a Dave
Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich single into a genre.
You
don’t have to believe us but we think these are still the best articles
about this nightclub on the web, with several interviews from people who
were there. The complete Cromwellian & The Bend series (running from
2008 till 2015): The
Cromwellian
Mojo March 2010 Cover.
The Madcap’s Mojo
2010 started with a bang. Rock magazine Mojo had a Madcap Laughs 40
years anniversary special, annex tribute CD, and it was undoubtedly
clear that some writers had found inspiration at the Church, but without
mentioning where they had found the information. (It needs to be said
that our secret informant in those days, Mark
Blake, who also wrote for the special, was not amongst those.)
We ended our review of the Mojo special with the prophetic words:
Ig’s story as published in Mojo may be the butterfly effect that will
cause the storm at the other side of the world. So perhaps, thanks to
Mojo, the Church will be one day able to fulfil its quest.
On the fifth of February 2010 Mark Blake informed us that Iggy was alive
and well and living in a small village in Southern England. The Church
were the first to publish this news on this entire planet. World
Exclusive: Ig has been found!
Initially Iggy wanted to anonymously live her life in her little village
in South-England, but her cover was blown by The Croydon Guardian. (Here
was another journalist suffering from amnesia. She didn’t find it
necessary to give a nod to the Church, although it was us who had
informed her about Iggy.)
Timing couldn’t have been better. Iggy was found just when we were going
to publish an interview with Gretta Barclay, who – with her friend Rusty
Burnhill – was a regular visitor at Wetherby Mansions in 1969.
A decade later this is still Margaretta’s one and only interview in the
Barrett-sphere.
We also tracked down Rusty Burnhill, living in a small town in Northern
Germany and sent him a polite letter where we asked if we could ask him
some questions. To our amazement he called us a few months later,
started swearing and shouting, threatened to call the police and smashed
down the phone. Needless to say that we didn’t pursue our plans to have
him interviewed.
Iggy had been located (by a few journalists) but wasn’t communicating to
the outer world (yet). A decision we obviously accepted. The Church has
never been into trophy hunting.
The Holy Church had already published the intriguing theory that the
painted floorboards at Syd’s flat didn’t date from autumn 1969, but from
spring 1969. This was contradicting all witness reports and all
biographies and obviously it was clear evidence that the Holy Church was
lead by a raving lunatic.
But our anonymous witness JenS had said so, Gretta Barclay and Iggy
confirmed it and more ‘proof’ for this was found by Barrett enthusiast
Dark Globe, a member of the Late Night Syd Barrett forum and one of the
people helping the Church with valid information.
Rob Chapman didn’t update this information in his Syd Barrett biography,
but Julian Palacios did, just before the printing deadline, making him
one of the believers. What was a wacky theory at first, laughed at by
several people, has now become the gospel.
Our review of Rob
Chapman’s Syd Barrett biography A Very Irregular Head
was quite polemic (and made us persona non grata in top level
Barrett circles). We did conclude it was one of the better biographies
around but there was of course the Octopus – Clowns & Jugglers
controversy.
Rather than stirring up a dying fire and prejudicing you we suggest you
read the review first and we’ll talk about it afterwards.
An intriguing anecdote was told to us by Gretta Barclay. One that also
couldn’t be found in any biography. Syd Barrett and his Welsh
counterpart Meic Stevens, who also suffered from a few psychological
drawbacks, met each other at different occasions.
Prydwyn read Steven’s autobiograpy (in Welsh) and translated the
relevant bits into English for generations to come. One pretty exiting
bit is that the two musicians were filmed by a BBC camera-team, but
apparently the movie has been destroyed, unless it still is hiding in a
BBC archive somewhere.
2019 sees Meic Stevens gigging again in Britain (although he immediately
started with some controversial
statements). Men
On The Border singer Göran Nyström published an excellent follow-up
to our Solva Blues article just a few days ago, with a few new
discoveries. Or how an article from a decade ago inspires people today
to further investigate in all matters Syd.
The Church wishes to thank all of those who helped us 10 years ago.
Unfortunately, many of them have already left the scene. : Anonymous,
Banjer and Sax, Margaretta Barclay, Paul Belbin, Mark Blake, Rusty
Burnhill, Constance Cartmill, Rob Chapman, Denis Combet, Duggie Fields,
Dark Globe, Rod Harrod, JenS, Pascal Mascheroni, Kerry McQueeney, David
Moore, Julian Palacios, Paro नियत, Prydwyn, Douggie Reece, Lynn Annette
Ripley (Twinkle), Brian Roote, Beate S., Jenny Spires, Allison Star,
Jean Vouillon, Kirsty Whalley, Vicky Wickham and the Dutch Dave Dee,
Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich fan community (not online any more)… (Sorry to
those we have forgotten to mention.) ♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
Holy Church Wordcloud (2018). Artwork: Dolly Rocker. Concept: Felix
Atagong.
The church started as a jokey blog in August 2008, but we had to get
serious when, only a year later, Iggy was found back, thanks to Mark
Blake, from Pigs Might Fly fame. She lived in a village in
West-Sussex, 52 miles from central London in the north and 14 miles from
the south coast, with a population of approximately 5,000.
Those and other stories you can read in the overview of the first two
seasons of The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit, a name that Iggy
thoroughly hated, by the way.
In season three the Church had acquired some maturity and because
Iggymania hit us hard there were over 30 articles that year. Here is
what happened a decade ago, a condensed overview of our third season, in
a reader’s digest way.
Metallic Spheres (cover: Simon Ghahary).
Metallic Spheres
Somewhere in the early nineties, the Reverend got aware of the band The
Orb, basically because some lazy journalists had baptised them the
Pink Floyd of ambient house. It has been a love/hate relationship ever
since because The Orb used to spit out songs and or remixes by the
bucket-load, often from uneven quality. (Check their 2020 sixteenth or
seventeenth studio album Abolition of the Royal Familia, that is
really good.)
In August of 2010, the official David
Gilmour blog (that no longer exists) finally confirmed the rumours
that a Floydian Orb partnership was going to take place. You can find
all juicy (and wacky) details in two articles but those aren’t amongst
the Reverend’s bests.
For those fans who might think, what does The Orb has to do with Pink
Floyd, Syd
Barrett or Iggy the Eskimo, there was news about Syd Barrett
compilation number 6 that saw the light of day in October 2010. An
Introduction To Syd Barrett was the first compilation combining solo
and Pink Floyd songs on one single album.
Before you say ‘what the fuck’ this compilation did have some extra bits
and pieces for the Syd Barrett anoraky collector. Four songs had been
remixed, plus one partially re-recorded, by David
Gilmour and for the first time in history, the 20 minutes version of Rhamadan
was offered as a downloadable extra track (for a limited period only).
About a year and a half after Rob
Chapman’s An Irregular Head Julian Palacios’ retaliated
with Dark Globe, a complete re-write of his previous Barrett and
early Pink Floyd biography Lost In The Woods.
