/r/OldSchoolCool **History's cool kids, looking fantastic!** A pictorial and video celebration of history's coolest kids, everything from beatniks to bikers, mods to rude boys, hippies to ravers. And everything in between. If you've found a photo, or a photo essay, of people from the past looking fantastic, here's the place to share it.
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jeez, he probably couldn't even tell a green field from a cold steel rail
Why would anyone trade a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? I'm guessing they didn't ask for that in the right state of mind.
Do you think you can tell?
Did they get you to trade?
Your heroes for ghosts.
I love the juxtaposition of this song and "Have a cigar".
I’d known and loved this song for years but never listened to the album. My first experience with Have A Cigar and its transition into Wish You Were Here was unforgettable.
A few years ago, me and some friends took a trip to a very remote part of the country to stay in a little country house by a lake and take some acid. We were about 2 hours into the trip, and we were tripping balls by this point. Sitting in the back garden, rolling around on the grass, looking out over the lake and the mountains, and listening to music on a Bluetooth speaker.
Someone put on this album. It was the perfect music to listen to for this experience. All of the weird synth sounds were blowing my mind and I was just completely lost in the music. Shine On, Welcome to the Machine, they came and went. Have A Cigar comes on and I’m just bopping and grooving along with it, in my element. There’s nobody else around for miles so the Bluetooth speaker is turned up full volume and booming. I’m wondering why the fuck I’ve never sat down and listened to this album before.
At the end of the song, there’s this big woooooooosh noise, and suddenly the full, loud booming bassy music becomes quiet and tinny. Being absolutely out of our minds on acid, this was quite a jarring jolt to the senses. Immediately we assumed that the Bluetooth speaker had died and that the music was now being played through the phone speaker. We all jump up and start clamouring for the charger to get the system working again as soon as possible while the intro to Wish You Were Here plays in the background.
While still looking for the cable, the full sound of the acoustic guitar solo hits our ears. The Bluetooth speaker was working fine. We’d just been trolled by Pink Floyd about 45 years into the future.
It's been 45 years since I did acid while listening to Pink Floyd on vinyl at 33 1/3.
Your experience with the seque is certainly familiar (sans Bluetooth, of course). Too bad it only works once.
Whenever I hear Pink Floyd now, it takes me right back to my early years.
Thanks for posting...
The opening dual guitars on wish you were here still give me goosebumps. I think we played that song 100x that night. Good times
Killing me. Freaking hilarious
Syd's illness led to some great music so who’s to say it’s all bad?
His post pink Floyd music is pretty great.
Apparently, according to Syd Barret's sister, his mental problems were greatly exaggerated by the rest of the band, primarily Roger Waters. While he probably did suffer a nervous breakdown brought on by stress and drug-induced psychosis at one point, he mostly just wanted to live a more quiet life and figured early on that the amount of fame Pink Floyd was heading towards just wasn't for him.
It's done wonders for Pink Floyd's image to make people believe that their original guitarist and main lyricist was "driven mad" by the intensity of their art and lifestyle. While in reality he was living his simple life in the English countryside making art for love, rather than money.
There's still no question that Syd was on acid for weeks on end. His "friends" used to dose him when he wasn't. All that acid is not good for one's mental health.
I personally think the sister might have been protective of him against the stigma of mental illness but people in the Pink Floyd sub have argued with me about that.
At the very least, your theory seems like a really obvious possibility. But people love a counter narrative.
I think the effects of acid are a bit mythologized and people who did a lot of acid tend to feel that way from my personal experience.
They also tend to want to move on to simpler things in life...
So the narrative that he did a lot of acid and drugs, then decided it's too much, too fast, and time to move on, is actually the Occam's razor narrative for me.
Barrett was 22 in ‘68. That’s a common time in life for latent mental illness to begin manifesting. LSD use potentiates symptoms of mental illness in those predisposed to it. Those around Barrett at the time noted massive personality changes (not just while he was tripping) and “nervous breakdowns.” Contemporary accounts are very clear that he was in a turbulent mental place irrespective of drug use. So Occam’s razor cuts the other way from my perspective.
