Syd Barrett

Syd Barrett

Roger Keith "Syd" Barrett (6 January 1946 – 7 July 2006), was an English singer-songwriter, guitarist and painter, best remembered as a founder member of the band Pink Floyd. He was the lead vocalist, guitarist and primary songwriter during the band's psychedelic years, providing major musical and stylistic direction in their early work. He is credited with creating their name, but left the group in April 1968 amid speculations of mental illness exacerbated by drug use, and was briefly hospitalised.

He was active in music for only about seven years, recording four singles, the debut album (and contributed to the second one), plus several unreleased songs with Pink Floyd. In 1969, Barrett started off a solo career with the release of the single, "Octopus", which foreshadowed his first solo album, The Madcap Laughs (1970), which was recorded over the course of one year (1968–1969) with four different producers (Peter Jenner, Malcolm Jones, David Gilmour and Roger Waters). Nearly two months after Madcap was released, Barrett began working on his second – and last – album, Barrett (produced by Gilmour, and featuring contributions from Richard Wright), which would be released in late 1970, before going into self-imposed seclusion lasting more than thirty years. In 1988, an album of unreleased tracks/alternate takes, Opel, was released by EMI with Barrett's approval.

Barrett's innovative guitar work and exploration of experimental techniques such as using dissonance, distortion, and feedback had an enormous legacy, with a wide variety of musicians from David Bowie to Brian Eno to Jimmy Page and more drawing influence. In his post-musician life, Barrett continued with his painting and dedicated himself to gardening, never to return to the public eye. He died in 2006. A number of biographies have been written about him since the 1980s, and Pink Floyd wrote and recorded several tributes to him after he left, most notably the 1975 album Wish You Were Here.