barrett

Syd Barrett went wondering, stumbling, fumbling, rumbling astray in the su-perlative  spastic seething of this effervescent enmeshing of a party of clowns.   He had worked with five different producers over a year in the recording of his solo debut 'The Mapcap Laughs'; but the album garnished enough interest to convince EMI to approve a followup.  After an appearance with the rhythm section of David Gilmour and Jerry Shirley on  John Peel's Top Gear radio show, work began at Abbey Road in late February of 1970, only a month after the release of 'The Mapcap Laughs'.     Gilmour produced the sessions that featured  Syd Barrett on guitars, lead and backing vocals;   David Gilmour on production, bass guitar, organ (second organ on "It Is Obvious" and "Gigolo Aunt", "Wined and Dined"), drums ("Dominoes"), and 12-string guitar;   Richard Wright on piano, harmonium, and Hammond organ;   Vic Saywell on tuba;   Jerry Shirley  and   John "Willie" Wilson  on drums and percussion;  and  with  Peter Bown engineering.    Work on 'Barrett' was suspended between February and April while Pink Floyd completed work on Atom Heart Mother.

Gilmour looks back:  "Those sessions were done so quickly. We were rushing to gigs every day and had to fit recording sessions in between. I probably took it away to have a listen and simply forgot to take it back. It wasn't intended to be a final mix. Syd knocked it off, I took a tape home ... We really had basically three alternatives at that point, working with Syd. One, we could actually work with him in the studio, playing along as he put down his tracks – which was almost impossible, though we succeeded on 'Gigolo Aunt'. The second was laying down some kind of track before and then having him play over it. The third was him putting his basic ideas down with just guitar and vocals and then we'd try and make something out of it."

Barrett would later admit:   "It would be terrific to do much more mood stuff. They’re very pure, you know, the words… I feel I’m jabbering. I really think the whole thing is based on me being a guitarist and having done the last thing about two or three years ago in a group around England and Europe and The States, and then coming back and hardly having done anything, so I don’t really know what to say. I feel, perhaps, I could be claimed as being redundant almost. I don’t feel active, and that my public conscience is fully satisfied...[I wouldn't say that I'm a difficult person to get on with]. Probably my own impatience is the only thing, because it has to be very easy. You can play guitar in your canteen, you know, your hair might be longer, but there’s a lot more to playing than travelling around universities and things."


Shirley says: "[Syd] would never play the same tune twice. Sometimes Syd couldn't play anything that made sense; other times what he'd play was absolute magic."


Wright recalls:    "Doing Syd's record was interesting, but extremely difficult. Dave [Gilmour] and Roger [Waters] did the first one (The Madcap Laughs) and Dave and myself did the second one. But by then it was just trying to help Syd any way we could, rather than worrying about getting the best guitar sound. You could forget about that! It was just going into the studio and trying to get him to sing."

Barrett would reflect on his separation from the Pink Floyd:    "Their choice of material was always very much to do with what they were thinking as architecture students. Rather unexciting people, I would’ve thought, primarily. I mean, anybody walking into an art school like that would’ve been tricked maybe they were working their entry into an art school...But the choice of material was restricted, I suppose, by the fact that both Roger [Waters] and I wrote different things. We wrote our own songs, played our own music. They were older, by about two years, I think. I was 18 or 19. I don’t know that there was really much conflict, except that perhaps the way we started to play wasn’t as impressive as it was to us, even, wasn’t as full of impact as it might’ve been. I mean, it was done very well, rather than considerably exciting. One thinks of it all as a dream...It wasn’t really a war. I suppose it was really just a matter of being a little offhand about things. We didn’t feel there was one thing which was gonna make the decision at the minute. I mean, we did split up, and there was a lot of trouble. I don’t think the Pink Floyd had any trouble, but I had an awful scene, probably self-inflicted, having a mini and going all over England and things. Still…The general concept, I didn’t feel so conscious of it as perhaps I should. I mean, one’s position as a member of London’s young people’s, I dunno what you’d call it underground wasn’t it, wasn’t necessarily realized and felt, I don’t think, especially from the point of view of groups."

