There are so many ways, in fact, that it’s nearly impossible to avoid writing hagiography when trying to give even a quick overview of what happened. The barest bones of what will someday be pure myth are still available to us: Syd Barrett was the principal songwriter and lead singer of a band originally called The Pink Floyd, later shortened to just Pink Floyd (and later still, by much-beloved parking-lot dwelling Marlboro-red-pack smoking feathered-roach-clip-hanging-from-the-rearview bearing longhairs nationwide, to “the Floyd”) . He almost single-handedly wrote the band’s first album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, a collection of short songs envisioning psychedelia as new hermetic nursery rhyme reined in by barely containable technicolor pop-rock structures. Shortly after the album’s release his behavior became erratic and unpredictable. David Gilmour, who had been one of Barrett’s friends in his hometown of Cambridge, was brought into the lineup to play second guitar, eventually replacing Barrett outright, whose descent into madness continued over the course of two solo albums, after which he stopped making music altogether. |