I
had forgotten about this posting I made in 2002 to the 604 mailing list
in response to one Clayton Hill's comments on an article in the
Guardian about Syd Barrett, but record producer Shahar just sent it to
me, having archived that list...
Clayton Hill wrote:
Pretty gross, this glorification of an inconsequential blip in the history of Psychedelia. I don't think that Syd had all that much to do with the "Floyd" that most have come to know and love (Meddle onwards). I also don't think that he warrants this hero worship or pity, as he seems to have chosen this for himself, and would prefer NOT to be written thusly into history books and culture. As "brilliant" as Syd and his times may have been, articles like this only deepen the twisted legends and mythologies that are unproductive and unrepresentative of a culture, at best.
______________________
Chris Case wrote:
It could be argued that legends and mythologies are in fact among the most representative aspects of a culture. As for "unproductive", that is hardly a relevant criterion, despite the modern obsession with Productivity. Nevertheless, it is certain that Syd was the inspiration -- the soul, if you will -- of the Pink Floyd, which in turn influenced and inspired many of the artists who now do likewise for many in the current wave. Mythologically speaking, Syd has been inducted into the pantheon as an instance of the archetype "Poete Maudit", updating in a way the Rimbaud archetype.
That said, the article does perpetuate the perspective typical of journalists and fans, namely that the most famous person in a group is the centre of it, implying that the people sharing space with him at 101 Cromwell Road and later at Egerton Court were "camp-followers" or "hangers-on." Nothing could be farther from the truth. Just about everybody there had his own thing, most were there before he came, and some of them his childhood friends. The creative atmosphere owed less to him than to such residents as poet John Esam (who co-organised the Albert Hall Poetry Festival), filmmaker Nigel Lesmoir-Gordon (now producing great films about fractals, Mandelbrot, mathematics, etc.), photographer Dave Larcher, graphic artists Storm Thorgerson and and the others who formed Hipgnosis, visual artist Dave Gale (Lumiere & Son), poet-author of The Book of Grass George Andrews, budding alchemist Stanislas Klossowski de Rola, etc., etc. Other visitors to 101 included Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Kenneth Anger, Alex Trocchi, and various Stones and Beatles. I could make a list twice as long, but the point is that Syd was there because it was one focal point of the matrix from which sprang 60s London psychedelia.
Of course, in addition to the psychonauts there were people who came merely because it was a Scene, people stuck at the level of personalities. Interestingly enough, many of these are the ones most eager to be interviewed about the carryings-on there, and their accounts often miss the essence as much as they themselves missed the point at the time through their exclusive focus on personalities.
Syd was our holy fool for a time, though by no means the best poet among us, and, as things started to go bad, the recipient of vast amounts of protective concern. Unfortunately, none of us could without hypocrisy advise him to stop taking acid completely, but the efforts made to chill him out (I found Bach's Well-Tempered Klavier and St. Matthew Passion particularly effective) and rescue him repeatedly from his own flakiness were such that it is way off the mark to call this circle "fairweather friends". If anyone abandoned him, I'd say it was Roger, and his feelings of guilt permeate the Floyd's subsequent work ad nauseam. Had the friends who tried to introduce him to the therapeutic and harmonising effects of Shabad Yoga (yoga of cosmic sound) been more successful, he might have emerged from this episode as purged as many others of us did, but they certainly got no help from Roger, whose oafish dismissal of mysticism in favour of a middleclass version of surly "working-class hero" resentment gradually moved the Floyd's weltanshauung from Syd's sensitivity to English game-reality and from his whimsical symbology into schizoid antisocial ranting, culminating in "The Wall", or perhaps in an account at Coutts. Great stuff occurred along the way, I admit, but on the whole the Floyd betrayed the original vision and went down a profitable cul-de-sac, much as the "More is More" crowd of performers are doing today in the trance world.
_________________________________________
Clayton Hill wrote:
It's too bad that our culture, so bent on the misery and misfortune of others, can't respect his wishes and leave this man alone.
_______________________
Chris Case wrote:
This man manages to be as alone as he wishes to be. The occasional journalist or fan overloading his doorbell's bandwidth is hardly a form of persecution, compared to what most people have to put up with. I see no reason why he should expect total immunity to the karmic consequences of his own earlier behaviour. Pity of a sort might be natural, but there are countless more acid casualties who don't have ongoing royalties sustaining their alienated lives.
And if the truth be known, many of the most "successful" of that period failed every bit as much to evolve as spiritual and human beings, knighthoods to the contrary notwithstanding. Perhaps inside every Sir Mick there is a Syd Barrett struggling to deny himself. What the lucky few (George Harrison?) find through success is a deeper humility; if this is what Syd has found, he will only deserve our pity if he doesn't eventually also find compassion..