'Barrett' came out in November of 1970 on Harvest in the UK and Capitol in the US; but it never charted.  









http://www.sydbarrett.com/


http://sydbarrett.net/


lyrics:
http://www.pink-floyd.org/barrett/sydlyrics.html#barrettalbum






"Gigolo Aunt" was based on Jeff Beck's "Hi Ho Silver Lining".


Grooving around in a trench coat
with the satin on trail
Seems to be all around its tin and lead pail, we pale 
Jiving on down to the beach
to see the blue and the gray
seems to be all and it's rosy-it's a beautiful day!

Will you please keep on the track
'cause I almost want you back
'cause I know what you are
you are a gigolo aunt, you're a gigolo aunt!
Yes I know what you are
you are a gigolo aunt, you're a gigolo aunt!

Heading on down with the light, the dust in your way
she was angrier there, than her watershell male
life to this love to me - heading me down to me
thunderbird shale
seems to be all and it's rosy - it's a beautiful day!
will you please keep on the track
'cause I almost want you back
'cause I know what you are
you are a gigolo aunt, you are a gigolo aunt 
Yes I know what you are
you are a gigolo aunt, you're a gigolo aunt!

Grooving on down in a knapsack su-perlative day
some wish she move and change as she kind move jiving away
she made the scene should have been su-perlative day
everything's all and it's rosy, it's a beautiful day
will you please keep on the track
'cause I almost want you back
'cause I know what you are
you are a gigolo aunt, you are a gigolo aunt 
Yes I know what you are

you are a gigolo aunt, you're a gigolo aunt!



"Dominoes"  






"Effervescing Elephant"  


An Effervescing Elephant
with tiny eyes and great big trunk
once whispered to the tiny ear
the ear of one inferior
that by next June he'd die, oh yeah!
because the tiger would roam.
The little one said: "Oh my goodness I must stay at home!
and every time I hear a growl
I'll know the tiger's on the prowl
and I'll be really safe, you know
the elephant he told me so."
Everyone was nervy, oh yeah!
and the message was spread
to zebra, mongoose, and the dirty hippopotamus
who wallowed in the mud and chewed
his spicy hippo-plankton food
and tended to ignore the word
preferring to survey a herd
of stupid water bison, oh yeah!
And all the jungle took fright,
and ran around for all the day and the night
but all in vain, because, you see,
the tiger came and said: "Who me?!
You know, I wouldn't hurt not one of you.
I'd much prefer something to chew
and you're all too scant." oh yeah!
He ate the Elephant





'Barrett'
full album:




Original release

Side one

1. "Baby Lemonade"   4:10
2. "Love Song"    3:03
3. "Dominoes"  4:08
4. "It Is Obvious"   2:59
5. "Rats"   3:00
6. "Maisie"  2:51

Side two
7. "Gigolo Aunt"   5:46
8. "Waving My Arms in the Air"   2:09
9. "I Never Lied to You"   1:50
10. "Wined and Dined"   2:58
11. "Wolfpack"   3:41
12. "Effervescing Elephant"   1:52

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv2oGElmoUBkAlynlC-ZioB9Ww8LHCEIy








Barrett's only solo performance, at the Kensington Olympia on June 6, 1970



1. Terrapin 0:00
2. Gigolo Aunt 4:15
3. Effervescing Elephant 9:04
4. Octopus 10:25





Radio One 16 February 1971 session


1. Terrapin - 0:00
2. Gigolo Aunt - 3:09
3. Baby Lemonade - 6:51
4. Effervescing Elephant - 9:27
5. Two of a Kind - 10:30
6. Baby Lemonade - 13:03
7. Dominoes - 15:27
8. Love Song - 18:30

the madcap laughs

Syd Barrett cried in his tattooed brain and painted a mystic shining dream dragon inside of a yummy winking nocturne.  Roger Keith "Syd" Barrett had started Pink Floyd with childhood friend Roger Waters; and had been the driving creative force behind their debut album 'The Piper at the Gates of Dawn'; but, by the time of their second album, 'A Saucerful of Secrets',  his erratic behavior had led the rest of the band fire him.  The management team of Peter Jenner and Andrew King followed him and Jenner produced the early sessions for Barrett's solo debut at  EMI Studios on Abbey Road from May through July in 1969.  Shortly thereafter, Barrett broke up with his  girlfriend Lindsay Corner and took a tour around the UK in his car, eventually winding up in psychiatric care in Cambridge.  Jenner and Norman Smith (the producer for Pink Floyd) had both refused to work with Syd, but Malcolm Jones stepped up to the plate and sessions resumed in April of 1969.  That is, until Barrett followed Pink Floyd on their trip to Ibiza.  It was there that he convinced his replacement David Gilmour to help finish the album during June and July.   