Somewhat hermetic and not always the easiest prose to read it still is the
Syd Barrett authoritative biography around, giving credit where credit
is due, a department where Chapman lacked somewhat. Palacios is the kind
of biographer who will give you the brand of the coffee machine that was
used in a bar in Cambridge where Syd used to have an espresso and who is
a bit cross he couldn’t trace back its actual serial number. We have you
warned.
Mojo 207.
Mojo
The Mojo
edition of February 2011 (#207) put on its cover that Iggy the Eskimo
had been found and surprised us with a (small) article. Mark Blake
promised us a more in-depth article later on while Iggy was learning how
to type the right syllables on her portable phone, leaving a bunch of
quasi undecipherable messages at the Mojo website (for the first time
published here, see underneath).
Meanwhile, the Reverend and Iggy tried to connect, de tâtonnement en
tâtonnement as the French so beautifully say, figuring out what
the future should bring if there was a mutual future, to begin with.
The Strange Tale of Iggy the Eskimo was Mark Blake’s full article that
appeared as a Mojo Exclusive on its website. Unfortunately, it was
deleted a couple of years later. It is not even sure any more if it is
still around on Mark Blake’s own website, but a copy has been saved for
eternity at the Holy Church.
Obviously, the Church had quite a few articles about Iggy's reappearance
in season three:
Some of Iggy's comments on the Mojo website. (She had never used a
smartphone before.) Terrapin
9.
False Claims
In January 2011 somebody who appeared to be close to the Barrett
epicentre tried to sell a handwritten poem by Syd Barrett. Only, the
handwriting was not Syd’s, but by Barrett collector Bernard
White, who had published the poem in the fanzine Terrapin.
When the Church tried to investigate we were warned not to dig too deep,
for reasons still unknown, a decade later.
Anno 2020 there is a Syd Barrett lyrics book in the making. Perhaps it
will finally clear the fog around ‘A Rooftop Song In A
Thunderstorm Row Missing The Point’.
Fakes come in all sizes and colours. A Pink Floyd acetate containing Scream
Thy Last Scream and Vegetable Man was analysed by the Yeeshkul
community and proven to be a forgery. It's value dropped from ten
thousand dollars to about zero. Beware for the (many) fake records and
autographed items out there, people!
Fake as well, was an interview with the proprietor and mentor behind the
Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit, the famous and agile Reverend Felix
Atagong. Originally issued – in Spanish! - on the fantasticoSolo
En Las Nubes Barrett blog, it gave away all its dirty secrets. Ay
caramba! The English version appeared some while later at the
Church. It truly is an article of epic proportions.
Ian Barrett, Iggy Rose and Captain Sensible (picture: Captain Sensible).
Idea Generation
Iggy’s first public appearance in about half a century took place at the Idea
Generation exposition on the 17th of March 2011. A lot of people
were invited and Iggy was pleasantly surprised that she was asked, by
about everyone (minus one), for autographs and pictures.
That she was the star of the evening not only surprised her.
Unfortunately, it also led to a jealous outbreak from someone whom we
will call X. That person had always been high on the Syd Barrett pecking
order and was afraid to lose that spot. Iggy and X would be frenemies
for the rest of their lives, en passant adding the Reverend to
the war zone who was hit by friendly (and less friendly) fire.
In our third season, we also continued our Cromwellian nightclub series
with articles about professional wrestlers Paul Lincoln, Bob 'Anthony'
Archer, Judo Al Hayes and Rebel Ray Hunter who co-owned The Crom and
other clubs in the sixties.
Meanwhile, David Gilmour and Roger Waters are fighting an online battle
to get the most attention of the fans, by releasing home recordings of
Barrett, Floyd and solo songs. Nick Mason (with his Saucerful band) is –
obviously – still the coolest guy around.
See you next year, sistren and brethren!
Many thanks to all collaborators who helped us a decade ago and who are
still helping us today. RIP to those who are no longer around.:
Adenairways, Amy-Louise, Anne, Bob Archer, Emily Archer, Russell
Beecher, Paul Belbin, Mark Blake, Libby Gausden Chisman, Dallasman, Dan,
Dan5482, Dancas, Denis Combet, Dominae & Ela & Violetta (Little
Queenies), Paul Drummond, The Embassy of God, Emmapeelfan, Felixstrange,
Babylemonade Flowers, Gianna, Dark Globe, Griselda, Rich Hall,
Hallucalation, Rod Harrod, JenS, Jimmie James, Mark Jones, Kieren,
Krackers, Lynxolita, Natasha M, Mojo, MOB, Moonwall, Motoriksymphonia,
Natashaa', Giuliano Navarro, Neonknight, Göran Nyström, Julian Palacios,
Alain Pire, PoC (Party of Clowns), Antonio Jesús Reyes, DollyRocker,
Dolly Rocker, Jenny Spires, Vince666, Vintage Groupies, Brian Wernham,
Wrestling Heritage, X, Xpkfloyd, Zag, Zoe and all the beautiful people
at Late
Night and Yeeshkul. ♥
Iggy ♥ Libby ♥
While the Reverend of the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit is more and more
becoming a recluse, living in a corner of a foreign field, it is cool to
notice that the Syd Barrett community keeps on attracting new souls.
The authoritative Birdie
Hop group, with its 7300 members (August 2020) attracts new members
every day. The only negative point is that – due to Facebook’s business
model – really interesting topics (for the extreme Sydiots amongst us)
get pushed down, making them virtually invisible after a couple of days.
New members, and who are we to blame them, will ask the same questions,
will post the same pictures and publish the same songs, due to their
enthusiasm and relative unfamiliarity with the subject.
Quite a few Syd Barrett sites and fora have disappeared over the years.
You may think whatever you want from Barrett-foghorn Kiloh Smith,
but his sydbarrettpinkfloyd blog was an almost endless source of
information, written by him and his many collaborators. The Late
Night forum from Eternal Isolation, officially called the
Late Night Syd Barrett Discussion Room, has 98000 threads but less than
a dozen regular visitors nowadays. And don't let us get us started about
the exclusive Syd Barrett Research Society that was such a
creative pool of information, once upon a time.
But here’s that old fool on the hill pondering again that the good old
days were much better, while the now and the here is in the hands of the
young. But sometimes it is good to have a few dinosaurs around.
The administrators of Birdie Hop. Good
times, Fred & Ginger.
Ginger Cat
Bob Martin is a veteran of Birdie Hop who, end of August 2020,
threw a little bomb in the community with an anecdote he got from Ginger
Gilmour, David’s ex-wife.
I just had a bit of a chat with Ginger Gilmour and she mentioned that
Syd would visit their home in Woodley and record at David's studio. The
interesting bit is it would have been 1971 or later… How cool is that?
And I would like to thank Ginger Gilmour for letting me share this
story. I was not aware that Syd and David spent time together well after
the recording of Syd's solo albums.
