Syd Barrett Interview in Melody Maker -- March 27, 1971

[Date: Fri, 5 Feb 1993 16:49 EST]
[From: BOKEEFE@antioc.antioch.edu]


 
"The madcap laughs"
 
Michael Watts talks to ex-Pink Floyd man SYD BARRETT
 
Stories about Syd Barrett are legion.
     That he became overbearingly egotistical, impossible to work 
with.  That he was thrown out of The Pink Floyd.  That he suffered 
a psychological crack-up.  That he once went for an afternoon 
drive and ended up in Ibiza.  That he went back to live with his 
mother in Cambridge as a part of a mental healing process.  That 
occasionally he goes to the house of Richard Wright, The Floyd's 
organist, and sits there silently for hours without speaking.
     Some of the stories are true.
     Roger Waters:  "When he was still in the band in the later 
stages, we got to the point where anyone of us was likely to tear 
his throat out at any minute because he was so impossible...
     "When 'Emily' was a hit and we were third for three weeks, we 
did Top Of The Pops, and the third week we did it he didn't want to 
know.  He got down there in an incredible state and said he wasn't 
gonna do it.  We finally discovered the reason was that John 
Lennon didn't have to do Top Of The Pops so he didn't."
     In the past two years he has made a couple of albums.  One of 
them was called "Barrett."  The other was called "The Madcap 
Laughs."
     The cover of "Madcap" has a picture of him crouching watchfully  
on the bare floorboards of a naked room.  A nude girl stretches her 
body on the background.
     The picture encapsulates the mood of his songs, which are 
pared-down and unembellished, unfashionably stripped of refined 
production values, so that one is left to concentrate on the words 
and the stream of consciousness effect.  His work engenders a 
sense of gentle, brooding intimacy; a hesitant, but intense, 
awareness.
     Syd Barrett came up to London last week and talked in the 
office of his music publisher--his first press interview for about a 
year.  His hair is cut very short now, almost like a skinhead.  
Symbolic?  Of what, then?  He is very aware of what is going on 
around him, but his conversation is often obscure; it doesn't 
always progress in linear fashion.  He is painfully conscious of his 
indeterminate role in the music world--"I've never really proved 
myself wrong.  I really need to prove myself right," he says.
     Maybe he has it all figured.  As he says in "Octopus," "the 
madcap laughed at the man on the water [sic]."
 
M.W.:  What have you been doing since you left The Floyd, apart 
from making your two albums?
 
S.B.:  Well, I'm a painter, I was trained as a painter...I seem to have 
spent a little less time painting than I might've done...you know, it 
might have been a tremendous release getting absorbed in 
painting.  Any way, I've been sitting about and writing.  The fine 
arts thing at college was always too much for me to think about.  
What I was more involved in was being successful at arts school.  
But it didn't transcend the feeling of playing at UFO and those sort 
of places with the lights and that, the fact that the group was 
getting bigger and bigger.
     I've been at home in Cambridge with my mother.  I've got lots of, 
well, children in a sense.  My uncle...I've been getting used to a 
family existence, generally.  Pretty unexciting.  I work in a cellar, 
down in a cellar.
 
M.W.:  What would you sooner be--a painter or a musician?
 
S.B.:  Well, I think of me being a painter eventually.
 
M.W.:  Do you see the last two years as a process of getting 
yourself together again?
 
S.B.:  No.  Perhaps it has something to do with what I felt could be 
better as regards music, as far as my job goes generally, because I 
did find I needed a job.  I wanted to do a job.  I never admitted it 
because I'm a person who doesn't admit it.
 
M.W.:  There were stories you were going to go back to college, or 
get a job in a factory.
 
S.B.:  Well, of course, living in Cambridge I have to find something 
to do.  I suppose I could've done a job.  I haven't been doing any 
work.  I'm not really used to doing quick jobs and then stopping, 
but I'm sure it would be possible.
 
M.W.:  Tell me about The Floyd--how did they start?
 
S.B.:  Roger Waters is older than I am.  He was at the architecture 
school in London.  I was studying at Cambridge--I think it was 
before I had set up at Camberwell (art college).  I was really 
moving backwards and forwards to London.  I was living in 
Highgate with him, we shared a place there, and got a van and 
spent a lot of our grant on pubs and that sort of thing.  We were 
playing Stones numbers.  I suppose we were interested in playing 
guitars--I picked up playing guitar quite quickly...I didn't play much 
in Cambridge because I was from the art school, you know.  But I 
was soon playing on the professional scene and began to write 
from there.
 
M.W.:  Your writing has always been concerned purely with songs 
rather than long instrumental pieces like the rest of The Floyd, 
hasnUt it?
 
S.B.:  Their choice of material was always very much to do with 
what they were thinking as architecture students.  Rather 
unexciting people, I would've thought, primarily.  I mean, anybody 
walking into an art school like that would've been tricked--maybe 
they were working their entry into an art school.
     But the choice of material was restricted, I suppose, by the fact 
that both Roger and I wrote different things.  We wrote our own 
songs, played our own music.  They were older, by about two 
years, I think.  I was 18 or 19.  I don't know that there was really 
much conflict, except that perhaps the way we started to play 
wasn't as impressive as it was to us, even, wasn't as full of impact 
as it might've been.  I mean, it was done very well, rather than 
considerably exciting.  One thinks of it all as a dream.
 