That said, it’s also very possible that Barrett found a lot of peace in his more toned down lifestyle and, per his sister’s reports, did not receive or necessarily need therapeutic help as he aged. The perspectives are not necessarily opposed in that sense. By the way, I’m also experienced, so I’m not coming at this from an LSD-demonizing or -mythologizing place.
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If I remember correctly, LSD gives you a very high tolerance, to the point that you can take it the following day and it will do nothing. That's why people wait weeks between trips.
Quite true
Just so you know: you can’t be on acid for weeks on end. You start to develop a tolerance to it almost immediately and quickly reach a state where taking more does nothing.
Truish - you get a tolerance. And when you quit you are so serotonin deprived you are catatonic and need days of rest. Need to wean off.
I didn't know that, thanks.
Look for the last known photo of him when he came to visit the band in studio. Haunting.
There are photos of him shortly before he died. He looks like a chubby Picasso. He enjoyed gardening and riding his bike to the shop. He like being called by his name: Roger.
I can’t think of a sub I’d less like to join
PinkFloydCirclejerk is much better and makes fun of the main PF sub all the time.
🗿
It’s quite toxic. For some reason..
Lol you can't be on acid like that, it doesn't work. You need a few days between hits or it's a waste because you won't trip. It's why you can't really get addicted to it because you have to have breaks in between.
There’s a story about how you would never take a drink from anyone at his apartment because it would most likely be dosed. Doing that someone unexpectedly is pretty messed up and would likely cause some PTSD associated with it. It wasn’t so much that he was suffering from acute mental illness it’s that he was very unproductive whenever they tried to get anything done because he was always dosed out. Even when they were helping him with his solo albums, it would test their patience because he’d be completely out of it while trying to record music and they’d have to constantly prod him to do anything.
His sister may be right that they exaggerated at that time, but I think your take is swinging too far the opposite direction. There are too many well documented and public examples of the contrary for him to just have been a healthy man with a couple eccentricities who just wanted to live a quiet life.
Some people act like he was either in a catatonic state or completely bonkers…he wasn’t either of those things and it most likely due to the stress of touring along with too much LSD that drove him out of the spotlight. They’d did some crazy things back then, like driving hundreds of miles in a day to get to the next gig in northern England and then the next day driving to a gig in southern England. The lack of proper rest, and the constant need to be on stage most likely just caused him to break a little; then just be done with it. Lots of artists talk about this very same thing when they are first starting out and why took a break after hitting it big. Was he not all there back then? For sure, but he got better through getting the rest he needed and by then; he was over it all.
There are crazier tour stories than that - wasn’t there a date where they did a day show in the Netherlands and then raced back to England the same day for another show that night? Or vice versa
Now toss in psychotropic drugs along with some amphetamines…along with trying to write songs and deal with and politics…and people wonder why Syd had a psychotic break.
Didn't he put some pills in his hair during a show that were melted by the lights and trickled down his face?
Pink Floyd or at least David made sure Syd got royalties. When Syd died I believe he was worth 30 million.
I heard that as well. Respect because Syd was able to be comfortable and not have many worries.
I was pretty happy to learn Syd got some of the money I spent on early Pink Floyd stuff. I wanted him to be comfortable as well.
I think he got slowly better, but things were very wrong. You can't look at the picture of him in the studio during Wish you Were Here recordings and think otherwise.
David Gilmour was one of his best friends and continued to try and record his music, I don't think David was just making it all up.
I’m sure sobriety and being out of the spotlight helped his mental health situation, but this idea that Syd intentionally left it all behind for a quaint and quiet life of artistic purity is a fantasy
Getting rest from all the non-stop touring they did back then probably helped a lot. Giving his brain a chance to rest from all the stimulation it was getting and not getting a break isn’t good for anyone.
There was that well documented show where he crushed qualludes on his head and stood strumming one note endlessly while staring into space while the ludes melted down his face.
Is that not normal? I feel judged
Mandrax was what I read.
Yep, that's right. The qualude / benadryl combo.
Quaalude is such an awesome word it has to be spelled correctly..
A light in the eyes.