Jenner looks back:  "As time’s gone on and I’ve worked with other musicians, I’ve realised more and more what a genius Syd was. That’s not just some rosy glow for the obituaries. It’s a reflection of how much influence he had and how Pink Floyd remained his band throughout, even after he’d gone and they were doing their own thing. The band revolved around him and his spirit remained central, even after he went...Some of his best work was in those last songs he wrote for the Floyd, like ‘Jugband Blues’. They were blinding songs, painful and true, like a Van Gogh painting. When the split came there was never any question in my mind that I wouldn’t go with Syd. I wasn’t a very good businessman and that decision tells you a lot about me. But Syd was the genius in the band in terms of the music and I was going to stick with him."

Gilmour recalls: "[The sessions] were pretty tortuous and very rushed. We had very little time, particularly with The Madcap Laughs. Syd was very difficult, we got that very frustrated feeling: Look, its your f ucking career, mate. Why don't you get your finger out and do something? The guy was in trouble, and was a close friend for many years before then, so it really was the least one could do." 

'The Madcap Laughs' features Syd Barrett on guitar, vocals, and production;   David Gilmour on bass, 12-string acoustic guitar, drums, and production;   Jerry Shirley on drums and bass;  Willie Wilson on bass and drums;   Robert Wyatt on drums;   Hugh Hopper on bass;   and Mike Ratledge on keyboards;  with additional production by Peter Jenner, Malcolm Jones, and Roger Waters;  and engineering by Phil McDonald, Peter Mew, Mike Sheady, Jeff Jarratt, and Tony Clark.    Mick Rock did the photography;  and Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell of Hipgnosis did the cover designs.  'The Madcap Laughs' went to number forty on the UK album chart.  

Barrett would express:  "I've spent a long time doing it - since I left the group. But it was done at a reasonable pace.  Yes, my time has been fairly well spent since leaving. I haven't had a particularly hard time and I was okay for money. I've heard of a few plans for me to do some appearances but there is nothing positive enough to talk about. There are vague ideas about a group as well.  I've just spent my time writing fairly regularly. I've certainly not been bored and there are still a lot of things to do. When I was with the Floyd the form of the music played on stage was mainly governed by the records. Now I seem to have got back to my previous state of mind. With the volume used, they inclined to push me a little.  Yes, there were hang-ups when I was with them, although it was not due to the traveling or anything, which you just put in the category of being a regular activity in that kind of job...I always find recording difficult. I can only think in terms of, well, 'I'm pleased with forty minutes of sound', but I can't in terms of the music industry. It's only a beginning, I've written a lot more stuff...'Octopus' is a particular example of recording being discussed as something exceptional because it takes an unusual metre. I don't read much, but I think I picked up Shakespeare as a book that just happened to be lying there to read. It was meant to be verse. I like to have really exciting, colourful songs. I can't really sing, but I enjoy it, and I enjoy writing from experiences. Some are so powerful they are ridiculous. The straight scene is the best.  What happened at Tottenham Court Road when we started was a microcosm of what happened later. I think pop today is a bit difficult to take in some ways - but it's fine. I've never felt I have been left behind. I'd like to play sometime on the scene. Got to do something. It would be a splendid thing to get a band together."






http://www.sydbarrett.com/


lyrics:
http://www.sydbarrett.net/subpages/lyrics/madcaplaughs_lyrics.htm





'The Madcap Laughs'
full album:




All songs written by Syd Barrett, except "Golden Hair" (music by Barrett, based on a poem by James Joyce)
00:00 Terrapin
05:03 No Good Trying
08:26 Love You
10:57 No Man's Land
14:01 Dark Globe
16:03 Here I Go
19:14 Octopus
23:02 Golden Hair
25:00 Long Gone
27:51 She Took A Long Cold Look 
29:47 Feel
31:57 If It's In You
34:30 Late Night