Clayton Hill wrote:
Pretty gross, this glorification of an inconsequential blip in the history of Psychedelia. I don't think that Syd had all that much to do with the "Floyd" that most have come to know and love (Meddle onwards). I also don't think that he warrants this hero worship or pity, as he seems to have chosen this for himself, and would prefer NOT to be written thusly into history books and culture. As "brilliant" as Syd and his times may have been, articles like this only deepen the twisted legends and mythologies that are unproductive and unrepresentative of a culture, at best.
______________________
Chris Case wrote:
It could be argued that legends and mythologies are in fact among the most representative aspects of a culture. As for "unproductive", that is hardly a relevant criterion, despite the modern obsession with Productivity. Nevertheless, it is certain that Syd was the inspiration -- the soul, if you will -- of the Pink Floyd, which in turn influenced and inspired many of the artists who now do likewise for many in the current wave. Mythologically speaking, Syd has been inducted into the pantheon as an instance of the archetype "Poete Maudit", updating in a way the Rimbaud archetype.
That said, the article does perpetuate the perspective typical of journalists and fans, namely that the most famous person in a group is the centre of it, implying that the people sharing space with him at 101 Cromwell Road and later at Egerton Court were "camp-followers" or "hangers-on." Nothing could be farther from the truth. Just about everybody there had his own thing, most were there before he came, and some of them his childhood friends. The creative atmosphere owed less to him than to such residents as poet John Esam (who co-organised the Albert Hall Poetry Festival), filmmaker Nigel Lesmoir-Gordon (now producing great films about fractals, Mandelbrot, mathematics, etc.), photographer Dave Larcher, graphic artists Storm Thorgerson and and the others who formed Hipgnosis, visual artist Dave Gale (Lumiere & Son), poet-author of The Book of Grass George Andrews, budding alchemist Stanislas Klossowski de Rola, etc., etc. Other visitors to 101 included Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Kenneth Anger, Alex Trocchi, and various Stones and Beatles. I could make a list twice as long, but the point is that Syd was there because it was one focal point of the matrix from which sprang 60s London psychedelia.
Of course, in addition to the psychonauts there were people who came merely because it was a Scene, people stuck at the level of personalities. Interestingly enough, many of these are the ones most eager to be interviewed about the carryings-on there, and their accounts often miss the essence as much as they themselves missed the point at the time through their exclusive focus on personalities.
Syd was our holy fool for a time, though by no means the best poet among us, and, as things started to go bad, the recipient of vast amounts of protective concern. Unfortunately, none of us could without hypocrisy advise him to stop taking acid completely, but the efforts made to chill him out (I found Bach's Well-Tempered Klavier and St. Matthew Passion particularly effective) and rescue him repeatedly from his own flakiness were such that it is way off the mark to call this circle "fairweather friends". If anyone abandoned him, I'd say it was Roger, and his feelings of guilt permeate the Floyd's subsequent work ad nauseam. Had the friends who tried to introduce him to the therapeutic and harmonising effects of Shabad Yoga (yoga of cosmic sound) been more successful, he might have emerged from this episode as purged as many others of us did, but they certainly got no help from Roger, whose oafish dismissal of mysticism in favour of a middleclass version of surly "working-class hero" resentment gradually moved the Floyd's weltanshauung from Syd's sensitivity to English game-reality and from his whimsical symbology into schizoid antisocial ranting, culminating in "The Wall", or perhaps in an account at Coutts. Great stuff occurred along the way, I admit, but on the whole the Floyd betrayed the original vision and went down a profitable cul-de-sac, much as the "More is More" crowd of performers are doing today in the trance world.
_________________________________________
Clayton Hill wrote:
It's too bad that our culture, so bent on the misery and misfortune of others, can't respect his wishes and leave this man alone.
_______________________
Chris Case wrote:
This man manages to be as alone as he wishes to be. The occasional journalist or fan overloading his doorbell's bandwidth is hardly a form of persecution, compared to what most people have to put up with. I see no reason why he should expect total immunity to the karmic consequences of his own earlier behaviour. Pity of a sort might be natural, but there are countless more acid casualties who don't have ongoing royalties sustaining their alienated lives.
And if the truth be known, many of the most "successful" of that period failed every bit as much to evolve as spiritual and human beings, knighthoods to the contrary notwithstanding. Perhaps inside every Sir Mick there is a Syd Barrett struggling to deny himself. What the lucky few (George Harrison?) find through success is a deeper humility; if this is what Syd has found, he will only deserve our pity if he doesn't eventually also find compassion..
