Back in 1965, art student Syd Barrett joined his college buddies' band and renamed them "the Pink Floyd Sound." Barrett wasn't interested in playing normal rock music. He wanted to create sounds that felt like dreams. His guitar experiments and fairy-tale lyrics turned Pink Floyd into pioneers of psychedelic rock.
"Arnold Layne," their first hit, told the story of a man who steals women's clothes from laundry lines. Their next single, "See Emily Play," featured Barrett singing about a mysterious girl in a dreamlike voice over swirling, hypnotic music. Music writers described Barrett's Pink Floyd as having a "darkly whimsical English eccentricity."
But when recording their second album, Barrett's behavior became frightening and unpredictable. "There was no doubt that Syd was schizophrenic, and that he was taking those drugs at the same time," his bandmate Roger Waters explained years later. Barrett would stand motionless during entire concerts, staring blankly at the audience. Other times, he'd suddenly start playing random notes or pull bizarre pranks that left everyone confused and worried.
The band faced an impossible choice. Barrett had written almost all their songs and was their creative genius, but his mental illness made it nearly impossible to work with him. They even considered keeping him as a hidden songwriter who would never perform live, but eventually made the heartbreaking decision to kick him out entirely.
That's when Pink Floyd 2.0 was born. Without Barrett's whimsical stories and experimental sounds, the remaining members transformed into something totally different — the Pink Floyd that created The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, albums that sold millions of copies worldwide. Meanwhile, Barrett retreated to his mother's house, where he spent the next 40 years as a reclusive gardener, painting and avoiding all contact with his former life until he died in 2006.
[Via Open Culture]
