Syd's Mental State

[Real Pink in the Inside]

This is an interesting document I found on my computer. I am not sure who wrote it, but I remember picking it up on the Echoes mailing list earlier this year:

From what I've read, I'd summarize Syd's breakdown and subsequent decline as
follows. I'd be interested to hear your, or anyone's views on whether this
sounds like the story of someone who suffers from schizophrenia or not.

April/May of 1967: Syd is 21 years old. Floyd's touring and associated
commercial pressures are beginning to get heavy, and Syd's acid intake is
beginning to follow suit. He begins to have occasional episodes of odd
behaviour: sometimes becoming withdrawn / argumentative / moody, or
incidents such as failing to recognise Dave Gilmour when he came to the See
Emily Play session, and his behaviour when miming See Emily Play for Top of
the Pops.

July 28 1967: The day after the third Top Of The Pops session, Syd walks out
of a BBC 'Saturday Club' session. Peter Jenner later sends an apologetic
letter to the BBC's booking manager stating that Syd has suffered a "nervous
collapse". The same night, The Pink Floyd play UFO. Jenny Fabian (writer
of the book 'Groupie') recalls that "He turned up at my place without any
warning to take me to a gig, and looked really ill. He wasn't speaking to
anyone and his face was deathly white and beaded with sweat. He went on to
play and I noticed halfway though the first set that he wasn't singing and
hardly playing a note. [Roger Waters] was covering up for him well, so not
many people noticed. After the first set [Syd] said he wanted to get away
from the club and sit somewhere quiet. So we took a taxi cab back to my
flat, promising to return in time for the second set. He sat down and
suddenly started talking about all the people who were now putting down the
group because they had made it. I told him there would always be people
like that. But he believed the group had sold out, and he couldn't
reconcile what he wanted to do with what he was actually doing.
Commercialism had nothing to do with being a religious artist, he said . . .
He seemed to have lost touch with reality, and there's no convincing someone
like that". Syd returned for the second set but spent the entire set
sitting on the stage.

29 July: The Pink Floyd play the International Love-In at the Alexandra
Palace. In the dressing room before the show, Syd is in a near-catatonic
state, unable (or unwilling) to speak, and has to be practically carried on
to stage. Once there, he stands motionless, neither singing nor playing for
the duration of the band's set. After this concert, Jenner and King cancel
all of the Floyd's engagements for the month of August, announcing that Syd
is suffering from "nervous exhaustion". After the group spends two days in
Abbey Road on 7/8 Aug working on 'Scream Thy Last Scream' and 'Set the
Controls for the Heart of the Sun', on August 10 Syd and Rick take a
two-week holiday in Ibiza.

Autumn 1967: The Pink Floyd resume making appearances in September, and
recordings of two excellent performances from this time (Top Gear 25sep67
and Copenhagen 13sep67) seem to suggest that Syd's condition has momentarily
improved somewhat. However, he seems to steadily worsen over the next few
months. He is having difficulty coming up with new material for the Floyd
to record for their next single, and the two songs that the band does
complete that October, Vegetable Man and Jugband Blues, seem to be the
product of a disturbed mind, or at least a deeply unhappy one, and could be
said to be willfully uncommercial - a far cry from the jolly, psych-pop hit
singles he seemed to be effortlessly churning out only six months before.
The song that they do finally manage to rush-record as their third single,
Apples and Oranges, seems disjointed, discordant and forced.

November/December 1967: On the American tour the band embark on at the start
of November, and the subsequent tour with Jimi Hendrix that follows
immediately after and lasts till mid-December, Syd becomes increasingly
unstable and unreliable. Nick Mason states that on the US tour Syd "didn't
know where he was half the time", and one concert features Syd detuning his
guitar and rattling the loose strings for the entire set. He refuses to
mime for TV appearances, or answer TV interview questions (Roger Waters: "We
would do the run-through and Syd would stand there [...] and mime happily.
And then they'd roll the tape and he'd just stand there and not move a
muscle. He knew perfectly well what was going on, he was just being . . .
crazy."). On the Hendrix tour, he would often refuse to sing or play (as
described above), or sometimes not turn up for gigs at all. Meanwhile, he
becomes increasingly withdrawn, paranoid and unpredictable off-stage, making
increasing use of mandrax (a tranquiliser which he was apparently perscribed
to counter his inability to sleep at nights, caused by excessive acid use).
He begins violently beating his girlfriend, Lynsey Korner - a source of
surprise to those who knew Syd previously, as he had apparently always been
an extremely gentle person. In January 1968, David Gilmour is brought in to
cover for Syd's erratic stage performances. Shortly afterwards, Syd is
dismissed from the band.