This is something new and exciting indeed. The obvious question some
people were and are asking was if these recordings have been saved for
eternity and are still somewhere hidden in Gilmour's archives. That
these archives have some unpublished (Pink Floyd) goodies is well known.
Gilmour used to have the Bob
Dylan Blues reel that allegedly also contains demo versions of
Wolfpack, Waving My Arms in the Air, Jigalo Aunt (sic) and an unreleased
song called Living Alone (aka I Get Stoned).
Bob Martin, however, is prudent.
No one is saying anything came of these recordings, even if they were
kept. But wouldn't that be grand if David did have some jams recorded?
David and Ginger.
The Geeky Stuff
Let’s try to put a date on these sessions, shall we? The Syd Barrett
anecdote has not been put in Ginger’s ‘Memoirs of the
Bright Side of the Moon’, but she is pretty accurate on dates and
places. (Read our review here: The
Ballad of Fred & Ginger.)
Virginia ‘Ginger’ Hasenbein met David Gilmour backstage on the 28th of
October 1971, at the Hill Auditorium (University of Michigan, USA) and
it was pretty much love at first sight. Ginger followed the band for the
rest of the tour that would go on till the 20th of November, meeting
Gilmour’s parents, who were living in the USA, on the 15th. After the
tour, she emigrated to England where she lived with David in a farm near
Roydon, Essex. Pink Floyd road manager Pete Watts and his girlfriend
Patricia ‘Puddy’ Gleeson stayed with them for some time.
David and Peter spent a lot of time in his studio, which was downstairs
next to the living room.
The two couples didn’t have much free time as the UK Tour ‘72 was
starting in January. But even with Gilmour on the road, the house was
never empty.
I was alone with the BOYS - David’s friends from Cambridge. Most
evenings I got stuck doing the washing up and keeping them filled with
Tea as they smoked their spliffs and watched telly.
Those boys probably were Emo and a couple of others, but Syd was not
among them. There was also Warwick, the housekeeper, doing the odd job
and taking care of the duck Digby, the cats Gretel and Naomi and a
retired Shire horse, Vim. Emo:
Ginger moved in when she came over. I remember Ginger telling me she met
Syd when he came to the house at Woodley, Essex.
Through Emo we got some extra information from Ginger:
He came to Woodley and David helped him record some music. Syd had to
sit on a stool and David stood behind him and helped him play the
guitar… arms around him… (date forgotten).
And from Bob Martin, we know that Ginger added that Syd would stop by
the house in Woodley quite often.
So if Syd attempted some recordings it may have been in that two months
‘calmer’ period, from November 1971 to January 1972. At the end of
January, the Floyd had a British tour, followed by the Obscured By
Clouds sessions, followed by a Japanese tour, an American tour, another
American tour and a French tour. And in between, they had some recording
sessions for what would become The Dark Side Of The Moon.
David with Emo, 1973. Picture by Ginger.
Starting Over
It is not that weird that Barrett tried to put his career back on the
rails. His previous album, Barrett, dated from November 1970 and he
hadn’t been doing a lot since. As a matter of fact, he had been doing
nothing.
February 1971 had seen his last gig, 3 songs only, for BBC radio,
probably with David Gilmour in the band. There were a couple of
interviews, with Syd invariably trying to convince the journalist that
he was still in shape and that a third album was in the works.
I’ve been writing consistently for two years now and I have lots of
undeveloped things lying around. I’m still basically like I’ve always
been, sitting around with an acoustic getting it done. I never get
worried about my writing. (1971 interview in Terrapin 17, 1975.)
I've got some songs in the studio, still. And I've got a couple of
tapes. It should be 12 singles, and jolly good singles. I think I shall
be able to produce this one myself. I think it was always easier to do
that. (Melody Maker, Mar 27 1971, Michael Watts.)
Another trigger might have been the release of the Pink Floyd
compilation Relics,
in May 1971, that contained four Barrett tracks (and 6 with him in the
band). Syd had a copy of the album and bragged about it to Mick
Rock that it had reached the top 10. Probably his management must
have thought this was the ideal moment to get the third record in the
can and surf on the Pink Floyd wave of fame.
That Syd Barrett was trying to get back in shape could be seen on the
26th and 27th of January 1972. Invited by Jenny Spires Syd went
to an Eddie
‘Guitar’ Burns gig at King’s College Cellars
(Cambridge), bringing his guitar with him. After the official gig Syd, Twink
(John Alder) and Jack
Monck (who was Jenny’s husband) had an impromptu jam.
Syd in Stars,5 Feb. 1972.
Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band
Barrett liked the experiment and joined the Last Minute Put Together
Boogie Band the next day on three numbers. LMPTBB was a power blues
outfit built around Twink, Jack Monck and the American singer Bruce
Paine. That day they also had Fred
Frith with them, who was less enthusiast about Barrett than the
others. (Read our Fred Frith interviews at: An
innerview with Fred Frith.)
The Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band gig was recorded and officially
released, after a long battle, in 2014. You can read all about it in our
LMPTBB series: LMPTBB.
Stars
When Syd Barrett showed interest to start performing again singer and
guitarist Bruce Paine was thanked for his services and a new band was
formed: Stars.
Bruce Paine continued as the Last Minute Put Together Boogie Band and
had at least one gig with Rick
Fenn, Bill Gray and someone called Gary, before joining Steamhammer.
All of a sudden, Syd Barrett had become the leader of a new band,
something he wasn’t really ready for. Stars did six gigs in Cambridge
and somehow the music press got hold of it.
When a Melody Maker journalist published a critical review of one of the
lesser shows, Syd Barrett called it quits. Apart from a jam with Jack
Bruce in the summer of 1973, he would never perform again in public.
Stars, without Syd, still played a few gigs but was disbanded soon after.
Stars Dandelion,29 Jan. 1972.
The Basement Tapes
That we have never heard of the Barrett-Gilmour home tapes before is
weird, and perhaps not. The Floyd nicely cultivated the Syd Barrett myth
over the years, keeping it mysterious. Take for instance the different
Syd Barrett visits during the Wish You Were Here sessions, with
Gilmour denying that Syd was there on his wedding day, although ten
witnesses, including his ex-wife, tell the opposite. Read all about that
at: Shady Diamond.
David Gilmour has never been the most talkative kind of guy, especially
when it comes to his relationship with Syd.
This was proven once again during the A
Theatre For Dreamers / Von Trapped Family live stream #6 (9 May
2020), that was mainly David Gilmour sharing some thoughts about Syd
Barrett. When asked who was the culprit not wanting to take Syd Barrett
on a gig in January 1968 David Gilmour stays very discreet, even when
pushed by Polly Samson.
David: “Someone...” Polly: “Who?!” David:
“...said...” Polly: “Who?!” David: “...as
we were driving around West-London picking people up about to head off
to some, like Southampton for a gig. Someone said shall we pick Syd up?
