Revist Roger Waters’ review of Syd Barrett’s solo debut ‘The Madcap Laughs’
While Pink Floyd enjoyed their most successful run through the 1970s, with bassist Roger Waters at the creative wheel, when they found their footing in the mid-1960s, it was all about Syd Barrett.
Under Barrett’s captaincy, Pink Floyd emerged as one of the earliest and most prominent psychedelic rock bands of the era. By 1967, they enjoyed seam-splitting popularity across the London scene with their first singles ‘Arnold Layne’ and ‘See Emily Play’. These were shortly followed by an appearance on the BBC’s Top of the Pops and their seminal debut album, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn.
With their popularity rising handsomely, Pink Floyd looked ready to take on the global arena, but sadly, Barrett’s mental state had been deteriorating rapidly over the summer of ‘67 due to his heavy use of psychedelic drugs. By the end of the year, the band brought in guitarist David Gilmour who would take the reins as Barrett became increasingly estranged and unreliable.
Barrett was finally ousted from the band in April 1968 after his bandmates saw no way of continuing with his diminished contribution and unreliability. Following a year out for reflection and recuperation, Barrett embarked on a short-lived solo career, having signed a new deal with EMI.
The catalogue of Barrett’s solo endeavours started and stopped with two studio albums released in 1970, The Madcap Laughs and its follow-up Syd Barrett. For these solo exploits, Barrett was reunited with his former Pink Floyd bandmates, David Gilmour, Roger Waters and Richard Wright, who took on production duties amid their work on Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother.
“Doing Syd’s record was interesting, but extremely difficult,” Rick Wright recalled in his Broken China press interview in 1996. “Dave and Roger 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.”
“[The sessions] were pretty tortuous and very rushed,” Gilmour recalled, per Barrett: The Definitive Visual Companion to the Life of Syd Barrett. “We had very little time, particularly with The Madcap Laughs. Syd was very difficult, we got that very frustrated feeling: Look, it’s your fucking 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.”
In January 1970, Waters was invited to review some of the month’s singles for Melody Maker’s ‘Blind Dates’ feature. During his visit to the magazine’s headquarters, the Pink Floyd bassist offered his opinions on Black Sabbath’s ‘Evil Woman’, Canned Heat’s ‘Let’s Work Together’, Barrett’s ‘Terrapin’ and Flaming Youth’s (Phil Collins’ early group) ‘Guide Me Orion’, among others.
None of the records received quite the same level of praise and genuine adoration as Barrett’s ‘Terrapin’. “This is a track I didn’t produce because it didn’t need anything doing to it,” Waters started. “This song makes everything else you have played me look completely sick and silly. I think this is very beautiful. Don’t take it off, I’m going to listen to it all the way through.”
“I think it’s a great song,” he added. “In fact, all the songs on this album are great. No, some of them on it are GREAT in capital letters, and all of them are good. Syd is a genius.”
Listen to Syd Barrett’s “beautiful” song, ‘Terrapin’, from The Madcap Laughs below.
