Syd Barrett is one of the most storied figures in rock’s firmament. A psychedelic pioneer who flew too close to the sun, he powered those early Pink Floyd cuts, taking groundbreaking records like ‘See Emily Play’ into the British charts. Yet it couldn’t last – unshackled from the humdrum everyday by hallucinogenic drugs, Syd Barrett came apart, departing the band he helped form following the release of 1968 record ‘A Saucerful Of Secrets’.
His influence could scarcely be felt on the record due to his deteriorating condition, but Syd Barrett’s performance on closer ‘Jugband Blues’ resulted into a harrowing confrontation with disintegrating mental health.
On his song, he queries “And what exactly is a dream / And what exactly is a joke” as the arrangement threatens to fall apart around him.
David Gilmour remains profoundly moved by ‘Jugband Blues’, and took part in an extensive 2001 documentary with John Edginton.
“I have no idea really how he wrote it. There were many occasions when he would seem to be, either at his flat or my flat or in the studio, he would appear to just start something and it would all come out as if he’d never thought of it before that moment.”
“With the words and everything, in a way that I find hard to conceive with not being wordy as he was. It felt like he just made them up as he went along, but I’m sure it can’t have been that simple. It’s a nice idea, though,” he said.
The brass band at the end was tirelessly tracked down by producer Norman Smith, who finally found an eight-piece ensemble suitable to Syd Barrett’s requirements. Imagine his disappointment then, when Syd simply told him to let the brass band “play whatever they want”.
The song exists somewhere outside of the temporal, it’s scattered flow suggesting a form of automatic writing, while the delicate internal structures mean that it could well have been laboured over. David Gilmour mused: “Maybe it’s a stream of subconsciousness that he had some way of letting flow out of him, or maybe he did sit and think about it. I can’t quite imagine him doing it consciously.”
Even at the end of his time in Pink Floyd, his band mates couldn’t quite unravel the enigma of Syd Barrett, and his out-there artistry.
Re-visit ‘Jugband Blues’ below.