Someone else said no, let’s not bother.” (Meanwhile, Polly keeps on
yapping at her husband.) Polly: “Come on, you know who said that!” David:
“Uhm, stop fishing… I actually don’t know. I don’t know the answer to
that.”
Stars Corn Exchange, 26 Feb 1972.
The Syd Barrett Lyrics Book
The main bulk of the conversation was about the Syd Barrett lyrics book
that David Gilmour is proofreading, comparing the master tapes with the
lyrics that have been written down. Not an easy task so it appears as
the Barrett little black book with his poems in has disappeared.
Another contributor to the Syd Barrett lyrics book will be Rob
Chapman and he had the following to say on Twitter about it:
No doubt publishers will announce this in due course but the Syd Barrett
lyric book has been put back to next year due to the Virus. A pity
because there is going to be an exclusive in there which will make all
Syd fans gasp and spontaneously combust when they read it. (Rob Chapman
April 29, 2020.)
What makes us wonder what this exclusive might be. Perhaps the fact that
David Gilmour still has a few unpublished demos or pictures in his
possession?
If we have learned something from our decades-long Pink Floyd admiration
it is that ‘spontaneous’ scoops like this mostly have been organised by
the Floyd’s management. The first 1975 Syd Barrett picture was
coincidentally found when Nick Mason had a book to promote. Years later
a second photo was accidentally revealed on the Pink Floyd exhibition.
But for the exclusive in the Syd Barrett lyrics book, we will still have
to wait a bit.
Many thanks: Rob Chapman, Ebronte, Ginger Gilmour, Bob Martin, Iain
‘Emo’ Moore, Lisa Newman, Ken Sutera Jnr, Swanlee, Wolfpack, Syd Wonder
and the friendly people of Birdie Hop and Late Night. Some pictures and
stuff at our Tumblr: Stars. ♥
Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
Sources (other than the above mentioned links): Gilmour, Ginger: Memoirs
of the Bright Side of the Moon, Angelscript International, 2015, p.
31. Parker, David: Random Precision, Cherry Red Books, London,
2001, p. 164. Povey, Glenn: Echoes, the complete history of Pink
Floyd, 3C Publishing, 2008, p. 149.
Rieks Korte is a Syd Barrett fan and a lover of rarities as his
Dutch blogs De
Platenkoffer and De
Platenkoldershow show. Unfortunately these blogs haven’t been
updated since 2016 as he also succumbed to the Venus
flytrap that is Facebook.
As such he is a valid contributor to Birdie
Hop, that eclectic mixture of Sydiots (good!) and idiots (not so
good!) who think that publishing the same pictures from Syd Barrett over
and over again is a splendid thing. But who am I to blame others, next
to slightly fantastic The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit (the blog
you are reading now), there is a pretty redundant Tumblr,
a superfluous Facebook
page and a forgettable Twitter
with the same name, that only add to the general obfuscation of the
interweb.
So far for my introduction that, as the gentle reader knows, mostly has
nothing to do with the rest of the article. This is no exception.
Lucifer Sam
A couple of days ago Rieks Korte wrote
about a Lucifer Sam cover from the band The Graded Grains,
allegedly from 1967, that he described as (possibly) the first Pink
Floyd cover ever. You can listen to it hereafter, before we continue
with our lament. Thank you.
There is a very detailed – official – website
of the band and from there we learn that they were originally based at
Exeter and started in 1964 as The Spartans. They morphed into Clockwork
Orange and finally they settled as The Graded Grains in 1967.
The band went on until 1971, had a bus-load of personnel changes, and
had over 300 gigs in Germany alone. They acted as a warm-up band for
quite a few rock legends: Amen Corner, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown,
Cream, Family, Free, Long John Baldry, The Move, The Pretty Things, The
Searchers, The Swinging Blue Jeans, Traffic and The Who.
A Graded Grains Mk2 was reformed in 1974. That band went on for about a
decade with over a thousand gigs on their list.
Despite these many gigs there are only about 30 recorded tracks of them,
available in collectors circles and never officially released, with the
odd exception here and there.
The Graded Grains Mk1. LTR: Cliff Andrews, John Gregory & Bud Street.
Picture: http://www.gradedgrains.co.uk.
Lucifer
Sam, Graded Grains, 1968.
Lucifer Sam
The first Graded Grains tracks were made at Swan Street Studio, Torquay,
in 1968, engineered by Tony Waldron. It had Cliff Andrews on drums, John
Gregory on guitar and Ian “Bud” Street on bass and vocals.
This session has survived on acetate. Side A has an early version of
Animal Magic (misspelled as Animal Majic), side B has a track that has
been noted down as Lucifer Son but that is a (pretty average)
cover of the Floyd’s Lucifer
Sam, probably to repeat the animal theme on the record's B-side.
Dating
While Modbeat66 at YouTube claims this is a 1967 track the Graded
Grains site confirms several times that this session dates from 1968.
That is the date we will work with.
So, is this really the first Pink Floyd cover as has been claimed? No,
it probably isn’t.
As usual, when things involve Syd Barrett and early Pink Floyd, the
Reverend thinks he can give the answers.
Chocolate Soup for Diabetics.
Explanation 1
First of all, the Lucifer Sam version of The Graded Grains exists only
as an acetate
disc and was never issued as a single. A collector found it in a
London shop and put the track on a 1983 Chocolate
Soup For Diabetics compilation (still as Lucifer Son, by the way).
One source told the Church that the song could be found on an earlier
bootleg, where it was described as a track from an unknown band, but we
didn't find a trace of that album.
Dr Doom, on 45Cat,
claims that there are two known acetates of this record. One was
auctioned in 2004 on eBay and on the third of September 2017 a second
one was sold for £821 on Popsike
(where it was confirmed this was the second known copy of that acetate).
Although recorded in 1968, Lucifer Sam by The Graded Grains has only
been officially released in the mid eighties, so it simply isn't the
Floyd’s first cover version. Some readers might find that we are
stretching the rules a bit...
...but we have an even better argument.
See Emily Play, Three To One, 1967.
Explanation 2
There is a Pink Floyd cover from a Canadian band that dates from 1967, a
couple of months before Graded Grains recorded Lucifer Sam. Three To
One recorded See
Emily Play on the Arc label in 1967 and a year later that same track
appeared on the CTV
After Four compilation.
A second See
Emily Play cover on Arc, using new vocals, but with the same musical
track, was released by the Okey
Pokey Band & Singers on their 1968 Flower
Power album. A shorter version of exactly the same song was put on
an 1968 EP from the band The
Golden Ring, unfortunately that version seems to have disappeared
from YouTube.
The Okey Pokey Band and The Golden Ring never existed as such, but were
just fake band names to put on so-called sound-alike records. We have
dedicated a very detailed article about these Canadian Pink Floyd
covers: The
Rape of Emily (three different ones).