1968: In May and June, Syd spends a month in the studio with Peter Jenner
working on solo material. Although some great performances result, Syd's
work in general has become erratic and unfocussed - Jenner later states that
it was near-impossible to get him to play a song the same way twice.
Nothing recorded in these sessions is deemed to be releaseable at the time
(some tracks are later polished for inlcusion on 'The Madcap Laughs', and
others appear on 'Opel'), and the project is abandoned. Little is heard
from Syd for the rest of the year: stories circulate that he was
hospitalised, either in a mental asylum, or following a heart failure due to
excessive mandrax consumption. He also appeared at one Pink Floyd concert,
standing in front of the stage at Dave Gilmour's feet, silently staring.

1969: Having moved into a flat with Duggie Fields at the end of '68, Syd's
mental condition seems to briefly improve. He has apparently stopped taking
acid (Fields states that he never saw Syd taking it in the 18 months they
lived together), and after seeing a Soft Machine concert in March he decides
to return to the studio himself. The volume and quality of work he produced
with Malcolm Jones in April and May seems to belie the fact that he was in
relatively good shape at the time. However, on the tracks recorded in a
rushed session in July to complete the album, Syd's performances are
generally strained and eratic, with him apparently finding it difficult to
sing in tune, or remember lyrics or chords.

1970: According to Fields, Syd's behaviour becomes increasingly
dysfunctional as his time living in the flat goes on. His violence towards
girlfriends continues, and he often spends hours on end locked in his room,
the curtains permanently drawn. His behaviour becomes increasingly
antisocial: deliberately starting chip-pan fires or throwing lit cigarettes
across the room at Fields. He is also spending longer and longer periods
away in Cambridge - apparently to get away from the constant stream of
groupies and hangers-on that follow him around in London. In the sessions
for his second solo album 'Barrett', between February and July, his
performances are erratic, ranging from perfect first takes to untogether
stumbling as described above. In the autumn, he suddenly leaves London for
his mother's home in Cambridge, becoming engaged to his girlfriend Gayla
Pinion in October. When the album is released in November, he shows no
interest in it and makes no effort to promote it.

1971: Although they spend time looking for places to live and Syd often
states that he wants to train to become a doctor, the relationship with
Gayla quickly dissolves into violence and recriminations (Syd repeatedly
accuses her, groundlessly, of having affairs) and he breaks off the
engagement in January. Shortly after, he records a BBC radio session and
gives a couple of fairly lucid, if oblique, press interviews where he claims
to still want to make music. However, nothing more is heard from Syd in
1971 - although he was often seen self-consciously strutting around the
streets of Cambridge, never speaking to anyone.

1972: After talking wistfully in the 1971 about forming a group, Syd puts
together a 3-piece band, Stars, which is soon playing small-scale gigs in
Cambridge, performing songs from his solo albums and a couple of Floyd
tunes. Although he is reportedly in fairly good shape initially (both
musically and personally), a disastrous gig at the Cambridge Corn Exchange
follows, at which Syd plays badly and sings inaudibly (worsened by technical
problems). Syd resigns from the band in March after reading a bad review of
the show in Melody Maker. He allegedly contributes to a recording session
with Steve Took in October. In December, he "went completely haywire in his
cellar, causing considerable damage to furniture and himself. He didn't
actually smash his head through the ceiling as has been alleged, but it was
an unsavoury and distressing incident which led to the police being called
and another spell in hospital for Syd." (Crazy Diamond biog)

1973: Syd's condition allegedly improves slightly, and he makes his final
known stage appearance, jamming onstage with Jack Bruce at a Cambridge
poetry gig in the summer. Later in the year, he leaves Cambridge to live
alone in a flat in the Chelsea Cloisters, London.

