Every Moment Has A Song

(Answered by Nick Ford)

This is the famous picture of Syd, taken when he walked into the Abbey Road studios while Pink Floyd were recording “Wish You Were Here”. Bloated, with shaven head and eyebrows, for a time he was unrecognized by his old bandmates only 6 or so years after leaving the band. Syd himself had ceased to make any sort of recorded music after 1974.

During and after this unfortunate encounter, Syd lived in a succession of London hotels, spending money on anything and everything, and often gifting his acquisitions to the staff.

Syd found communication with the band and his old life to be too upsetting and emotionally disturbing. He had a chance 1977 encounter with Roger Waters in the exclusive department store Harrods, as Roger recalled – “but we didn’t speak – he sort of scuttled away.” Apparently, Syd would buy sweets (candy) there, and this wordless meeting was disturbing enough for him to drop his purchases and flee.

When eventually the money ran out, he gave away all his possessions, leaving only a bag of dirty laundry, and walked the 50 miles back to his home town of Cambridge to live with his mother. He dropped “Syd” and returned to using his original name, Roger.

He would slam the door in the face of anyone looking for “Syd”.

Even though they never talked or met again after mid 1975, David Gilmour quietly made sure that his old friend Syd’s financial needs were taken care of until the day he died. As well as ensuring that royalties were getting paid, he would also insist on a Syd song being included on any PF compilation to ensure an income stream.

Syd lived out the rest of his life in a modest Cambridge house, decorated in a highly eccentric style, enjoying painting and DIY (as you can see in the video, with rather mixed results). His siblings kept a reasonably close eye on him until his death from pancreatic cancer in 2006. His last years were plagued with health issues- diabetes and stomach ulcers.

He watched a BBC documentary on himself, but didn’t like it. His sister reported that “He came to watch it with me. He didn’t enjoy it. He didn’t like it – he didn’t quite know what was going on, I don’t think. He just said, ‘It’s very noisy. The music’s very noisy.’”

Despite refusing all contact with most people from his past, and anyone associated with the music industry in general, in 2002, he surprisingly agreed to sign 320 copies of Mick Rock’s book of photographs called “Psychedelic Renegades”. As he no longer used the name Syd, he simply signed them “Barrett”.

His family always denied he had any form of mental illness, insisting that he lived his life as he saw fit, and didn’t feel the need to conform to others’ expectations.