Syd Barrett

SYD BARRETT – Legendary PINK FLOYD Co-Founder Would Have Celebrated His 80th Birthday Today

Posted on by JL

6 January 2026

Pink Floyd‘s co-founder and main songwriter/vocalist SYD BARRETT,
real name Roger Keith Barrett) was born on 6 January 1946.

Happy 80 to the visionary musician whose promising career
was torpedoed by drug abuse and mental problems.

He co-wrote/recorded the first two Floyd albums – The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn
and A Saucerful Of Secrets – and released two solo LPs in 1970, The Madcap Laughs
and Barrett. He passed away on 7 July 2006, aged 60.

PINK FLOYD


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SOLO


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Bio – Discography

PINK FLOYD Top The UK’s Albums Charts This Xmas Day With ‘WISH YOU WERE HERE’

Posted on by JL

25 December 2025

PINK FLOYD‘s grand 9th LP WISH YOU WERE HERE
celebrated its 50th anniversary last September.

The record was a tribute to their co-founder and legendary,
unorthodox songwriterr Syd Barrett (1946-2006).

In 1968 after being in the band for 3 years, he got fired
because of his unpredictable behavior due to drug abuse.

For the occasion, new digital and physical editions were launched a couple
of weeks ago and now today on Xmas the album tops the UK Albums Charts.

Former guitarist David Gilmour celebrates the No. 1 spot.

WISH YOU WERE HERE 50


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SYD’s 2nd Solo LP ‘BARRETT’ Released 55 Years Ago Today With A Little Help Of Pink Friends

Posted on by JL

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

PINK FLOYD Released ‘WISH YOU WERE HERE’ LP 50 Years Ago Today

Posted on by JL

Significant longplayers from the past

12 September 2025

PINK FLOYD released WISH YOU WERE HERE
their 9th LP, on 12 September 1975, today
50 years ago.

The lyrics express longing, alienation, and sardonic criticism of the music industry.
The greater bulk of the record was taken up by Shine On You Crazy Diamond,
a nine-part tribute to Pink Floyd‘s flamboyant co-founder Syd Barrett who got
fired years before for his huge drug problems.

The album went to #1 in the UK as well as in the US.

The stuntman Ronnie Rondell, who was set on fire
for the LP cover, died aged 88, last August 18th.

The Village Voice wrote: “The music is not only simple and attractive, with the synthesizer used mostly for texture and the guitar breaks for comment, but it actually achieves some of
the symphonic dignity, and cross-referencing, that The Dark Side of the Moon simulated so ponderously.”

SINGLE

ALBUM


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Linktree – All Albums

SYD BARRETT – New Book On The Late PINK FLOYD Legend Out In 3 Weeks

Posted on by JL

Yesterday, this message was posted on the socials of SYD BARRETT,
the legendary co-founder and inspirator of the early Pink Floyd years.

No title, nor further info, so far.

From 1965 until 1968, he was the band’s frontman and primary songwriter,
known for his whimsical style of psychedelia and stream-of-consciousness
writing. As a guitarist, he was influential for his free-form playing and for
employing effects such as dissonance, distortion, echo, and feedback.

He got fired by the group as his increasingly erratic behaviour, partly due
to his heavy use of psychedelic drugs, got worse and worse. He developed
a blank, dead-eyed stare. Barrett did not recognize friends, and he often did
not know where he was.

When his health got somewhat better, he wrote/recorded
and released 2 solo LPs, The Madcap Laughs and Barrett.
Both came out in 1970.

BARRETT


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THE MADCAP LAUGHS


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Barrett Story

SYD BARRETT Released Second And Final Album ‘BARRETT’ 54 Years Ago Today

Posted on by JL

13 November 2024

SYD BARRETT (1946-2006), co-founder of Pink Floyd in 1965, got fired in 1968
amidst the recordings of the 2nd Floyd LP A Saucerful Of Secrets because of his
huge drug abuse. Guitarist David Gilmour was recruited to replace him for the
completion of the album.