1974-1979: Syd is living off his royalties, secluded in Chelsea Cloisters.
The porter Ronnie Salmon recalls that he generally appeared to be in a happy
frame of mind, but would be constantly giving away his posessions (expensive
guitars, TVs etc), and occasionally appeared in drag, his head shaved. An
attempt to make a third solo album in 1974 results in three days of sessions
during which nothing but a few hours of directionless, fragmentary guitar
noodling is recorded. Storm Thorgeson approaches him to take a new photo
for the reissue of his solo albums, and is told to "**** off". In a short
amount of time, Syd puts on a great deal of weight (to the point at which he
is initially unrecognisable when he visits Pink Floyd in the studio in
1975). Oone occasion he smashes his door off its hinges. Ex-girlfriend
Gayla Pinion pays him a visit in 1977, and recalls that in the flat "all the
curtains were drawn, no windows were open and there was this horrible
smell". The following year ex-manager Brian Morrison states that "he
doesn't have any involvement with anything or anybody. He is a recluse with
about 25 guitars around him [...] I know where he is, but he doesn't want to
be bothered; he just sits there on his own watching television all day and
getting fat. That's what he does.

1979-present: In 1979, having been declared bankrupt due to a technicality
with his Floyd royalties, he returns to Cambridge to live with his mother.
1981/82 sees him committed to a sanitorium in Essex, allegedly to kick his
drug habit (presumably mandrax). Soon afterwards, he returns to hospital to
have a stomach ulcer removed (stomach ulcers are a side-effect of excessive
mandrax use over long periods). In 1982 he is tracked down by a French
journalist who attempts to conduct a doorstep interview; in the resulting
article, he appears lucid, polite and coherent, but clearly unwilling to
take part in any kind of interview. The same description applies to the
subsequent attempts of others who track him down and attempt to speak to him
about his past through the 1980s and 1990s. His family state that he
becomes depressed for long periods if he is ever reminded of his Floyd days.
By the last '80s he has developed an interest in painting again, and after
his mother's death in 1991 he is apparently well enough to live alone, which
he does to this day. Through the '90s he is often seen in the streets in
Cambridge, apparently in good health, although towards the end of the decade
he is diagnosed with diabetes. He continues to live alone and, although not
reclusive to Chelsea Cloisters levels, apparently has minimal contact with
the outside world. His family state that since the late '80s he has been
more content and in better health than for many years, but seem to avoid
discussing the specifics of any illnesses.

[quicksilver]

First off - that is one of the saddest stories I've read in a while and certainly coincides with interviews I've read with other band members about him over he years. I thought I read somewhere that Syd's mental state was in question even before all of the drugs, perhaps do to some traumatic family event or something. If so, the drugs just made thing worse. Some questions I've had:

Did he feel betrayed by the rest of the band in any way? maybe he felt they didn't help him out enough or left him out to dry?

Was he was jelous of the bands success after he left?

Did he ever want to get back in the band and was shown the door?

This one may be far out there, I know:

Is the rest of the band keeping some sort of secret regarding Syd to this day and what actually happened? Maybe Syd was told he could come back when ready to but when that time came he was told to leave, so as to not upset the new success of the band.

I'm sure there are some more out there.

[David Smith]

I heard Syd molested a little boy, could be wrong though.

My scource was a well known British tabloid, i don't want to reveal any names so for now we'll call it T_E S_N.

Can you figure it out?

