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

without him. Fifteen minutes later he appeared with a mixture of his favorite downer-drug, Mandrax, and a full jar of greasy Brylcreem rubbed into his frizzed-out hair. The hot lights soon turned Syd’s head into an oily, dripping, monstrous display of insanity On a night soon after this fearsome demonstration, the band just didn’t pick Syd up for a gig.
    Jonathon Green interviewed Syd for Rolling Stone, hoping to share in the Piper’s spiritual revelations, but the article was scrapped after the subject spent most of the time staring at the top corner of the room. “Now look up there,” an awestruck Syd told Green. “Can you see the people on the ceiling?”
    After a harrowing band meeting, it was put to Syd that perhaps he could become to Pink Floyd what Brian Wilson was to the Beach Boys—he could write and record but not perform live. Did Syd realize he was being excised from his own band? The split wasn’t announced until April 6, but after more disastrous sessions, a haunted Syd stood around in EMI’s Abbey Road lobby
with his guitar for two days, waiting to fulfill his Brian Wilson role. He never got the chance.
    A month later the doomed yet still eerily exotic Syd Barrett went back into the studio to attempt a solo record. It was an uneven, chaotic, and ultimately abortive experience that left Syd teetering more precariously than ever. He spent some time in a hospital, moved from place to place, spent days and weeks in bed, and turned up at Floyd gigs, staring a deep, dark hole into the eyes of David Gilmour, his replacement.
    March of ‘69 found Syd back in the studio due to the determination of Malcolm Jones, the youthful boss of EMI’s progressive Harvest label. Jones was ecstatic with the first session, in which Syd completed six guitar and vocal tracks. The drummer on The Madcap Laughs sessions was Jerry Shirley. “Syd had a terrible habit of looking at you and laughing in a way that made you feel really stupid,” he recalled. “He gave the impression he knew something you didn’t.” The sessions proved to be maddening and tedious for the musicians. Soft Machine were brought in for overdubs and soon realized the tracks they thought were rehearsal tapes were actually the final takes. Said Robert Wyatt, “We’d say, ‘What key is that in, Syd?’ and he would simply reply, ‘Yeah!’ or ‘That’s funny!’” David Gilmour, who always took a concerned interest in Syd’s life, came in to finish the record. (Guilt, perhaps?) But by the time the final session took place, Syd’s deterioration was blatant and shocking. Accompanied by the sound of his lyric pages being turned, Syd stops and starts, singing in an agonized, strangled voice. It hurts to listen to it. Melody Maker described The Madcap Laughs as “the mayhem and madness representing the Barrett mind unleashed.”
    Record sales were respectable, which prompted Gilmour to produce Syd’s second album, Barrett, released in November 1970. Though Syd’s looming madness was laced with touches of former magic, especially on “Baby Lemonade” and “Gigolo Aunt,” the sessions were torture. Syd’s directions came out of faraway left field: “Perhaps we could make the middle darker and maybe the end a bit middle afternoonish,” he’d tell the confused musicians. “At the moment it’s too windy and icy.” The lyrics told of a desolate place where Syd was spending most of his time: “Cold iron hands clap the party of clowns outside,” and even more revealing, “Inside me I feel so alone and unreal.” The Madcap wept.
    Syd was still surrounded by doting groupie girls, hangers-on, and drug dealers who haunted his London flat, soaking up the Piper’s sad/mad sheen. He continued to paint, locking himself in his room, slowly becoming even more reclusive and incommunicative. In the summer of 1970 Floyd’s Roger Waters saw Syd carrying two large bags in Harrods department store, but when Syd spotted Roger, he dropped the bags and ran