{"id":24401,"date":"2025-09-18T21:14:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T21:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/24401\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T21:14:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T21:14:11","slug":"syd-barretts-lost-letters-uncovered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/24401\/","title":{"rendered":"Syd Barrett\u2019s Lost Letters Uncovered"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interstellar Overdrive. Flaming. Scream Thy Last Scream. Long Gone. And the alternative title of Dark Globe: Wouldn\u2019t You Miss Me. From\u00a0Pink Floyd<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn<\/a>\u00a0in 1967 to\u00a0Barrett<\/a>\u00a0in 1970, Syd Barrett\u2019s recording career only lasted three years. But within his songs, his tragic arc can be traced, from the blazing English psychedelia of\u00a0Piper\u2026\u00a0to the lost-in-the-woods acid martyrdom of his solo work and the years of absence that preceded his death in 2006.<\/p>\n

The myths around Barrett have been foaming for more than 50 years, but now fresh insights arrive with new Pink Floyd book Shine On. Subtitled The Definitive Oral History, it\u2019s written by preeminent Floyd historian and MOJO contributor Mark Blake, who has distilled a lifetime\u2019s fandom and a 33-year interviewing relationship with the band into a compelling retelling of the story, from the principals\u2019 origins to the present day. New, unpublished and rare discussions with all the main players and a dizzying plethora of intimates are now joined by something to astound: a stash of letters from Barrett to his former Cambridge girlfriend Jenny Spires, dating from January to September 1965.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Barrett’s letter to girlfriend Jenny Spires telling her Pink Floyd had split up, May 1965<\/p>\n

\u201cI met and interviewed Jenny about 15 years ago,\u201d says Blake. \u201cWe hadn\u2019t spoken for a few years, but she got in touch and said, \u2018I\u2019ve got these letters that have fallen through the cracks, they\u2019ll fill in the gaps of \u201965.\u2019 And what was such a revelation to me about them is that they actually do: you\u2019ve got Nick Mason and Roger Waters, years later, talking about trying to get on Ready, Steady, Go! and then you\u2019ve got Syd actually telling you about it in real time. He\u2019s the one person who would be underrepresented because he never gave an interview after 1971. So to have these unpublished letters is to have new interview material, effectively. I think it gives it a real lift. Everyone\u2019s talking about him, and then you\u2019ve got him talking himself.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Jenny Spires (left) and Syd Barrett in 1967.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re an honest reflection of what was going through his head as a young man,\u201d Blake continues. \u201cThere\u2019s one letter where he\u2019s slightly upset because the band had actually broken up \u2013 Nick Mason and Roger Waters were working as architects and getting on with real life, but they get together a few months later and play at a party with David Gilmour\u2019s group Jokers Wild. He talks about his first recording session as well \u2013 he hates the sound of his voice and feels quite intimidated being in a little studio in West Hampstead. There\u2019s also a lovely line which relates to sharing a room in London with Roger Waters: \u2018You can have too much of Roger, even though he\u2019s a good mate.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Relaxed, lucid and playful, this is the young Barrett in the ascendant, as alive and vivid as any of the interviewees. As well as reflecting on matters Floyd, the letters find him digging\u00a0the Small Faces<\/a>, narrating bouts of toothache and chicken pox, and employing the excellent maxim \u2018twistravegrooveygroove\u2019, and also decorating his letters with pop art graphics. \u201cIt\u2019s just a shame he didn\u2019t talk more later, or that there aren\u2019t more letters about what was going on from 1967, \u201968 onwards,\u201d says Blake, \u201cwhen things weren\u2019t going so well for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

In these carefree missives, the impending darkness of Barrett\u2019s mental illness, exacerbated by drug use, is implicit. This is a place Shine On goes to. Let go from the group in early 1968, Barrett\u2019s spectral afterlife in the saga includes turning up at Floyd studio dates in the 1970s, unreadable chance meetings with old friends, being sectioned and retreating to hermitdom in the family home in Cambridge.<\/p>\n