[Guest]

from what i heard syd has paranoia and shizophrenia. but what does this actually mean?? that he' s nuts?? well i don' t believe that.
maybe he had some trouble when he was young (i mean who doesen' t), but that doesen' t mean you' re mad or anything.

and what' s that roumor 'bout syd molesting somebody?? does anyone know something about that?


i have one question for you? was he gay? i think he wasn' t but people did have some sexual exerience with the same gender. was he linked to anyone particular??? tell me please

[Keith Jordan]

from what i heard syd has paranoia and shizophrenia. but what does this actually mean?? that he' s nuts?? well i don' t believe that.
maybe he had some trouble when he was young (i mean who doesen' t), but that doesen' t mean you' re mad or anything.

and what' s that roumor 'bout syd molesting somebody?? does anyone know something about that?


i have one question for you? was he gay? i think he wasn' t but people did have some sexual exerience with the same gender. was he linked to anyone particular??? tell me please

RKB was certainly mentally ill. He wasn't all there.

He battered one of his girlfriends when on a bad trip after he suspected her of cheating on him. Her name was... umm... can't remember now. It wasnt iggy the eskimo tho.

[kaya]

oh!!
so you' re from england man. i' d give anything to live there man!! but i' m stuck in this shit slovenia. i mean it' s nice though, just borring. you know it??? you' ve been here??

[crofloyd]

Kaya, we are neighbours (I am from Split, Croatia) and it's very good to see PF fan from this part of Europe.
As for Syd, the greatest diamond... His story is very sad and sad is also the fact that his name could be written in gold today in rock history along with John Lennon, Jim Morrison and Hendrix...

[kaya]

hi!!
yes, it's a very big surprise to find you here. do you think we're the only ones from slovenia and croatia on this forum???? wouldn't it be weird if we were? it's like we're the only one who listen PF in slovenia and croatia.....
nice to meet you

[InsightSeeker]

Syd is the only person who knows what happened to Syd. From the bits and pieces I've read, I would say that he's had a semi-religious experience in the sense that he broke his programming and could see himself in a different light. That's bourne out by his claiming to be a 'religious artist' at one stage. I think that to understand what was going on in Syd's head, you've got to understand the times that produced him.

Consider the music of the time, consider Britain at that time with it's strong sense of class. division and post-war economy. Young people wanted to challenge authority in a way not seen again until Punk. Acid was legal for a time, and of course completely without experience, people necked it like there was no tomorrow. Down in London, all the coolest cats and hippest groovers were taking Acid, having group experiences, breaking down barriers that changed society forever. People in the North were grooving to Northern Soul and popping purple hearts however.

For a short time, the shortest time, it was possible to change the world with a thought - a kind of magic.

Syd was a part of that, and at the fore-front in musical terms. The band's focus at that time was firmly on live performance, or rather live 'art' - quadrophonic speakers systems with sound that could be controlled with a joystick - once on Radio Luxemburg Roger Waters asked the question, 'what colour is this song?' - an experiment then, music as art - breaking down barriers - the Surrealists of guitar music.

But underneath all that, Syd was just a shy kid who took drugs to cover it up. Eventually it caught up with him and his deamons were laid bare, for all to see in the end.

I really wouldn't be at all suprised to discover that Syd had been insecure in his early life. His dad died in the war I think, maybe it caused unconcious fears that could only surface later in his life, when perhaps he really was taking a lot of Acid.

If Mandax is pescribed to bring you down when you're taking Acid too often, and lets also assume that there's a large slice of pot being smoked at the same time, then I know pretty much how whacked out he must have been.

At one point riddled with doubt about who he was, and then the fight back, with sheer brilliance of music - unexpected and uniquely his music - the music of a religious artist.

Unfortunately for Syd however, there was a band to run, debts to pay and success for all to be had, maybe. You kind of get the feeling that he got *so* tied up in this whole popstar fad that he really believed himself at first, took himself and his art too seriously, only to find the grim reality was 4 pop songs a year, 2 albums every 18 months lose the wierd noises - tour every year playing the same songs the same way ('cause thats the way the fans like it - it's good for business dontcha'know)

Maybe that was part of it too - so he did the next best thing and f**ked everyone off to chill out and enjoy his own company.

Imagine this is your legacy, just try to imagine how it must have been to become stripped, bare, without the necessary tools to be whole and without fear - trapped even.

