Syd's "obligatory Hendrix perm"

[jtull]

check this, nosaj:

http://www.sydbarrettpinkfloyd.com/2010 ... -rare.html

"This Cheetah show was the gig where Syd smeared the Mandies and Brylcream over his head and (reportedly) played a single chord. At the Cheetah, after a lengthy wait, the rest of Pink Floyd decided to take the stage except for Syd Barrett, who was left in the dressing room, manically trying to organize his, badly permed at Vidal Sassoon, hairstyle of the time. As the rest were tuning up, Syd, more out of desperation than anything, emptied the contents of a jar of Mandrax, broke the pills into tiny pieces and mixed the crumbs in with a full jar of Brylcream. He then poured the whole coagulated mass onto his head, picked up his Telecaster, and walked on stage.

As he was playing, the Mandrax/Brylcream combination started to run amok under the intense heat of the stage-lighting and dribbled down from his scalp so that it looked like his face was melting into a distorted wax effigy of flesh. Audience members supposedly screamed in horror. Needless to say, there was a wildly positive review in the LA Free Press newspaper. The reporter states that this gig was the only area appearance for Pink Floyd.

According Dr. Sam Hutt, peripatetic physician to the Underground, people were always looking for new ways to take acid. One of those methods was to mix acid with gel (grease, hair wax or whatever) and to put it in your hair. The acid would then enter your brain by sweating, stage lighting, etc... Another one was to put liquid LSD on the inside of your eyelid. Syd Barrett did that, according to Dr. Sam Hutt, with acid and gel on several occasions.

Dr. Hutt also tells that later on Syd tried it with Mandrax, (the famous Brylcream incident), on more than one occasion. According to Dr. Hutt, "I remember near the end with Syd him coming up and somebody had given him a bottle of Mandies. Mandies were the big bouncing around drug, dodgy indeed, and probably a good idea that they took them off the market. Barbiturates are just plain bastards, but Mandies have this awful seductiveness about them. Syd appeared on-stage with this jar of Brylcream, having crushed the Mandies into little pieces, mixing them up with the Brylcream and putting this mixture of Brylcream and broken Mandy tablets all over his hair. So when he went out on-stage the heat of the lights melted the Brylcream and it all started to drip down his face with these bits of Mandrax."

[nosaj]

Thanx. So, I have heard the stories for years, but it was always a one time thing. Now, according to that link, he was doing it all the time. Of course we can trust Dr. Hutt, can't we?

I don't know...whatever. There has been so much written about Syd that I can never know whether it is true or not. In fact, was is Roger Waters the only one who remembers spitting at a fan in 1977??

I guess it all doesn't really matter somehow?? I dunno...

[Wolfpack]

Well, this quote starts out "The archetypal Syd Barrett story...". A myth basically. The above quote does not seem to be attributed to a direct eye witness. This is why the An Irregular Head is so interesting, as it points to many variations on the same story, but nobody can identify when exactly it happened...in fact the author spends a chapter showing how many stories (or myths) started somewhere to such an extent that people will retell them as if they witnessed it, yet they probably did not...memory is a funny thing.

In his book 'The Half-life of Syd Barrett', Tim Willis already describes how witnesses tells different stories. Including a category in which the SAME witness tells different stories.

Does 'An Irregular Head' give a conclusion what is true or not, or does it just describe the different stories? Reading some comments about the book, it seems that the author does give a conclusion. Or is that just the wishful thinking of some readers of the book?
I want to buy the book, but I am hesitated because of readers who describe the book as a Good News Show. By reading those comments I expect the book to even make a myth of Barrett and Pink Floyd going separate ways.
I don't buy stories of Barrett consciously screwing up his career in 1967 and 1968. If he would, he wouldn't have made his solo albums. I've read that Barrett in later life, looked at himself as a failure. (He wouldn't have been a failure after succeeding to consciously screwing up his career.)

I like one of the quotes in regards to the story, one person suggests Syd would never waste good Mandrax on his hair...

Dr. Ruth's story gives an explanation for that, by telling that Barrett was putting Mandrax in his hair as a way to get stoned.

According Dr. Sam Hutt, peripatetic physician to the Underground, people were always looking for new ways to take acid. One of those methods was to mix acid with gel (grease, hair wax or whatever) and to put it in your hair. The acid would then enter your brain by sweating, stage lighting, etc... Another one was to put liquid LSD on the inside of your eyelid. Syd Barrett did that, according to Dr. Sam Hutt, with acid and gel on several occasions.

Barrett putting acid and gel on the inside of his eyelids is even more bizarre.