'Scouse' Pete has a lot to answer for.
He was the reason I took up blues harmonica and the reason I got into Syd's songs.
Back in our digs in Aber he left his 'gob iron' around, so I picked it up and blew and blew till I found I could bend the notes round corners and into the west wind.
His musical taste was as catholic as mine was limited then : from James Brown to Captain Beefheart, Albinoni to T.Rex.
Unlike myself he was a bopper, a dead ringer for Jagger, a girl-puller with his moves.....hence the Brown.
I took to Beefheart and also Syd Barrett. I loved the latter's child-like Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear musings, yet always that edge of darkness, of insanity.
I soon related to his album 'Madcap' when I found that members of my favourite band Soft Machine were backing him and , as a fan of James Joyce, was amazed at the plaintive setting of 'Golden Hair', from 'Chamber Music'.
I've recently read Tim Willis' biography of Syd simply called 'Madcap' and , though fascinated by his sad story from fame to chosen anonymity, I'm not much closer to understanding why he abandoned music totally and , for thirty years, lived in a very modest Cambridge street, refusing to acknowledge his past.
Drugs like LSD and Mandrax had a serious affect on him and no doubt contributed to his mental breakdown, which led to Pink Floyd jettisoning him in favour of his good friend Dave Gilmour.
He may well have completely rejected the whole notion of pop stardom as well and this led to an increasing disillusionment and depression.
He soon came to resent playing singles like 'Arnold Layne' and 'See Emily Play' on stage, exactly as they were on record.
Syd was ever the experimenter; a restless character who embraced light-shows before their time and wanted to use dissonance to create an array of colours in sound.
A great influence on David Bowie, he also created a stage persona which was visually exotic and often androgynous.
It's also too easy to romantise Syd's life. His mental torments did leave him permanently 'damaged' , as Willis shows, but also caused him to abuse others, especially the women in his life. There is much evidence of this and one time he appears to have smashed a guitar over the head of one girlfriend, Lindsay Corner.
I think he may have come to realise just how dangerous he could be to others and that explains why he spent most of his life living alone in the cul-de-sac St. Margaret's Square ( odd name for a Close!).
It's strange to think how our paths overlapped.
I was living in Cambridge at the same time as Syd (myself a child, he a teenager) and rode my bike past his family home on Hills Road.
The river-side open-air pool where he swam with his first proper girl-friend Libby Gausden, was a place where we often spend our summers.
Years later, teaching at Pen-y-dre High in Merthyr, a colleague in the English Dept. had actually taught both Syd ( or Roger, as he was then) Barrett and Roger Waters. Syd, he told me, was a lovely lad while Waters was very arrogant and surly.
Just as I had biked everywhere in that 'City of Cycles' Cambridge, so bikes feature greatly in Syd's life.
In his childhood, as in mine, it was his only way of discovering the city. When he lived alone and carried on painting, he would cycle to the shops every day for his groceries.
Written and sung by him, one of Pink Floyd's earliest songs is called 'Bike', on the first album 'Piper at the Gates of Dawn' -
' I've gotta bike.
You can ride it if you like.'
It takes off into cloaks , gingerbread men and clockwork toys.....and all to woo a girl like Libby.
Ultimately, Syd Barrett left behind many unique and imaginative songs and Roger Barrett left behind Syd.
BARRETTS ON BIKES
1.
Syd's bike hurtling
down the long avenue
slaloming between tall trees,
smartie-top spokes
making light shows
and foil flag in the breeze.
In love with Libby,
towards the pool
hair a curly mane
bannering back,
he draws curves
of her with wet tyres.
Over the hallowed grass
and the sighing bridge,
all the colours of music
in his starship brain,
down the river paths
waking the book-bound buildings
and launching the ducks.
2.
Roger back from the shops
head down into cul-de-sac,
anonymous coat and gloves
and a shaven skull.
A study in the ordinary,
two baskets of groceries,
his wheeled mule
neither rears nor brays.
'Syd! Syd!' the photographer yells
to try and get his attention.
It's another person's name.
The one they took away.
Back to the warm front room
and a deck of paints and pens,
the blank white paper sitting,
a partner dozing at the desk.
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