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Joe Boyd - Syd Barrett Tried to Set us FreeThe following tribute to Syd Barrett was read by Joe Boyd at The Madcap's Last Laugh at The Barbican, London, in 2007
"So many things are impossible to imagine without Syd. The year of our Glorious Psychedelic Revolution began in August of 1966, with Pink Floyd playing those London Free School benefits in Powis Square. It ended with Syd on stage the following July, hands at his side, motionless, watching the lights play over the UFO audience, listening to the group behind him struggling to fill the void. Syd was beyond caring then. But Syd was always beyond caring – in the best possible way. Syd’s brilliant unconcern kept everyone around him honest. He didn’t care about stardom, didn’t care what the record company wanted, or the agency, or how the press or the fans told him he ought to do it. David Bowie says Syd changed his life by the way he sang Arnold Layne just as he talked, not trying to sound black, or American, or cool, just sounding like himself singing about the way the lodger’s knickers used to go missing in the Barrett backyard. Syd certainly changed the life of his fellow Floyds – he gave them escape velocity. Long after he was gone, his way with a chord and a melody shaped their music and their triumphs. They sang about him over and over again, to the millions of fans who knew the name but never heard the voice. Syd changed the lives of the Czechs of the Prague Spring that Tom Stoppard has called back to life in Rock ‘n’ Roll. Last summer, after he died, Radio 4 aired a tape of Syd being cross-examined by Hans Keller on an ITV arts programme. Forget those snatches of Syd’s voice you hear on cd bonus out-takes; Syd sounded nothing like that in the spring of 1967. He answers Keller’s questions like a man born to be a radio pundit – clear and calm with no mumbled ums and ers. The interview was filmed a few weeks before Syd changed, before he altered himself into the damaged person we now think of when we think of Syd. I remember that voice, the calm Syd voice, not upset that an ignorant interviewer doesn’t understand the Floyd’s music, perfectly at home explaining the logic of rock ‘n’ roll volume levels as if he were talking to a child. You can’t really analyze how Syd changed everything just by being Syd, but when I think back to the year in which I knew him, I can feel his ripples. Everyone at those early Floyd shows was just a bit different afterwards, you could sense it in the streets of Notting Hill. The crowds at the early UFO shows were so happy Syd was there in front of them; so many things were changing by the week, but Syd seemed untouched, the still centre around which the hurricane blew. His unconcern was the key, the way his songs were so casually offered. Which isn’t to say he didn’t yearn – he yearned for love and companionship and he was unashamed about it. Everyone yearns – he just stated it as a simple obvious fact. You’re the kind of girl that fits in with my world If you want things. Syd had nothing against people wanting things, he just didn’t seem too bothered about them himself. In 1967 we thought we were at the beginning of something, something really big. We didn’t realize we were nearing the end. Everything we created in those years of optimistic freedom wound up on a corporate website. The four doomed gastronomes in La Grande Bouffe saw it coming. Albert Ayler saw it coming. Stuart Brand and his Whole Earth Catalog – maybe - saw it coming. I think Syd saw it coming, like the small animal that runs out of the forest two days before the earthquake. Tonight, with our eyes wide open, we are commodifying Syd’s songs. We can’t help ourselves. It’s the only way we know how to reassure ourselves we really loved him. If we’re very lucky, there may come a moment tonight when performer and audience stop caring whether anyone likes it or remembers it or knows we were hip enough to be here. Maybe for an instant we’ll just be there, as if no one had ever done a tribute concert before. Syd won’t know or care, but perhaps we’ll walk just a tiny bit differently as we leave." Joe Boyd - 2007
Those Who Knew - Joe Boyd producer of Pink Floyd's first hit Arnold Layne in 1967
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