Those familiar with Pink Floyd only to the extent of the band’s greatest hits may not recognize Syd Barrett’s name, but to serious fans, he’s a cult god, the crazy diamond who shined on in legend past the point of his actual creative output. Barrett co-founded Pink Floyd, but due to deteriorating mental health—possibly exacerbated by copious drug use—he parted ways with it in 1968 before it achieved worldwide success.
Up to that point, Barrett had been known as a charming, good-looking painter and musician, but he tapered off creatively after leaving the band, releasing two solo albums, then essentially fading from view, as he moved back to his hometown of Cambridge, took up a semi-reclusive lifestyle (dodging the fans who still demanded interaction), and ultimately died of cancer in 2006.
Perhaps contributing to his own mystique, or as a self-negating gesture of his mental illness, Barrett burned his diaries and most of his art. That, combined with a paucity of interviews with the man, leaves biographer Rob Chapman very little with which to work directly. But that didn’t stop him from publishing 411 pages on Barrett, largely cultivated from interviews with Barrett’s family and peers, and bolstered by Chapman’s own takes on each of Barrett’s compositions and actions. Without being able to get much first-hand information on Barrett, Chapman goes into detail regarding a lot of subjects tangential to him, like his art and music influences, favorite writers, the British school system, and Cambridge’s social milieu. These insights may provide food for thought for established Barrett fans, but some of the minutiae of how the Barrett song “The Scarecrow” is influenced by the “instinctive awareness of the English hymnal” bogs down the book for those looking for a basic Barrett primer.
The problem is that there’s so little to go on. Barrett appears to be whatever fans want him to be, and in this case, Chapman sometimes rises to his defense too eagerly, trying to prop up Barrett’s actions with rock ’n’ roll justifications. Perhaps Barrett didn’t leap into inane televised pop shows because he was a rebel who saw through the fluff of the music machine, or perhaps it was simply because he was too mentally fragile. Maybe The Rolling Stones are parodies of their former selves as they trot out their old hits, but at least they’re seemingly happy enough to do so.
Chapman doesn’t try to hide or apologize for the fact that he’s a huge Barrett fan who mourns what could have been, but too often in the book it feels like he’s propping up a ghost. Quotes like the one from Melody Maker’s Michael Watts resonate most: “I fear that [Barrett] was not as important as his obits suggest. He was an interesting but minor figure, whose derangement has heightened his reputation.”