Conclusion
Graded Grains were one of the very first bands to cover a Pink Floyd
tune, only nobody ever heard it before the eighties. They were preceded
by a couple of months by Canadian band Three To One who covered See
Emily Play. Perhaps Graded Grains were the first British band to
have covered a Pink Floyd song, although that is open for discussion.
It makes a good story though.
Many thanks: British
Music Archive, Dr Doom, Graded
Grains, John Gregory, Rieks Korte, Modbeat66 and the friendly people
of Birdie Hop. Some pictures and stuff at our Tumblr: Graded
Grains. ♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
The Lyrics of Syd Barrett. Edited by Rob Chapman & David Gilmour..
Rumours
Somewhere in October 2019, I heard rumours about a Syd Barrett lyrics
book that was in the pipeline. In April 2020 there was – finally – some
official news about the book when Rob
Chapman tweeted about it:
...the Syd Barrett lyric book has been put back to next year due to the
Virus. A pity because there’s going to be an exclusive in there which
will make all Syd fans gasp and spontaneously combust when they read it…
Two weeks later, during one of his ‘Theatre
For Dreamers’ live streams, David
Gilmour confirmed that he was proofreading Syd’s lyrics by comparing
Chapman’s notes with the isolated voice tracks from the Syd Barrett
masters.
The complete lyrics of Syd Barrett – 52 songs written for Pink Floyd and
during his subsequent solo career – are presented together for the first
time, along with rare photos and artwork, to form this beautifully
illustrated book.
February 2021 the book has finally arrived in the hands of the fans,
although Amazon France keeps on insisting that it doesn’t exist, yet.
Let's talk about the 'rare' photos and artwork first. To be honest,
there aren’t any. I’m browsing through the Kindle version and all
pictures, except perhaps one, are those that are daily published on a
multitude of Syd Barrett Facebook groups and Tumblrs, including my own
ridiculous iggyinuit.tumblr.com.
But obviously, this book isn’t about the pictures although these
could’ve been a bit less predictable, to say the least.
Peter Jenner
There is a foreword by Peter Jenner who compares Syd’s songs with Van
Gogh’s paintings. He’s done that before, for instance on the Birdie Hop
/ The Church interview
he did in 2014 (see: An
innerview with Peter Jenner). Syd left an everlasting impression on
the people he met and worked with, that’s for sure.
Van Gogh - Wheat Field with Syd (1890). Mashup: Felix Atagong.
Rob Chapman
Before the lyrics section starts there is a quite brainy and erudite
introduction by Rob Chapman. Evidently, it centralises on Syd's
wordsmanship that often meanders in obscure waters. Some lyrics need a
guide book that only existed in Syd’s mind, others are just plain
gibberish and failed experiments, a bit like the early Floyd jams that
sometimes were cool and often were not. But when Syd is brilliant, well…
he’s just damn brilliant.
Chapman's essay regales its readers, read it slowly to let it sink in.
Scream
As soon as the first copies were distributed Syd fanatics had their
remarks. Fans are used to their interpretations of Syd's lyrics and some
of the Gilmour / Chapman adaptions were not that easily accepted. Here
are a few examples:
Waddle with apples to grouchy Mrs Stores vs. Waddle with apples to
crunchy Mrs Stores.
Gregory Taylor on the Birdie
Hop Facebook group about this Scream Thy Last Scream verse:
I am not sure that the word 'grouchy' was particularly in usage during
the 1960s whereas 'crunchy' was very current particularly in telly
adverts. Syd liked onomatopoeic words so that sounds more feasible to
me. He also didn’t use obvious Americanisms like ‘grouchy’.
Matthew Cheney:
My point was that given the potential for multiple interpretations
still, the book will inevitably have some kind of slant depending on who
is involved.
WTF is "limpet green"? Limpid green refers to the icy waters mentioned
in the same verse. Limpid is a water reference. A limpet is a mollusk
(and they aren't green).
Actually, Rontoon, green limpets do exist, the internet is full of them.
However, it would be so nice if Rob Chapman could explain to the
hardcore Sydocracy why he (and Mr Gilmour) put in the 'grouchy'
and 'limpet' words instead of ‘crunchy’ and ‘limpid’.
Annotations would have been very helpful but unfortunately, Rob prefers
to kick around on Twitter,
making derogatory remarks about anyone who doesn’t agree with him.
Controversy
At Late
Night, still relevant after all these years, Syd Wonder assembled
lyrics that could contain errors in Chapman's transcription. According
to Syd Wonder Rob Chapman did a particularly bad job on Double O Bo and
made mistakes in Late Night, Milky Way, Rats, Wined and Dined, If It's
In You and Vegetable Man. Read his analysis at: The
lyrics of Syd Barrett...
Official Secrets Act
Some fans regret the fact that this book was assembled in secrecy and
that Roger Waters, nor Nick Mason have been involved. Were they asked,
we will never know, but it doesn't look that way. Syd Barrett is a
division of the Gilmour-led Floyd company and shares the same management.
Chapman, who once described Pink Floyd as a firm of chartered surveyors,
finds this utterly silly as well:
I’ve got to sit on hot information for nearly a year now. I’ll probably
have to sign the Official Secrets Act. 48 hour ago I was the first
person in the world outside of ‘certain famous parties’ to read it.
Tease?
Missing Songs
Now for the songs. These are the lyrics for the Syd Barrett tracks that
have been officially released. Why do I say that? Because ‘Living
Alone’ is missing and perhaps a few others.
‘Living Alone’ is vegetating on tape E95744Z that is in David Gilmour’s
Fort Knoxian archives, along with Bob
Dylan Blues. Bob Dylan Blues has been released on a compilation
album, but Living Alone not. Is Living Alone a song with lyrics? Is it
worth releasing? Who knows? Who cares?
Another missing song is ‘Remember Me’ from the 1965 demos.
‘Lucy Leave’, ‘Double O Bo’ and ‘Butterfly’ are in the book. ‘Remember
Me’ not. This could mean it was written by someone else or perhaps it is
just one of those traditional Floydian fuck-ups. As usual, there is
silence in the Chapman / Pink Floyd camp.
Rooftop in Terrapin 9.
A Rooftop Song In A Thunderstorm Row Missing The Point.
Then there is the case of ‘Rooftop’. The July 1974 issue of the fanzine
Terrapin has an unpublished Syd Barrett poem, copied by Bernard White
after a visit at the Hipgnosis
headquarters.
It has survived in two versions, both in Bernard White’s handwriting.
There is the published
version in the fanzine, where he explicitly thanks ‘Hypgnosis’ (sic)
for the poem. A second
version was sold by Bonhams in December 2010 for the crazy price of
2160£.
The seller claimed that the poem was in Barrett’s handwriting. The Late
Night forum and the Church debunked this and tried to warn potential
buyers. Bonhams was warned as well but they ignored it. A decade ago I
was advised not to dig too deep into the matter, as the seller had a
high position in the Syd Barrett pecking order. Weird scenes inside the
Syd Barrett goldmine, so it seems. See: Bonhams
Sells Fake Barrett Poem.
