In a Bentley to Southampton: The night Pink Floyd changed forever
There comes a moment when everything changes. A couple sat on a park bench, a distance apart but caught in heavy conversation; an ambulance siren; an election. Or, in this case, a band in the back of a Bentley. That was where it all changed for Pink Floyd.
In the world of Pink Floyd, the luxury of this setting feels strange. This was right at the start, before The Dark Side of The Moon shot them to whole new scales or The Wall built their empire even bigger. Before all of that, they were merely a band quickly earning themselves a cult following as word of mouth spread quick about their impressive live shows and unique energy.
But the exact thing that impressed people was also destined to be the thing that jeopardised Pink Floyd.
Syd Barrett was the thing that first drew people to the band. Formed in his image, they were led by his inner creative world that poured out through his lyricism. With him at the helm, they were a woozy psychedelic bunch that merged his poetry with boundaryless instrumentals. But the complexity that makes his art great also seemed to be the thing that became too much when he spiralled further and further into drug use and became more and more unreliable.
It hit a point where Barrett couldn’t really do anything. He couldn’t remember his songs, he couldn’t play his parts, he couldn’t be trusted to show up for rehearsals or even for gigs, at least in any fit state to perform. It only kept getting worse until eventually, the rest of the band knew something needed to change. However, that moment came in perhaps the most callous way possible.
“There’s a famous story about Syd being phased out of the band in 1968. You were all in a van, going to a gig in Southampton…” Guitar World asked David Gilmour in 1993. That wasn’t true, though, as Gilmour had to correct them with a worse story: “Not in a van, no. In a Bentley”.
With the band taking off more and more, things were getting plush. Right as Barrett was spiralling further into madness, the band’s world was getting more luxurious. Meaning that the moment the rest chose to leave him behind happened in a nice car, driving them down the motorway as they simply decided to not pick up their singer.
“Someone probably said, ‘Shall we go and pick up Syd?’ And Roger probably said [in conspirational tones], ‘Oh no, let’s not!’ And off we went down to Southampton,” Gilmour recalled, and that was it. In the back of a Bentley, musical history changed forever when Pink Floyd drove on without their original leader.
It was a move that, in hindsight, they came to be remorseful about. “I think looking back now, what’s rather sad is how little we understood or knew how to deal with it. And it’s not that we were unsympathetic, but I just don’t think we had a clue as to what was happening or why it was happening,” Nick Mason said, blaming their callousness on their times and the lack of understanding of mental health as they drove off and left him on his own.