Another interviewee is Barrett\u2019s youngest sister Rosemary Breen, who calls him by his real name Roger rather than his nickname. \u201cTo me, that was a pivotal moment, to actually sit down and talk to a family member,\u201d says Blake. \u201cYou realise there\u2019s all this bullshit that has been built up over the years and you\u2019re confronted by a much clearer picture of the reality of it. She did say to me that her and her mum had blamed Pink Floyd in the past [for what befell Barrett], but she knew that there was a bigger problem. There\u2019s also Jenny, and Syd\u2019s other girlfriends who stayed in Cambridge, who were like, this is a guy I had a relationship with in the \u201960s, when he was this young, beautiful man, and now he\u2019s this damaged individual being shepherded around a department store by his sister, or pottering around on his bicycle, and we\u2019re told not to talk to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not saying it\u2019s completely tragic, because he functioned, but he only functioned at a level,\u201d says Blake. \u201cThe success of Pink Floyd enabled him to live a comfortable life, but he never worked again and he never had relationships again. Something had gone awry, and all of that [creative genius] just stopped. So it is very poignant, and that sense of what could have been for Syd really came home for me with the letters.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Syd Barrett’s comic drawing to Jenny Spires, September 1965.<\/p>\n

There is, of course, more to Shine On, which steers away from excessive detail to allow the conversation and impressions to flow, frequently into unexpected but illuminating directions. \u201cThis book\u2019s full of grumpy old men, so it was great to talk to the much less grumpy and sort of eternally youthful girlfriends [including Barrett\u2019s other romantic interests Libby Chisman, Vivien \u2018Twig\u2019 Brans and Lindsay Corner],\u201d says Blake. \u201cThey haven\u2019t got an agenda, they\u2019re not rushing out listening to anyone\u2019s latest album, they just judge it on how these young men were when they knew them, and that input is great.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, future Floyd live guitarist Tim Renwick remembers Barrett as his boy scout patrol leader, lyricist Nick Laird-Clowes breaks cover to recall when he told Gilmour he was going to see The Clash (the guitarist\u2019s response: \u201cWhy?\u201d) and Waters irately recalls Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor suggesting \u201cIce-T or one of those people\u201d do a rap version of a song from\u00a0The Wall\u00a0live in Berlin in 1990.<\/p>\n

Whatever the situation, it seems, Blake\u2019s been there and found articulate witnesses to talk about it, with such important but now-departed voices as Wright, designer Storm Thorgerson, Barrett\u2019s artist pal Duggie Fields, counterculture catalyst John \u2018Hoppy\u2019 Hopkins and many more all present. Consequently, the familiar tale is reinvigorated, as we look upon post-Barrett transition and experiment, the huge coming-into-being of\u00a0The Dark Side Of The Moon<\/a>, Wish You Were Here\u00a0and\u00a0The Wall, on to serious money, fracture in the \u201980s and its aftermath. The band\u2019s non-communicating chemistry is also laid bare, and the dictatorial Waters emerges unsympathetically. When co-producer Bob Ezrin reacts to Waters\u2019 attempt to bully him with \u201cRead my lips, motherfucker. You cannot talk to me like that,\u201d the reader might feel like cheering.<\/p>\n

Another motivation for the book, says Blake, is that the end is closer than the beginning. \u201cThey\u2019ve sold their catalogue to Sony, which we talk about in the book,\u201d he says. \u201cI think there\u2019s a feeling that they\u2019re letting it go, and a sense of relief that they\u2019re no longer shackled to this beast. There\u2019s also an element of wanting a final word \u2013 certainly in\u00a0David Gilmour<\/a>\u2019s case, to right a few wrongs and explain that his contribution was greater than it was sometimes made out to be, rather than the idea that it was Roger Waters that did it all. It will be really interesting to see how things pan out over the next few years, because Sony paid a fortune. It\u2019s not going to lie dormant, is it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Shine On will at least tie up the band\u2019s direct involvement in Pink Floyd, and ultimately the art, triumphs and sublime madness of their self-contained world should outweigh mortal rancour. \u201cIt\u2019s easy to think that with all the bile and drivel that\u2019s gone on that there was never any companionship or joy to be shared amongst us,\u201d says Gilmour, who admits he used Syd Barrett\u2019s birdfeeder in his garden for a while. \u201cBut there certainly was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pink Floyd Shine On: The Definitive Oral History by Mark Blake is published by New Modern on October 9.<\/p>\n

ORDER: Amazon<\/a> | Rough<\/a>Trade<\/a> | Waterstones<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Main picture: Pink Floyd in 1967 (credit: Chris Walter\/WireImage)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Interstellar Overdrive. Flaming. Scream Thy Last Scream. Long Gone. And the alternative title of Dark Globe: Wouldn\u2019t You…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409],"class_list":["post-24401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}