Your version is very beautiful, and I would like to believe it. But this is possible if Barrett's appearance in the studio during Pink Floyd's 1975 recording session, when he shaved off all the hair on his head, including his eyebrows, is a fiction.
Roger Waters comes across as a piece of shit to be honest. He has said some very shitty things about the other remaining Pink Floyd members. I think he's just an arrogant old goon.
That said, Barrett was highly overrated as a solo artist. I know that he seems to have a lot of fans for his solo work but I think it's just awful stuff to be honest.
Waters was on Rogan talking about Syd and he had nothing but extremely positive things to say about him. He praises his work on Pipers and I do think he called him a genius.
wow how can you listen to tunes like "here I go" and "terrapin" and call it awful stuff? absolute blasphemy
I don’t think his solo stuff is great, but the first Pink Floyd album is absolutely brilliant. It wasn’t until Meddle that they were able to make anything half as good.
I like Barret’s solo work more than anything Pink Floyd did except for Animals.
Hot tip for an Animals lover…
Les Claypool and the Frog Brigade have a sensational live cover of Animals on Spotify. It is well worth a listen.
Animals is my favorite from PF.
Yeah but the solos stuff was after he suffered the psychotic breaks. His work on Piper's is great, he had an exceptional talent for songwriting and lyrically he was like Lewis Carroll level. His songs perfectly epitomized that early psychedelic rock era. Tbh Waters never had his natural talent like Syd could write a great pop song any day of the week without trying too hard I feel like Waters is more of a grafter who has to really work at coming up with songs
I agree with your take on Rogers, he wrote some good songs but he couldn’t pump them out like Barrett or even Gilmour could. I did all 3 phases of the band, but Rogers just isn’t as solid of a songwriter or musician without a lot of backup behind him.
Lmao the guy wrote the most part of one of greatest concept albums of all time, The Wall, how the hell is that not solid? Holy hell, Waters haters are delirious sometimes
..have you seen him live?
Does anybody claim he was "driven mad?" Everything I have heard is that he had schizophrenia. Which is genetic. And may well have been accelerated by LSD.
back when i was an apprentice carpenter circa 2001 working on the student digs @ Cambridge university down Gramge road I would see him riding past on his push bike with carrier bags in tow - odd chap If it wasn't for the old boys i was learning my trade off i wouldn't have had a scooby who it was
Such a beautiful man. So effortlessly cool.
Oh great! I loved his whimsical childish songs from the first two albums. I'm glad he loved happily and not on the edge of madness the rest of his life
“Intensity of their art” is the funniest thing I’ll read today
TIL
Thank you for this….
He had a bike you could have ridden it if you had wanted to. There was also a clan of ginger bread men and a mouse called Gerald
That bike had a basket and a bell if I recall
And things to make it look good. I would lend it to you if I could, but I borrowed it.
This is an AI post? Title is butchery
Agreed. Did this happen on the 4th June, 1968, or as Americans would have it, 6th April, 1968. We’d have to look it up.
Americans would have it Month, Day, Year.
I met a guy a year or so back that said he worked in the chippy Roger (as he was now known again) frequented in his later years.
Said he was a really nice chap, and often sat and had a chat while he ate his chips.
The Madcap Laughs is a hell of an album
Gilmour had been in the band for several months at that point.
Omg. That car!!!!
Same. Is that the Lincoln Futura that was the base of the 60s Batmobile?
Edit-Dammit it's not...my bad.
Def looks it
That’s a 1959 Pontiac I personally can’t tell what version as in 1959 they had many names for that car Bonneville, Catalina, Parisienne, Laurentian, etc…
Awesome thank you for sharing
Omg he was hot
David did not replace Syd. David had been in the band for a while at that point.
No he definitely did replace Syd. He was brought in because Syd had been slipping for a while and was unreliable and trying to sabotage live performances and stuff like that.
Color tv replaced monochrome sets, but not all at once.
Not at first.
Shine on you crazy diamond
Sad what happened to Syd. He made some great music. ‘Remember a Day’ on headphones and high is a great way to spend some time
Shine On You Crazy Diamond