Syd Barrett’s “genius” parting joke to Pink Floyd
The ill-fated story of Syd Barrett is up there with some of the most tragic in rock music history. Brimming with talent and sheer creative force, as Pink Floyd’s original singer and guitarist, he was one of the psychedelic era’s most prominent stars. But his stardom was short-lived, and Barrett was plagued by mental health issues that conspired to unravel his psyche.
Both Barrett and his bandmates were powerless to his slow descent, and although they were deeply troubled by his escalating mental health crisis and heavy drug use, each member did their best to keep the band intact with him in the fold. However, during Pink Floyd’s UK tour with Jimi Hendrix in 1967, David O’List from The Nice was forced to step in and cover for Barrett several times, and only a few months later, the band asked David Gilmour to join as a second guitarist to cover for Barrett’s faltering state.
Things were reaching a breaking point, and although it was apparent Barrett’s behaviour was no fault of his own, it was becoming almost impossible for him to perform live. He took to wandering around on stage or, on occasion, not showing up at all – all of which prompted the band to leave him behind on the way to a gig at Southampton University in 1968.
But again, there was an almost guilt-driven need to keep Barrett included, and the original plan was to keep him in the band as a non-touring member, much like The Beach Boys had done with Brian Wilson, but Barrett’s irrational moves in the recording studio soon scuppered that plan too.
What came to be their last practice session exemplified this erratic behaviour. According to Roger Waters, Barrett walked into the session armed with a new song. It seemed simple enough when he presented it to the band, but the practicalities proved a lot harder, verging on impossible to play. Aptly named ‘Have You Got It Yet?’, Barrett was changing the keys and arrangement as the band played, making it quickly apparent it was all an elaborate joke.
As David Gilmour described it, the song was “really just a twelve-bar, but the responses were always in the wrong places, according to [Barrett]. Some parts of his brain were perfectly intact – his sense of humour being one of them”. Waters, however, didn’t find it remotely funny, deciding he didn’t want to work with Barrett in this condition anymore. In Saucerful of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey, an exhausted Waters dubbed it a “real act of mad genius”.
While it might have been a flicker of humour amid the darkness of mental health decline, it was the last straw, and neither Pink Floyd nor Barret ever recorded the song. Gilmour joined full-time to help the band out, and as of April 1968, Barrett was officially out of the fold, his final act coming to exemplify his increasingly erratic state.
