Floyd’s crazy diamond cracked under strain

N 1975, while Pink Floyd were making their album Wish You Were Here at the Abbey Road Studios in London, they noticed a strange looking man lurking around. No one knew how he sneaked into the studio, uninvited – clearly security around rock groups was not as tight in those days – but somehow he made it into the mixing booth to hear them working on their latest album.

It took them a while to work out who the bald, overweight man was – probably because it had been a while since any of them had seen him. Also because he had shaved off his eyebrows and kept getting up from his seat and brushing his teeth. One of the band members finally recognised it was Syd Barrett, a founding member of the band and once their creative genius.

In 1968 Barrett had been told by his bandmate Roger Waters that it was best he leave the group, after a marked decline in his mental health, possibly brought on by excessive drugs. Barrett had long since given up music and had cut off any communication with the band.

Oddly he chose that day to visit them in the studio, while they were working on mixing Shine On You Crazy Diamond, which was inspired by Barrett and his mental collapse. His only comment was that it sounded “a bit old”. It was to be the last time any of the band members ever saw Barrett. He disappeared from their lives.

Barrett was born Roger Keith Barrett, on January 6, 1946, in Cambridge, the son of a pathologist, Arthur. As a child Barrett dabbled in music, playing piano, then ukulele before moving onto banjo and then a guitar. But he was also passionate about painting, drawing and writing poetry.

When he picked up an electric guitar he began jamming with other musicians. One story suggests he was nicknamed Syd after well-known jazz

musical prowess and

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he turned up one day wearing a flat cap.

He formed a cover band in high school and when that broke up in 1962 he went solo while studying art at a college in Cambridge. But with his passion for poetry it wasn’t long before he started writing his own songs and performing them.

At college he met fellow student David Gilmour and they sometimes performed together around Cambridge. But Barrett later moved to London to study art and in 1964 he met Waters, a former Cambridge school friend, who invited him to join a band named the Tea Set, which he had formed with Nick Mason, Richard Wright and a guitarist named Bob Klose.

At the time they mostly played covers of American rhythm and blues

Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, Nick Mason, Syd Barrett and Richard Wright in 1967; (inset) Barrett in later years.