13 November 2025

Pink Floyd‘s co-founder and confused genius SYD BARRETT (1946-2006)
released his 2nd and final solo album, simply called BARRETT 50 years ago.

It was produced by PF’s guitarist David Gilmour and keyboardist Richard Wright.

Wright: “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 about his 2 solo longplayers: “They’ve got to reach a certain standard and that’s probably reached in Madcap once or twice and on the other one only a little – just an echo
of that. Neither of them are much more than that.”

Barrett himself designed the LP’s cover.
The album didn’t chart. All fans had
forgotten about their former idol.

AllMusic: “Instrumentally, the result is a bit fuller and smoother than the first album,
although it’s since been revealed that Gilmour and Wright embellished these songs as
best they could without much involvement from Barrett, who was often unable or
unwilling to perfect his performance.

It was regarded as something of a charming but unfocused throwaway at the time
of its release, but Barrett’s singularly whimsical and unsettling vision holds up well.”

Turn Up The Volume: Probably still with his head in the clouds, Barrett showed
his songwriting skills again and recorded them with two Pink Floyds. A mix of folk,
pop, and psych-rock twists. Too bad it was already over after this second and final
studio LP. Wish the crazy diamond had produced some more magic. R.I.P.

ALBUM

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Biography – Discography