![]() ![]() Poor mental health isn’t a barrier to a comeback: look at Roky Erickson, Brian Wilson, Arthur Lee and even Sly Stone. In 2009, Iggy Pop was advertising car insurance and the New York Dolls and the MC5 were regularly touring and recording despite key members having died off decades ago, so there was something about Syd’s retreat from his own legacy that really rankled. Yes, his absence was certainly maddening. Syd, it seemed, both burned out like a supernova and then spent the decades until his death fading away. In a 1970 interview around the recording of his second album, Barrett (published in Barrett fanzine Terrapin in 1974), he was asked if he was looking forward to performing again. After the second one, everyone – not least of all Syd himself – seemed to have given up on his music career. The solo albums that followed were dark and disturbing with pitiful sales. In the space of a year the man who had helped to revolutionise – no exaggeration – English rock’n’roll was a burnt-out case, ejected from the band he had formed and shaped. ![]() He would be unable even to mime let alone perform his songs. ![]() At the peak of their fame on an American tour, Syd started to behave oddly. The drugs that helped to fuel and sustain this maverick creativity also helped to push him over the edge into the realm of mental illness. His is a potent myth: a heartachingly beautiful man, the person that everyone wanted to be around, a powerhouse of musical and artistic talent. Everyone loves a ‘mad genius’, a star that explodes and leaves a vacuum in its wake. And the inspiration was not just his music. Everyone from The Jesus And Mary Chain to David Bowie has covered his songs and paid some homage to his inspiration. The lo-fi indie scene and the new generation of psychedelic folkies like Devendra Banhardt. One could argue that Syd looms large in the history of punk rock, They sold poorly at the time, though a devoted cult of believers has tended to his flame all the way through the long decades of his silence. His two solo albums and the handful of demos and outtakes that have surfaced in recent years collapsed into his own little world Edward Lear-like nonsense poetry and jittery post-acid comedown folksiness. ![]()
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