If I was Syd, I would have walked away from it too - and never gone back, just to escape the notoriety and chatter.

[NiceJangly]

Syd certainly had some sort of mental breakdown, that is beyond dispute. Whether or not it was/is actual schizophrenia is debateable. Schizophrenia takes different forms. I think Syd did show many of the so-called negative symptoms typical of certain types of schizophrenia. I do, however, believe that the prodigious drug-taking that Syd was accused of was more a symptom of his mental state than a cause.

[mosespa]

I'm beginning to be slightly disturbed by what appears to be a newly growing trend regarding Syd...the notion that it's possible that he "faked" his breakdown in order to preserve the integrity of his artistic vision.

Despite the large amount of time I spend here, this isn't the only Floyd site I go to, and I am beginning to see (here and there) messages and the like coming from people who seem to feel that Syd may have faked it all.

This, to me, is denying his condition the dignity (whatever's left of it) it deserves.

To say that Syd's condition is a sham is to deny it importance.

Syd's breakdown did occur (as we here acknowledge) and it was a result of a number of factors...some of which probably haven't even been remotely close to being discovered by the public.

It's one thing to theorize that Jim Morrison or Elvis Presley didn't die when the media says they did...it's another to theorize that an otherwise alive (if not well) human being has faked a psychological condition.

I'm just glad his doctors haven't taken that view.

[Real Pink in the Inside]

I'm beginning to be slightly disturbed by what appears to be a newly growing trend regarding Syd...the notion that it's possible that he "faked" his breakdown in order to preserve the integrity of his artistic vision.

That notion is ridiculous beyond belief when one considers the facts seriously. For example, in 1981/82 Syd was committed to a sanitarium in Essex, allegedly to kick his drug habit (presumably mandrax). Why would he have "faked" that so many years after being in the spotlight?

I have seen the notion you speak of on other boards as well. If you ask me, there are a number of disturbing trends on the net concerning Pink Floyd. The worst has to be "Dave and Rick were always the musical force behind Pink Floyd," which is propagated strongly by one board in particular. I used to be a member of this board I speak of, but I was banned for disagreeing with one of the webmasters (Can you say fascism?).

[dgsyd1]

Depends on where you go to. If you go to The Laughing Madcaps for example, you'll find an almost irrational loathing of any member of Pink Floyd who isn't called Syd Barrett. General opinion over there seems to be that Roger forced Syd out, and then spent the next 30 years writting songs about it. Completely untrue, but there you go. It is however, an excellent resource for all things Syd.

As far as the idea that Syd 'faked' his illness goes, it shows a complete disregard for the facts. By the end of 1967, his mental state was such that it was impossible for him to be a member of the band anymore. As much as I love the music he made (PATGOD is still tied with MEDDLE as my favourite Pink Floyd album), the fact remains that if he'd stayed then Pink Floyd would have died. As Roger has said "It couldn't have started without him, but it couldn't have gone on with him".

[mosespa]

...in 1981/82 Syd was committed to a sanitarium in Essex, allegedly to kick his drug habit (presumably mandrax). Why would he have "faked" that so many years after being in the spotlight?

I can already hear the cynics saying "to put his name back in the spotlight." The funny thing is that this would come from the same people who would say that he faked the whole thing to get OUT of the spotlight.

This is something that's just occurred to me, but it could be that this "theory" is a sort of attempt to hold on to the notion of Syd. After all...as far as RKB is concerned, "Syd" IS quite dead.

The notion that he faked the whole thing may provide a sick sort of comfort to the people who can't accept that he will never record again.

[Ernst]

I think that Syd is a genius, I think that a genius spirit cannot be harmed by any substance here. Barret posses a very sensitive soul that allows him to acomplish whatever he desires to do.

With us is the same, we can do anything just keeping confidence in our soul, not our aprehended and complex knowlege, but with our certainty of spirit.

The "mental" status of Barrett is no worry to me but in a physicaly oriented focus. It may be a general consense that every genius mind in history has turned a madcap, but we are not sure who is the madcap, us or them? Maybe they can see the true reality of the universe.