Afterward, with his problems under control, he released two solo LPs.

His second and final one, titled simply BARRETT, came out on
13 November 1970, 54 years ago today, only 10 months after
his debut The Madcap Laughs. 

His band consisted of Humple Pie’s drummer Jerry Shirley and Floyd members Rick Wright and Dave Gilmour, who also produced the LP.  A collection of psych folk/pop musings and
I like them, on a quiet, lazy night.

Original tracklist: #1 – #12


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SB: Biography

UNCUT Magazine’s New Ultimate Music Guide – ‘FLOYD SOLO’

Posted on by JL

24 October 2024

“While it began life like a thrilling and improvised space craft, by the time of its most commercially successful work, PINK FLOYD was more like a corporation or a rebranded utility company. A highly-organized business with a streamlined visual message, not to mention a phenomenally high turnover.

As you’ll read in this new magazine, what this initially meant for the artistic aspirations
of the individual members told you a lot about the impulse to create. For David Gilmour, Richard Wright and Nick Mason solo work clearly began as a release: a break from the responsibilities of the day job.

When Roger Waters (aged 81) quit the band in 1983, however, something changed
and solo music which had previously been a pleasing distraction assumed a far more competitive edge. For Waters, the ongoing existence of a Pink Floyd without him stung him into action: if you were in any doubt about his key contributions to the Pink Floyd albums then the many renderings of the material in his solo catalogue should put you straight.

The solo music that you’ll find covered in this new magazine is important on one
level as an inverse history of Pink Floyd. But there are other reckonings going on
within it. For Roger Waters it has become a political/personal platform.

For David Gilmour (78 now) meanwhile, it has been a place to articulate himself at
his own leisurely pace, and share his thoughts on the consolations of love and family.

Most recent Pink Floyd member’s solo LP. Luck And Strange by David Gilmour.


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Keyboardist Richard Wright (28 July 1943 – 15 September 2008) and drummer Nick Mason (80) do not have a large catalogue of work, and seem to have ultimately been rather hard done by the Pink Floyd experience.

The most important solo career here, though is the one which flowered most briefly:
that of Syd Barrett. The music on his two solo albums is abstract, playful, and sometimes barely there, testament to a personality and mental health which wasn’t built to thrive within the demands of the pop business.

Syd Barrett‘s debut LP The Madcap Laughs (1970).


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You can order a copy of this guide and let it be sent to your home. Info HERE.

New SYD BARRETT Documentary Named ‘HAVE YOU GOT IT YET?’ Premiers In London Today

Posted on by JL


The previously announced docu about SYD BARRETT, the late (1946-2006),
infamous co-founder and songwriter of prog-rock titans Pink Floyd will
premier in London today, 27 April. A wider U.K. release is scheduled for
May 15.

More info here

It was Barrett who gave the group their musical moniker by combining
the names of two obscure blues players — Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.

The docu titled HAVE YOU GOT IT YET? is named after
a daft Syd written jangler that the other Floyds didn’t like.

Check it out here.

The film features new interviews with the band’s surviving members — Roger Waters (Barrett’s classmate and Pink Floyd’s co-founder), Nick Mason, and David Gilmour — to provide insight into The Piper at the Gates of Dawn mastermind’s meteoric rise, acid-fueled breakdown and eventual exile from the band.

It also includes interviews with legions of the artists inspired by Barrett’s brief tenure with the band — The Who’s Pete Townshend, Blur’s Graham Coxon and more, plus former Pink Floyd managers Peter Jenner and Andrew King, playwright Tom Stoppard and Syd’s sister Rosemary Breen.

The movie was directed by Roddy Bogawa and the late album cover designer Storm Thorgerson, who created iconic Pink Floyd covers like The Dark Side of the Moon and
Wish You Where Here. Thorgerson died in 2006.

TRAILER

The last words Barret said to a journalist who
tracked him down in the street where he lived
and asked him if he was the former Pink Floyd star.