Syd Barrett - Barrett
On November 14, 1970, "Barrett", the second and final studio album by British musician Syd Barrett, was released.
The story of Roger Keith Barrett, known to the music world as Syd Barrett, is one of the most fascinating, poetic and tragic milestones in the history of world rock. The man who founded the band "Pink Floyd" in 1965, gave it its name, shaped its early psychedelic vision and led it to the revolutionary debut album "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" in 1967, found himself outside the band he conceived in April 1968. The destructive combination of the pressures of rapid fame, heavy use of hallucinogenic drugs and the onset of a profound mental deterioration made Barrett's behavior on stage and in the studio unpredictable, to the point that his bandmates were forced to continue without him with his old friend from Cambridge, guitarist David Gilmour.
But even after the painful separation, the deep emotional connection and sense of commitment of the members of "Pink Floyd" towards their founding leader did not fade. In early January 1970, his first solo album, "The Madcap Laughs", was released, the agonizing recording process of which lasted nearly two years and was only completed thanks to the mobilization of Gilmour and Roger Waters in the final moments. The debut album received critical acclaim and reached number forty on the British album charts, a success that convinced the record company Harvest Records to approve the recording of a second solo album in the hope of leveraging the momentum before Barrett's condition permanently distanced him from the world of music.
On February 26, 1970, just weeks after the release of his first album, Barrett entered Abbey Road Studios in London to begin work on "Barrett". This time, the production work was entrusted from the very beginning to the dedicated and loving hands of Gilmour and Pink Floyd keyboardist, the gifted musician Richard Wright, with sound engineer Peter Bown at their side. The two understood that in order to capture the sparks of their friend's genius without losing him in the chaos of the studio, they had to build a much more stable, organized and supportive musical envelope for him than had characterized his previous album. Gilmour played bass, twelve-string guitar, slide guitar and additional organ, while Wright contributed Hammond organ, piano, harmonium and electric piano. They were joined by "Humble Pie" drummer Jerry Shirley, whose playing brought a warm, precise groove, and Willie Wilson on drums and percussion.
The fifteen days of recording, which took place from February to July 1970, while Gilmour and Wright were working on Pink Floyd's "Atom Heart Mother" album, were conducted under extraordinary conditions that required infinite patience. Barrett's mental state was becoming increasingly withdrawn, and he had difficulty repeating the same song structure twice. He would skip bars, change chords in the middle of a take, or stop abruptly. To meet the challenge, the producers adopted a different working method. In many cases, Barrett first recorded his singing and guitar playing alone in a raw, live take, and only then did Gilmour, Wright, and Shirley build the band's arrangements around the existing skeleton. On other songs, the band played the basic playback in advance, with Gilmour directing the members with head movements, but even then, Barrett preferred to record his voice and guitar in one continuous take, feeling that attempting to recreate the moment would damage the song's inner truth.
In the midst of recording the album, on June 6, 1970, one of the most iconic and chilling moments of Barrett's career occurred. That evening, Barrett took to the stage to give his only ever live solo performance at the Music and Fashion Festival at the Olympia Hall in Kensington, accompanied on stage by Gilmour on bass and Shirley on drums. For the first three songs, which included "Terrapin", "Gigolo Aunt" and "Effervescing Elephant", Barrett's singing was almost inaudible in the mix. Midway through the fourth song, "Octopus", when his voice finally came through the speakers, Barrett suddenly and unexpectedly put down his Fender Telecaster guitar, politely thanked the audience and walked off stage to the stunned eyes of his bandmates.
The album opens with one of the most beautiful and mournful psychedelic folk gems Barrett has ever written, "Baby Lemonade". The song's mesmerizing opening was born entirely by chance, as Barrett sat in the studio warming up his fingers with free improvisation on the acoustic guitar, and the nimble Gilmour recorded the piece and attached it to the beginning of the song. Over a rich twelve-string guitar accompaniment and Wright's enveloping Hammond organ, Barrett paints surreal pictures of a sad city, gray rain and clowns outside in his fragile British voice, before a slow, curling electric guitar solo cuts through the air and captures the sense of loneliness of a man looking at the world through a thick glass window.