In the uncut and unedited Darker Globe manuscript from Julian
Palacios, one can find the following.
At El Patio, they read 19th Century French symbolist poet Charles
Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil. In Arthur Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell, the
17-year old hellion poet insisted, ‘It is necessary to be absolutely
modern’. Syd was taken with Baudelaire’s 1869 Paris Spleen, and
fragments found way into his poem ‘Rooftop in a Thunderstorm Row Missing
the Point’. Syd scribbled, ‘the prophecy, to recreate the truth / in
visions of a seasonal mood...’
Unfortunately, I can't find the Paris
Spleen fragments that inspired Barrett, but The Old Clown
poem does have a clowns and jugglers line.
It was one of those gala days that all the clowns, jugglers, animal
trainers, and ambulant hucksters count on, long in advance, to make up
for the lean seasons of the year.
In a tweet from February 2021, Rob Chapman calls Rooftop a total fake.
Oh gawd!
Yes its that totally unconvincing Thunderbird (sic) Row missing the
point forgery that Bernard White was passing around in the 80s. He casts
a long vapour trail does Mr White.
Wolfpack, over at Late
Night, has his objections about Chapman’s comment:
There were no Xerox machines just easily available in the early 1970s.
So, if White found a sheet of Barrett lyrics in some Hipgnosis archive,
he just couldn't run to some supermarket to copy the sheet.
All
he could do was writing down in his own handwriting, what he was reading
in front of him.
First of all, the Rooftop poem doesn't date from the eighties but was
published in Terrapin in 1974. In his foreword Bernard White thanks
‘Hypgnosis for the poem and photos’. This is repeated in the ‘credits’
section: ‘This issue all photos plus poem: Hypgnosis’. Bernard White
doesn’t seem the person to me to fabricate a false Syd Barrett poem. The
Hipgnosis archive, where he claimed to have found the poem, has been
lost. We can’t prove its authenticity. Chapman can’t prove the opposite
either.
Mind Shot (It Is Obvious).
Mind Shot
The 2001 Syd Barrett compilation album Wouldn’t
You Miss Me? has a partial facsimile of the Mind Shot lyrics,
better known as It Is Obvious. It is believed that it comes
straight out of Syd’s binder that contained his lyrics.
Wolfpack has asked, and rightly so, why this sheet hasn’t been included.
Most of Syd’s typewritten lyrics have been lost, so why didn’t they add
the one(s) that did survive?
On top of that, Chapman changes Syd’s line ‘Oh mumma listen dolly’ into
‘Mumble listen dolly’. Once again some explanation would have been
appreciated.
I kid you not. Madcap
announced as Mad Cat.
Octopus
There are plenty of cases where different interpretations of the lyrics
are possible. But it’s nice to see that there finally is a consensus
about Opal (instead of Opel) and that both mad cats and madcaps
are hiding in Octopus / Clowns & Jugglers.
Meanwhile, it has been suggested that Gilmour and Chapman didn't listen
to isolated voice tracks for all tracks, despite all the brouhaha, only
for those they had a problem with. There is a line in Octopus that
officially goes: "The seas will reach and always seep."
That's wrong, states Chapman on Twitter, nearly a year ago, suggesting:
“The seas will wreath. We’ll always see.”
So why did it change back to the first – clearly wrong – line in the
book?
Walk with me
Chris Flackett on Twitter:
I do have one question, respectfully asked, as it goes: I always thought
the line in Candy and a Currant Bun was 'please just fuck with
me'. Was it just a common mishearing then? Always wondered how they
slipped that past EMI.
Rob Chapman replies:
Didn't have any multi-track to prove that but I think it's both, like
madcap and madcat on Octopus.
Wrong, multi-tracks of Candy do exist and have even been (partially)
published on YouTube.
Rob Chapman plays it safe and uses the politically correct line:
"Please, just walk with me."
This is weird because in 'Irregular Head' Chapman acknowledges the
existence of the four-letter word: “He slips a cleverly disguised ‘fock’
into the chorus and makes it sound like ‘walk’.”
No Man’s Land
The promised part where fans would ‘spontaneously combust’ is the spoken
word ending of No Man's Land. It must have been a titanic work to
isolate the mumbling sentences of the crazy bard, spoken at a staggering
speed.
It’s a work of love and dedication and Sydiots all over the planet will
thank the Chapman / Gilmour team for that.
Conclusion
Is this the definitive statement on Syd’s lyrics as Chapman proudly
tells in an interview with the Bureau
of Lost Culture? I don’t think it is. There are still some loose
ends and as some anoraks have said, it wouldn't have hurt to add some
annotations. It’s not that Chapman / Gilmour didn’t have the time.
But it will find its way into the shrines of most Sydiots, I’ll guess.
They will discuss its contents for centuries to come.
Strawberry Fair Logo.
Mythology
Let’s add another Syd Barrett myth, shall we? Over at Hoffman’s
Music Corner member APH claims he had several brief Syd
encounters:
I was watching my friends' group the Fire Dept at Strawberry Fair, late
eighties. There was a bald guy in a jumpsuit dancing around
enthusiastically on his own. I was told it was Syd. After that, I
recognised him around Cambridge through the years. Generally just
walking alone. Occasionally doing something like paying for his weekly
shop in pennies, and making everyone wait.
He was quite well
known locally, it wasn't considered the done thing to approach him. I
heard he would scream at people who did that. One look at him, and it
was obvious there was no reason to approach him, he wasn’t the same
person.
The Church wishes to thank: APH, Asdf35, Eleonora Siatoni, Gregory
Taylor, Hallucalation, Julian Palacios, Matthew Cheney, Psych62, Rich
Hall, Rob Chapman, Rontoon, Stephen Coates, Swanlee, Syd Wonder,
Wolfpack, Younglight. ♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
Sources (others than the links above): Baudelaire, Charles: Paris
Spleen 1869, New Directions Publishing, New York, 1970, p.25.
Translated from the French by Louise Varèse. Chapman, Rob: A
Very Irregular Head, Faber and Faber, London, 2010, p. 134. Palacios,
Julian: Darker Globe: Uncut and Unedited, private publication,
2021, p. 85.
It passed by as a fait-divers. On the third of December Rod Harrod died
in his home village of Dinas Powys in South Wales. Many people,
especially those in Floydian spheres, will not recognise him.
In the early days of the Church, when we were still looking for Iggy, we
had an agreeable conversation with Rod about the heydays of The
Cromwellian and the other clubs Iggy used to frequent. Rod Harrod was
the man who - more or less – discovered Jimi Hendrix and who gave him a
first chance to play at the Scotch of St James Club in London. To read a
bit more about Rod Harrod you can go to these early Church archives: Rod
Harrod remembers The Crom and The
Style Council.
Our condolences to the family, relatives and friends of Rod.
2021
Twenty twenty one was a lousy weird year, with – unfortunately – also a
few deceases closer to the Floydian home. The Church also had a few good
moments, even something we could call the highlight in our thirteen
years existence.
