NME Syd Tribute

[my breakfast.]

do you only listen to one band then?

I do listen to other bands, just not... erm.. The Pete Dohertys....

[Atom Heart Sun]

I can see Pete Doherty has some talent, but the point is he is not at all relevant to Syd other than in an innane "artist messed up by drugs" approach which is simplistic and has no real bearing.

Syd did spliff and acid at the dawn of popular culture as we know it today (more or less) and cannot be blamed for what he put himself through. Also, Syd was often spiked with acid without realising (according to many accounts) and therefore, once again, cannot be blamed.
Furthermore, the hallucinagens may have exascerbated a breakdown in Syd from which he would have little control over.

Doherty is an entirely different case and there is no comparison beyond "drug use". This guy's drug problem occurred 40 odd years AFTER Easy Rider and other such drug-mythologising popular culture iconography. Along the way there have been MANY accounts of the repercussions of using drugs, particularly hard drugs and heroin. There is absolutely no excuse for Mr Doherty in my view: he knew what he was doing and everything that might come of it unlike Syd.
Doherty also has the option of leaving heroin behind him and simply living with being a recovering addict, which however uncomfortable that may be, is still an opportunity to lead a more or less normal life.
Mental illness and breakdown is a hell of a lot more radical than that, and yet Barrett overcame his drug related problems enough to lead a normal life given he was still semi-famous according to how he wanted his life to be (Yes, Barrett did achieve some kind of normality too: he was bald, fat, over forty, unglamourous and most times went to the shop for himself).
In this sense Barrett empowered himself; Doherty is, so far, the opposite of that: he whines like a girl and is passive to his demons whilst letting everyone else pull his pants up.


There is a world of difference between going innocently on a voyage of inner discovery with acid in the 60's and knowingly wasting yourself away on heroin in the 21st century.

However much Syd may have taken the piss, not played ball, and added to his own myth, he is NEVER guilty of asking for some of the troubles that were evident in certain periods of his life.

Doherty in my opinion has asked for, nay positively gorged himself, on his own personal mythology. Just look at his body language and how he gives people the doe-eyes: you can tell his way of feeding his ego is to charm people into wanting to look after him and feel sorry for him.
I have no respect for his pop culture image right now and the only way he can save it is to genuinely kick the habit and do something worthwhile as a result. Only then can he be lauded in my view, until which point he remains a cheap, vacant, pop culture cliche with nothing much to say to anyone.

[J Ed]

Syd did spliff and acid at the dawn of popular culture as we know it today (more or less) and cannot be blamed for what he put himself through.

your musical history is a little truncated and misses out the fact that popular musicians have been wrestling with drug problems as long as theres been popular musicians
it may be something to do with the loneliness of life on the road, or the desperate questing type personality needed for a musician who is going to create new sounds

off the top of my head, drugs (specifically heroin) shortened the lives of Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker and Hank Williams, decades before Syd took his first trip
then again many musicians smoked reefer with no probs, such as Louis Armstrong (whose early recordings could more accurately be described as the "dawn of popular culture as we know it today"), and he lived to a ripe old age
Charlie Parker in particular was infamous for his drug dependencies, and the negative influence his myth had on younger lesser musicians who assumed if they shot junk they too could wail like Bird

the point being, a musician of Syds generation, especially one who can pick out extra obscure blues musicians to name his band after, would be well aware of the cautionary examples of those whod gone before
the difference with Syd was his choice of poison: LSD was I believe still legal in 66/67, and was being aggressively promoted to young folks as some sort of instant religious experience by Tim Leary, Ken Kesey and others

the topic of why so many great musicians had drug problems is a huge one, and misrepresented by claiming somehow Syd was the first and therefor not accountable for his choices

[Atom Heart Sun]

your musical history is a little truncated

Ahem, one sentence (the one you quoted) is hardly a musical history, nor is any of my above post. I've not specified ANY musical history other than mentioning that Syd's time was the dawn of popular culture as we know it today, and even there I added "more or less", and then I mentioned Doherty being contemporary with the 21st century. Neither of those (factual) observations are a history, they are simply two points in a history. Let me remind you what this topic is about: the NME tribute edition which brought up this nonsensical Barrett/Doherty comparison.

and misses out the fact that popular musicians have been wrestling with drug problems as long as theres been popular musicians

Well actually, if you want to be pedantic there's been musicians with drug issues since classical times, in fact, I could probably find evidence enough if I wanted to look for it to say since pre-history, certainly since the ancient Greeks.
Of course, since I wasn't doing anything like making a "musical history" then it doesn't miss out any "fact". Everybody knows drugs and musicians have gone hand in hand since forever, that isn't my point at all.
I am talking culturally, and yes the 60's counter-culture was the basis for our modern day pop culture. That doesn't mean to say there was no pop culture before the 60's! In case you don't realise, the liberalism of the 60's was the beginning of our pop culture proper: before that the world was a stiffer, greyer place where, for instance, a young man was either a boy or a man.. one day he was dressed one way, then suddenly he was dressed like his father.
Yes, the 50's gave us the roots of youth culture, but it wasn't until the mid 60's that the world went technicolour. In this Syd was at the dawn of it, when people sought enlightenment from such things as LSD.

off the top of my head, drugs (specifically heroin) shortened the lives of Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker and Hank Williams, decades before Syd took his first trip
then again many musicians smoked reefer with no probs, such as Louis Armstrong (whose early recordings could more accurately be described as the "dawn of popular culture as we know it today"), and he lived to a ripe old age
Charlie Parker in particular was infamous for his drug dependencies, and the negative influence his myth had on younger lesser musicians who assumed if they shot junk they too could wail like Bird

We know all this. It does not take from the fact that Syd was from a generation that set the precident with psychedelics (amongst MANY other things). Syd was a precurser unlike Doherty - that is my point and you cannot deny it.
As far as my mentioning spliff, I was observing what Syd did and mentioned it in passing. I have not claimed that cannabis did Syd's head in nor that he was the first to do it.

the point being, a musician of Syds generation, especially one who can pick out extra obscure blues musicians to name his band after, would be well aware of the cautionary examples of those whod gone before
the difference with Syd was his choice of poison: LSD was I believe still legal in 66/67, and was being aggressively promoted to young folks as some sort of instant religious experience by Tim Leary, Ken Kesey and others

Here you have simply repeated what I was saying.

the topic of why so many great musicians had drug problems is a huge one

Yes and not one being discussed here.

and misrepresented by claiming somehow Syd was the first and therefor not accountable for his choices

I never said he was the "first" ever drug-using musician. You have missed the point entirely. Please don't try to put words into my mouth.

[Norbert Wilkins]

Found a link to a page that has that "Beg, Steal or Borrow" song:

http://www.myspace.com/getloadedinthepark

It's okay up to a point, I guess. Sounds like someone doing a lazy Joe Strummer impression over an early Housemartins tune to me though.

A whole bunch of songs here:

http://www.frenchdogblues.com/indexmain.html

Okay, I'll admit some of them are quite charming. I guess if I was fifteen years younger and hadn't heard of Captain Beefheart or Sun Ra (or Royal Trux or early Mercury Rev even) I might be quite taken with them.

Still don't think he's worth the column inches though, I'm afraid...

[PublicImage]

I have never heard that version before now, I've only heard him doing it by himself on an acoustic guitar. I must say that the solo version is a lot better.

[Norbert Wilkins]

This one?

(found here: http://workorduty.blogspot.com/2006_07_ ... chive.html)

[PublicImage]

Yeah, that's it. I thought it was pretty good.