It's followed by "Love Song", a light, bouncy, and charming song about a romantic love memory, driven by a rhythmic, smiling piano and harpsichord that give it the vibe of an old British vaudeville act, though beneath the surface there's a longing for a love that's already gone. The tone shifts sharply on the mesmerizing third track, "Dominoes", which was written in response to the end of Barrett's relationship with his then-partner Lindsay Korner. The song drifts along in a slow, dreamlike rhythm driven by Wright's soaring organ and Gilmour's measured drumming, with its highlight being a wondrous electric guitar solo recorded at double speed and played backwards, creating a mournful, crystalline, and otherworldly sound that blends with the aching lines in which Barrett sings of his tears and dreams as the day passes like falling dominoes.
The fourth track, "It Is Obvious", continues the bare confessional line and describes with chilling sensitivity a couple's bond that crumbles in cold rooms and a fog of disconnection, as Wright and Gilmour weave around Barrett's singing a delicate tapestry of keyboards and guitars that sounds like a comforting embrace. On the other hand, "Rats" bursts with raw, punk energy that begins as a feverish acoustic demo by Barrett alone before the entire band crashes in with a loud, unbridled electric power, and Barrett fires words at a dizzying pace in a wild stream of consciousness. The first side closes with "Maisie", a slow, heavy, dark blues influenced by the American blues players Barrett admired in his youth, in which he sings in a low, tormented voice over a dirty, echoing guitar riff.
The second side of the record opens with a smiling storm with "Gigolo Aunt", the longest, most sweeping and accessible song on the album, recorded in fifteen takes until it reached the desired result. It is a contagious and lively psychedelic rock anthem that rests on a rolling organ and guitar riff, Shirley's energetic drumming and a sunny chorus that is easy to imagine becoming a huge hit if it had been recorded with "Pink Floyd" in 1967. It is followed by two songs that were joined as a medley on the original record release and separated on later releases, "Waving My Arms in the Air" the rhythmic and theatrical that moves directly into "I Never Lied to You", a short, vulnerable and sincere ballad in which Barrett's voice breaks over the accompaniment of piano and Gilmour's caressing slide guitar.
The intimate and warm atmosphere returns in all its beauty in "Wined and Dined", a melancholic and gentle song recorded in ten takes and conjuring memories of summer nights and quiet evenings in Cambridge, with Gilmour adding layers of soft electric and acoustic guitars that envelop the melody with a rare human warmth. Immediately following comes "Wolfpack", a dense and mysterious psychedelic rock piece with a choppy rhythm and enigmatic lyrics that once again demonstrates the unique way in which Barrett dismantled the structure of the traditional rock song and reassembled it according to the laws of his imagination.
The entire album concluded with a humorous and eccentric nod in the form of "Effervescing Elephant", an entertaining song of less than two minutes that sounds like a surreal children's fairy tale in the style of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll about a tiny elephant and a giraffe in the jungle, accompanied by playful tuba playing by guest musician Vic Saywell. Even the album's white, minimalist cover bore Barrett's personal stamp, having designed it himself based on an illustration of flying insects and strange creatures he had drawn in his notebook during his Cambridge studies years earlier, while the back of the cover incorporated a gloomy studio photograph of himself taken by the legendary photographer Mick Rock.
Released in November 1970, with no promotional singles or supporting tour, "Barrett" was met with relative commercial silence and failed to enter the UK album charts. In 1972, Barrett briefly played with "Stars" in Cambridge. Another attempt to record in 1974 did not lead to an album. He later left the music industry and lived in Cambridge, where he returned to painting until his death in July 2006. However, the passage of decades and the expanded editions released over the years, most notably the masterful "Crazy Diamond" box set from 1993, which collected early alternate takes, have turned "Barrett" into a revered cult work. The unique combination of a bare, unmasked soul and the supreme musicianship of his friends from "Pink Floyd" created a human and artistic document of rare beauty, one that influenced generations of indie, folk, and alternative artists and left the eternal mark of the crazy diamond.
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