M.W.:  Did you like what they were doing--the fact that the music 
was gradually moving away from songs like "See Emily Play"?
 
S.B.:  Singles are always simple...all the equipment was battered 
and worn--all the stuff we started out with was our own, the guitars 
were our own property.  The electronic noises were probably 
necessary.  They were very exciting.  That's all really.  The whole 
thing at the time was playing on stage.
 
M.W.:  Was it only you who wanted to make singles?
 
S.B.:  It was probably me alone, I think.  Obviously, being a pop 
group one wanted to have singles.  I think "Emily" was fourth in the 
hits.
 
M.W.:  Why did you leave them?
 
S.B.:  It wasn't really a war.  I suppose it was really just a matter of 
being a little offhand about things.  We didn't feel there was one 
thing which was gonna make the decision at the minute.  I mean, 
we did split up, and there was a lot of trouble.  I don't think The 
Pink Floyd had any trouble, but I had an awful scene, probably 
self-inflicted, having a mini and going all over England and things.  
Still...
 
M.W.:  Do you think the glamour went to your head at all?
 
S.B.:  I dunno.  Perhaps you could see it as something went to 
one's head, but I don't know that it was relevant.
 
M.W.:  There were stories you had left because you had been 
freaked out by acid trips.
 
S.B.:  Well, I dunno, it don't seem to have much to do with the job.  
I only know the thing of playing, of being a musician, was very 
exciting.  Obviously, one was better off with a silver guitar with 
mirrors and things all over it than people who ended up on the 
floor or anywhere else in London.  The general concept, I didn't 
feel so conscious of it as perhaps I should.  I mean, one's position 
as a member of London's young people's--I dunno what you'd call 
it--underground wasn't it--wasn't necessarily realised and felt, I 
don't think, especially from the point of view of groups.
 
     I remember at UFO--one week one group, then another week 
another group, going in and out, making that set-up, and I didn't 
think it was as active as it could've been.  I was really surprised 
that UFO finished.  I only read last week that itUs not finished.  Joe 
Boyd did all the work on it and I was really amazed when he left.  
What we were doing was a microcosm of the whole sort of 
philosophy and it tended to be a little bit cheap.  The fact that the 
show had to be put together; the fact that we weren't living in 
luxurious places with luxurious things around us.  I think I would 
always advocate that sort of thing--the luxurious life.  It's probably 
because I donUt do much work.
 
M.W.:  Were you not at all involved in acid, then, during its heyday 
among rock bands?
 
S.B.:  No.  It was all, I suppose, related to living in London.  I was 
lucky enough...I've always thought of going back to a place where 
you can drink tea and sit on the carpet.  I've been fortunate 
enough to do that.  All that time...you've just reminded me of it.  I 
thought it was good fun.  I thought The Soft Machine were good 
fun.  They were playing on "Madcap," except for Kevin Ayers.
 
M.W.:  Are you trying to create a mood in your songs, rather than 
tell a story?
 
S.B.:  Yes, very much.  It would be terrific to do much more mood 
stuff.  They're very pure, you know, the words...I feel I'm jabbering.  
I really think the whole thing is based on me being a guitarist and 
having done the last thing about two or three years ago in a group 
around England and Europe and The States, and then coming 
back and hardly having done anything, so I don't really know what 
to say.  I feel, perhaps, I could be claimed as being redundant 
almost.  I don't feel active, and that my public conscience is fully 
satisfied.
 
M.W.:  Don't you think that people still remember you?
 
S.B.:  Yes, I should think so.
 
M.W.:  Then why don't you get some musicians, go on the road 
and do some gigs?
 
S.B.:  I feel though the record would still be the thing to do.  And 
touring and playing might make that impossible to do.
 
M.W.:  Don't you fancy playing live again after two years?
 
S.B.:  Yes, very much.
 
M.W.:  What's the hang-up then?  Is it getting the right musicians 
around you?
 
S.B.:  Yeah.
 
M.W.:  What would be of primary importance--whether they were 
brilliant musicians or whether you could get on with them?
 
S.B.:  I'm afraid I think I'd have to get on with them.  They'd have to 
be good musicians.  I think they'd be difficult to find.  They'd have 
to be lively.
 
M.W.:  Would you say, therefore, you were a difficult person to get 
on with?
 
S.B.:  No.  Probably my own impatience is the only thing, because 
it has to be very easy.  You can play guitar in your canteen, you 
know, your hair might be longer, but there's a lot more to playing 
than travelling around universities and things.
 
M.W.:  Why don't you go out on your own playing acoustic?  I think 
you might be very successful.
 
S.B.:  Yeah...thatUs nice.  Well, I've only got an electric.  I've got a 
black Fender which needs replacing.  I haven't got any blue 
jeans...I really prefer electric music.
 
M.W.:  What records do you listen to?
 
S.B.:  Well, I haven't bought a lot.  I've got things like Ma Rainey 
recently.  Terrific, really fantastic.
 
M.W.:  Are you going into the blues, then, in your writing?
 
S.B.:  I suppose so.  Different groups do different things...one feels 
that Slade would be an interesting thing to hear, you know.
 
M.W.:  Will there be a third solo album?
 
S.B.:  Yeah.  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.

