Roger "Syd" Barrett

I first started listening to Syd when I was around 16 and caddying in Oreland. Some older caddies kept talking about Pink Floyd, so I ran out and bought “The Piper At The Gates of Dawn”, and eventually bought the Syd solo albums. For those of you that don’t know much about Syd, his psychedelic sounds, wistful lyrics, and formation of Pink Floyd, check out this Wikipedia.com page: Syd Barrett.

When I heard that Syd had died today, I felt a little off about it. To me, it’s almost as if he’s been swept off the Earth years ago, somewhere in the mid-70s. Sometimes I’d catch a photo surface on the internet of Syd walking to the store, and it just didn’t look like him at all. It looked more like my Dad or something!

What’s amazing is that no one knows for certain why he stopped functioning as the leader of Pink Floyd. Was he just an acid casualty, or was it a combination of that with a mental disorder? It seems it could have happened to any of those rock icons of the late 60s.