Excellent interview with Syd sister, Rosemary

[Keith Jordan]

The Fingal’s Cave Podcast recently granted us a rare and intimate glimpse into the life of the enigmatic Syd Barrett through a personal interview with his sister, Rosemary Breen. The hour-long session delved into a multitude of topics, unravelling some of the mystery that has long shrouded her brother. Its a great interview about Syd Barrett and his story and not to be missed.

https://www.neptunepinkfloyd.co.uk/syd- ... r-rosemary

[Annoying Twit]

I'm surprised that there aren't more comments on this. I thought this was a great interview giving insights into Syd's life after PF. And, unlike many other reports on Syd his sister wants people to understand Syd, rather than pandering to prurient interest.

[Keith Jordan]

I am surprised it took this long to get a comment! lol.

The article has had thousands of views so at least people are reading it, if not commenting.

He was very much an ordinary guy, as many of the "celebrities" are I guess.

[Basser101]

IMHO, Syd’s sister has always been in denial about some aspects of her brother and his life, and that has helped to create a distorted picture of it. He and his closest cadre of Cambridge friends were true bohemian radicals and intellectuals. He may have been a casualty, but he was not a victim. Floyd provided a platform for his genius and unfortunately his radical thought — including that large amounts of LSD could lead to enlightenment. As the leader of the underground Freak Out scene’s primary band, he was a high priest of the movement, and until the LSD and underlying mental illness (my opinion, mild bipolar) eroded his ego, he absolutely wanted and enjoyed the success. The Syd Barrett pictured jumping up and down during the EMI signing is not skeptical of pop success. The damaged Syd Barrett who followed his old band around in 1968 knew he had lost something that had been important to him. That same person wanted Malcolm Jones and Dave Gilmour to help him recapture some of it, even if it couldn’t fully do that. His sister has always wanted to portray him as victim while not fully acknowledging who he was at the height of his fame, and that he was exhibiting free will in both seeking to be that guy leading the musical side of an entire radical movement followed by London’s hipsters and in the drug experimentation that ultimately destroyed his genius and his mind.

[Keith Jordan]

The Syd Barrett pictured jumping up and down during the EMI signing is not skeptical of pop success. The damaged Syd Barrett who followed his old band around in 1968 knew he had lost something that had been important to him.

I happened to watch that yesterday and had similar thoughts. I watched his performances at the UFO club too. He looked in his element dancing and creating movement, interacting with the audience before him. Rosemary said he wasn't interested in the audience and played for himself. That is not what I saw.

[scarecrow]

I feel it remains ambiguous how Syd felt about it and tend to doubt anything is likely to change that. I think this (final) interview in 1971 gives some indication of how he might have felt... leans towards it having been exciting and fun, but the emphasis seems to be on how he felt about it, rather than the audience:

http://sydbarrett.net/subpages/articles ... dy_mak.htm

[Basser101]

I have always been skeptical of anything he said after that tragic week of late July 1967. He was not the same person afterward, and anything from that point forward may not have expressed how the non-damaged Syd actually felt. Same with Peter Green, wanting to give away everything. Was that the same person who formed a pop group and wrote 3-minute songs? I would encourage anyone to read John Lennon’s Rolling Stone interview from the early 70s where he discusses his LSD use and the negative sides of it. At that point, he was very aware that “ego death” was not such a great thing.

[Niebla de Fuego]

I liked that interview. Very interesting, even if sad at times. Is great to listen to someone who was actually by Syd's side and knew him well. Who better to talk about Syd than the person who loved him and cared for him for decades? We can see the human side of myth. And that is a lot more insightful than what you can get from any "truths", guesses, suppositions, or wishful thinking that thousands of other people who never even talked directly to Syd love to throw just to sound as if they knew anything about his inner processes to enshrine him as some sort of messiah.

[snifferdog]

It's very interesting, as much for Rosemary's view of Syd's story as for insights into the man himself. She's very much sticking to the line of "He was my little brother and he was led astray and he'd have been a great artist if he hadn't taken a minor detour into music". Maybe there's some self-preservation going on there. She is the one who had to live through the trauma of seeing her much-loved brother's mind being destroyed. She's the one who ended up picking up the pieces after he came back to Cambridge. It's interesting how utterly disinterested she is in Syd's music and how little she seems to think of it. I get that Syd's music mightn't be her cup of tea and that she didn't understand the 60's psychedelic scene. I think it goes deeper than that. It's a painful reminder of what could've been.

[Basser101]

It's very interesting, as much for Rosemary's view of Syd's story as for insights into the man himself. She's very much sticking to the line of "He was my little brother and he was led astray and he'd have been a great artist if he hadn't taken a minor detour into music". Maybe there's some self-preservation going on there. She is the one who had to live through the trauma of seeing her much-loved brother's mind being destroyed. She's the one who ended up picking up the pieces after he came back to Cambridge. It's interesting how utterly disinterested she is in Syd's music and how little she seems to think of it. I get that Syd's music mightn't be her cup of tea and that she didn't understand the 60's psychedelic scene. I think it goes deeper than that. It's a painful reminder of what could've been.

Absolutely agree with all of that. It is completely understandable why she would feel the way that she does, and I can’t imagine how difficult it all must have been. I also think that she is correct in her view that, minus the copious amounts of psychedelic drugs, he would have accomplished a lot and led a much fuller, happier life (even if he had some underlying mental health issues that she might not accept.)

But just as perhaps it makes it easier for Roger Waters to attribute the tragic outcomes to schizophrenia, it may make it easier for her to attribute them to a sort of misguided adventure into popular music as a way of completely rejecting the mental illness comments of people like Waters.
In doing so, though, at times she has seemed to paint or at least contribute to the “return to a simple life in Cambridge” myth, as opposed to the obvious— that he was mentally ill, regardless of the cause.