Rock Bottom: Dark Moments In Music Babylon Read Online Free Page A

the time Syd’s masterpiece reached number six on the charts, he had more pressing things on his mind.
    When gigs had to be canceled, the management labeled Syd’s problem as “nervous exhaustion.” For weeks at a time the twenty-two-year-old seemed in complete control, and then he would snap—once keeping his girlfriend locked in a room for three days, shoving crackers under the door while she begged to be let out. When the badly shaken girl was discovered by friends and released, Syd promptly locked himself in the same room for an entire week. Besides the blasts of acid that Syd bestowed upon himself, sycophantic friends would dose his drinks just to watch him shatter into interesting fragments.
    There was pressure from the rest of the band to conform to some sort of commercial “pop star” ideal that the increasingly fragile Syd couldn’t even comprehend. Demands were made for a third Barrett single. It must have been difficult for the band to realize the full extent of how Syd was losing his grip. They didn’t spend much time with their elusive leader, and even playing music together became virtually impossible. At a gig in July with the Animals, it became excruciatingly clear that Syd was slowly switching off. He just stood onstage with his guitar dangling around his neck, staring at the audience, catatonic. When the Floyd started their first tour of the United States, they soon realized it would be Syd’s last. In between brief moments of dissonant brilliance and frenzied sexual encounters with eager, adoring girls, Syd unraveled. The look on his face was one of horrified paranoia. He had gotten a bad perm and his hair frizzed out from his head like a fright wig, the blazingly bright colors he wore giving his ashen features a dreadful glow. In San Francisco Syd bought a pink Cadillac, only to give it away to a total stranger a few days later. During a record-company tour of Hollywood, upon reaching the corner of
Sunset and Vine, Syd piped up, “It’s great to be in Las Vegas!” On Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand” Syd refused to lip-synch to “See Emily Play,” and on Pat Boone’s TV show he stared blankly as a flustered Pat asked an array of dumb questions. He just walked off the set of a third television show. Finally the disastrous tour was halted, with the East Coast never getting the opportunity to see Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd.
    Recording sessions for the second album proved to be madness, with Syd insisting that a Salvation Army band be brought in for “Jugband Blues.” The lyrics are telling: “I’m not here/And I’m wondering who could be writing this song.” In another tune, “Vegetable Man,” Syd describes what he is wearing, tossing in the chorus, “Vegetable man, where are you?” Good question. Onstage he would either not play at all, play an entirely different song than the rest of the band, or strum the same chord endlessly, sitting cross-legged and staring flatly at the audience. When the Floyd toured with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Jimi nicknamed Syd “Laughing Syd Barrett.” Maybe the guitar god witnessed something in the dark-ringed eyes that nobody else could see.
    Syd let his hair get matted and grungy, beat up his girlfriend (once smashing her repeatedly with a mandolin), and dropped endless tabs of LSD (once tripping for three solid months), becoming more and more withdrawn. The band never knew what would happen when he finally made it to the stage. “We staggered on thinking we couldn’t manage without Syd,” said Nick Mason, “so we put up with what can only be described as a fucking maniac. We didn’t choose to use those words, but I think he was.” At this point, an old friend of Syd’s, David Gilmour, was brought in to pick up Syd’s formidable slack onstage.
    The most notorious Syd Barrett tale seems like a verification of Mason’s assessment . Weary of waiting for Syd to pull himself out of his backstage mirror-trance, the band went onstage