‘Have You Got It Yet?’: The final song Syd Barrett presented to Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd were a force like no other in psychedelia and progressive rock, carving out sprawling, spacey soundscapes and earning themselves a place as one of the most influential bands of all time. In the beginning, that sonic experimentation and rambly songwriting was driven by co-founder and frontman Syd Barrett.
Barrett’s major contributions to the legacy of the band were apparent very early on when he came up with the name Pink Floyd Sound in 1965. Replacing a myriad of forgettable and substandard name changes, including the Screaming Abdabs and the Meggadeaths, the legacy of Pink Floyd began.
Throughout his three-year stint with the band, Barrett would contribute his unique guitar skills and distinctive voice to their first two records, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and A Saucerful of Secrets, before he departed from the band. As the decade neared its end, Barrett became plagued by mental health issues and the effects of years of psychedelic drug use.
No longer able to grip a plectrum and sometimes dipping out on shows completely, Barrett’s time with Pink Floyd came to an expected end in 1968, but not before the frontman gifted them one last song in their final practice session. ‘Have You Got It Yet?’ contained all the experimental sensibilities Barrett had always displayed, which he used to vex his bandmates in the practice room.
The songwriter refused to allow his collaborators to learn the song, changing it incessantly as they tried to practice alongside him. His intention, it seemed, was that his bandmates would never “get it”. Bassist and vocalist Roger Waters was so infuriated by the frontman’s antics that he abandoned the practice session and, with it, his working relationship with Barrett. He later dubbed the moment a “real act of mad genius” in Saucerful of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey.
Guitarist David Gilmour has also spoken about the experience, suggesting that the song was “really just a twelve-bar, but the responses were always in the wrong places, according to [Barrett].” Still, he seemed to hold less animosity towards his bandmate, joking, “Some parts of his brain were perfectly intact – his sense of humour being one of them.”
Not long after, in the spring of 1968, the band announced Barrett’s departure as he went on to embark upon a solo career. The song remained unfinished and unrecorded, perhaps as Barrett intended, and marked the final song Barrett presented to Pink Floyd before he left the band, only giving its name to a biopic over 50 years later.