All of these have been illustrated on our Tumblr
sister blog … and here is our annual overview:
January
2021: the long awaited Syd Barrett Lyrics book is finding its way to
the fans. It is assembled by the Moriarty of Barrett biographies Rob
Chapman, meaning that controversy is never far away. Our review: The
Syd Barrett CookbookFebruary
2021: a 2015 Syd Barrett mood-board by Manu, aka SydParrett, who has
disappeared from social media since 2016. Hope you’re doing fine, girl! March
2021: RIP Duggie Fields. Picture: Iggy and Duggie, at the Barrett book
launch, 2011. Obituary: RIP
Duggie Fields 1945 – 2021April
2021: Iggy and some musician. Picture: Mick Rock. May
2012: Orange Dahlias in a Vase. Syd Barrett painting auctioned and
sold for £22,000. Article: Orange
Dahlias in a VaseJune
2021: in June of 2021 the Church was contacted by Iggy’s relatives in
Mizoram, who had lost all connection with the British side of the family
for over half of a century. This created quite a buzz in India and the
Church was mentioned in half a dozen of newspaper articles, culminating in
the Reverend's second interview ever. Read more at: Family
ReunionJuly
2021: who could’ve guessed that The Anchor really existed in
Cambridge? August
2021: Syd Barrett wearing his notorious Yogi Bear tie. Warning for our
younger fans: this is not an original. Syd. Shopped by: Fabio Mendez. September
2021: Octopus ad, made by Hipgnosis. October
2021: the object of the Reverend’s adoration. Pills not included. November
2021: RIP Mick Rock. Picture: Dave Benett. Obituary: Rock
of AgesDecember
2021: Iggy, 2010, by Chris Lanaway, for Mojo magazine. She hated that
shooting. Always a bit of a rebel, our Iggy. RIP girl.
Anonymous, Ajay Dep Thanga, Antonio Jesús Reyes, APH, Asdf35, Barbara,
Basit Aijaz, Chandrima Banerjee, Din Nyy, Eleonora Siatoni, Elizabeth
Joyce, Elvee Milai, Euisoo's left sock, Göran Nyström, Gregory Taylor,
Hallucalation, Hmazil, Hnamte Thanchungnunga, Julian Palacios, Kevin
Arnold, Kima Sailo, Lalrin Liana, Lzi Dora Hmar, Mact Mizoram, Mafela
Ralte, Mark Blake, Matthew Cheney, Mick Brown, Myithili Hazarika,
Noeeeayo (Rinnungi Pachuau), Panjee Chhakchhuak, Park Yoongi, Psych62,
Racheliebe (Chha Dok Mi), Ramtea Zote123, Rich Hall, Rinapautu Pautu,
Rob Chapman, Rontoon, Rosang Zuala, Roy Alan Ethridge, Stash Klossowski
de Rola, Stephen Coates, Swanlee, Syd Wonder, Tnama Hnamte, VL Zawni,
Wolfpack, Younglight, Zodin Sanga, Zolad.
The document belongs to an ‘anonymous’ associate of the band who
describes the song as follows.
To me these tracks are like the Van Gogh painting with the birds over
the wheat field, that’s what Syd’s brain was at. Try to look at the
disturbance of Van Gogh through his paintings. If you want to understand
Syd, if you want to know what was going on with him, you have to listen
to those tracks in the same way…
The above quote has literally been taken from a 2014 innerview
I had with Peter
Jenner (with many thanks to co-author Rich Hall). It was
simultaneously published at the Holy Church and Birdie Hop,
but Bonhams doesn’t find it necessary to say where they took this quote
from.
Vegetable Man Lyrics Sheet (original)
Vegetable Man
The handwritten lyrics for Vegetable Man include the chord breakdown of
the song, all in Syd Barrett’s hand. Unfortunately, the picture on the
Bonham website and catalogue is very difficult to decipher unless you
enhance the contrast between the light blue ink and the white paper. And
of course, this is what has been done, for instance in the Yeeshkul
forum, by user Axefeld.
Vegetable Man Lyrics Sheet (enhanced by Felix Atagong)
Chords
On the same forum, Goldenband concludes that the chords on the lyrics
sheet are not the chords Pink
Floyd plays on the record.
What Syd noted down as "| D Db | A G# | E | A B | E |" is,
on the recorded version "| Eb Db | A G# | E | G# A | B E |". The
BBC version is also a bit different, namely: "| Eb D | A G# | E | G#
A | B E |".
Don’t worry if this reads like Chinese to you, it reads like Chinese to
me as well.
Lyrics
We have had multiple discussions about Syd’s lyrics over the decades,
and even Rob
Chapman’s book, aptly titled ‘The Lyrics of Syd Barrett’, has gotten
it wrong on different occasions. (See our review at: The
Syd Barrett Cookbook) The handwritten lyrics of Vegetable Man reopen
the discussion of what Syd meant.
Detail from the Vegetable Man Lyrics sheet (taken from Yeeshkul).
Axefeld:
I see some words there that I can't hear on the recordings: "my
haircut looks so ----". I'd always heard "bad" , but there's a different
word here, possibly 4 letters? Same goes for: "so I change my gear
and I find my -----". I'd heard "feet", the word here is possibly 5
letters?
Other Syd anoraks have chimed in: Blackstrat01: I always thought it
was "Find my niche." Lennyif: I have always heard it as
"Find my knees."
Blackstrat01: I always thought it was "My haircut looks so rare." Goldenband:
I think it might be "My haircut looks so fair." Jaman57: I
always heard "My haircut looks so fab."
For your information, Rob Chapman lists those as: "I bind my knees." and
"My haircut looks so bad."
Detail from the Vegetable Man Lyrics sheet (taken from Yeeshkul).
Early Years
Several (bootlegged) versions of Vegetable Man exist. In 2011, the
Church published an article where some of these differences are
mentioned: Scream
Thy False Scream. Of course, in 2016, the fairly overpriced Early
Years box set saw the first official release of the track.
We continue with a quote from the Bonhams catalogue:
It is believed this is the first time a complete set of Syd Barrett's
handwritten lyrics have been offered at auction. This set was acquired
by Pink Floyd’s first manager at the time the song was written and has
been in his possession since.
Authenticity
Some idiots (not Sydiots!) with brains smaller than a rat claim the
Vegetable Man lyrics sheet is a fake. Over at Birdie Hop, LX - that old,
grey and wise grandfather of Sydolatry - posted the following
message.
I know from his family that this document is 100% genuine. I even
know who is selling it and why this person is selling it. I will not
disclose that under any circumstances.
Van Gogh - Wheat Field with Crows (1890). Mashup: Felix Atagong.Rino
Di Lernia.
Pricing
If you are interested in purchasing this piece of rock ‘n’ roll history
be sure to have a fat wallet. The auction prices have been estimated at
£30,000 – 40,000, €34,000 – 46,000, US$33,000 – 44,000. See you on the
16th of November 2022 at 13:00 GMT.
Bonhams Auction House Syd Barrett / Pink Floyd: A Rare Set Of
Handwritten Lyrics For Vegetable Man, circa. 1967,
Birdie Hop member Rino Di Lernia visited Bonhams and took some pictures.
(Thanks, Antonio Jesús Reyes for warning us.) The Church activated some
Paint Shop Pro magic on it and here is the result.
Vegetable Man Lyrics. Original picture by Rino Di Lernia. Paint Shop Pro
magic by Felix Atagong.
Auction Day
The auction took place on the 16th of November where the highest bid
stranded at £22,000 - €25,120 - US$25,980, or about 3 quarters of the
minimum bid. Thanks to Philippe Spadaccini from Pink
Floyd Collectors we have the following screenshot.
Bonhams Online Auction, vegetable Man stranded at £22,000.
Sold, or not?
There seems to be some confusion whether the lyrics have been sold of
not. The minimum bid, believed to be £30,000, was not reached. The
Bonhams site is pretty vague and mentions 'amended' on the
Vegetable Man page, whatever that may signify. But it needs to be said
that the lots that have been sold all carry a 'sold' tag on their
page and that is not the case for VM.
Bonhams auction results for lot 93.
Syd Hype
Whatever it is, the big Syd Barrett hype is perhaps over, something we
have been witnessing before. Portrait of a Girl reached £6,500: Missing
Person found. On the other hand Syd's Orange Dahlias in a Vase,
auctioned in 2021, was sold for a whopping £22,000, while it was only
estimated at £3,000! See: Orange
Dahlias in a Vase.
This article will be updated if more news shows up. Some (enhanced) pictures will be published on our Tumblr
page, with the “Vegetable
Man” tag.
Other Meaningful Articles
While you’re at it, why don’t you read the articles about the auctions
in 2022 and 2023 or the Rich Hall / Felix Atagong / Birdie Hop interview
with Peter Jenner, dating from 2014?
The Church wishes to thank: Axefeld, Blackstrat01, Birdie Hop, Bonhams,
Goldenband, Rich Hall, Alexander 'LX' Peter Hoffmann, Jaman57, Peter
Jenner, Lennyif, Rino Di Lernia, Lisa Newman, Göran Nyström,
PinkSydFloyd, Antonio Jesús Reyes, Philippe Spadaccini and all the
beautiful people we have forgotten. ♥ Libby ♥ Iggy ♥
Sources (other than above mentioned links):
Bonhams: Rock, Pop & Film (catalogue), Bonhams London, 2021,
p. 36-37. Chapman, Rob: The Lyrics of Syd Barrett, Omnibus
Press, London, 2021, p. 91.
On July 4, 2023, Omega
Auctions had a ‘Showcase Sale’ of Guitars, Music memorabilia, and
Rare Vinyl Records. So far, nothing spectacular, as these things are
auctioned every day. But lots 419 and 430 were something else for the
early Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett collectors.
This is merely a post for archival purposes, as the items generated
almost no interest whatsoever. Perhaps they weren’t mentioned on social
media to keep the number of potential bidders as low as possible.
The following descriptions and pictures have been taken from the auction
website.
LOT 419 - PINK FLOYD - SYD BARRETT'S HANDWRITTEN LYRICS FOR 'JUGBAND
BLUES'.
A page of lined paper (20 x 33cm) with three verses (19 lines) and chord
structures for Pink Floyd - Jugband Blues, in the hand of Syd Barrett.
Jugband was to Barrett's sole songwriting contribution on 'Saucerful of
Secrets'.
Provenance: from the collection of Peter Jenner, legendary manager of
Pink Floyd and other noted acts of the 1960s-1990s. Accompanied with
signed letter of authenticity from the daughter of Peter and archivist
of the Jenner collection since the 1990s.
As far as we know these handwritten lyrics weren’t auctioned before. For
more information about Jugband Blues you can read our article from 2014: Hurricane
over London.
Jugband Blues Syd Barrett Lyrics. Taken from Omega Auctions.
LOT 430 - PINK FLOYD - HANDWRITTEN LYRICS BY SYD BARRETT FOR APPLES
AND ORANGES.
Two lined sheets of paper (each approx 20 x 33cm) with handwritten
lyrics by Syd Barrett c 1967 for Pink Floyd - Apples and Oranges. With
verses, chorus and chord structures. 32 lines. Very good condition. Also
to include a one page typed set of lyrics for 'Apples and Oranges',
which according to accompanying provenance documents, was likely used
within the 'Blackhill' offices for publishing purposes.
Provenance: both the handwritten and typed lyrics are from the
collection of Peter Jenner, legendary manager of Pink Floyd and other
noted acts of the 1960s-1990s. Both are accompanied with signed letters
of authenticity from the daughter of Peter and archivist of the Jenner
collection since the 1990s.
Those who do consult this blog will perhaps remember that this item was
put up for sale before. It was part of the Bonhams Rock, Pop & Film
auction of May 2023, where it didn’t reach the bottom price of £20,000,
with an estimation to get close to £30,000.
You can find our previous article about it at: An
Apple a Day…
Pictures
Apples and Oranges Syd Barrett Lyrics. Taken from Omega Auctions. Apples
and Oranges Syd Barrett Lyrics. Taken from Omega Auctions. Apples
and Oranges Typed Lyrics. Taken from Omega Auctions.
PINK FLOYD - HANDWRITTEN LYRICS BY SYD BARRETT FOR VEGETABLE MAN
These weren’t the only times that handwritten lyrics of Syd Barrett from
the Peter Jenner archives were auctioned. The Bonhams Autumn Sale of
2022 had Syd’s copy of Vegetable Man. (See: Vegetable
Man For Sale)
While they tried keeping it a secret that it came from Peter Jenner,
this was obviously clear, especially when they quoted from the
‘innerview’ this blog had with Peter Jenner in 2014, without mentioning
its source. (See: An
innerview with Peter Jenner)
Vegetable Man had a bottom price of £30,000, which wasn’t reached as the
highest bid was £22,000. We assume that the item wasn’t sold then and
there, but as it didn’t show up at Omega Auctions, it might have found a
seller outside the auction.
So far, three handwritten lyrics (and one typescript) have been put up
for sale, coming from Peter Jernner’s archives. The question is why
these are absent from ‘The Lyrics of Syd Barrett’, compiled and
investigated by Rob Chapman, especially as the foreword of this book was
written by Jenner himself. (Read our review at: The
Syd Barrett Cookbook)
But the attentive reader of this blog knows that the Pink Floyd
marketing machine is of far greater importance than historical accuracy.
Other Meaningful Articles
While you’re at it, why don’t you read the articles about the auctions
in 2022 and 2023 or the Rich Hall / Felix Atagong / Birdie Hop interview
with Peter Jenner, dating from 2014?