Syd Barrett article

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   I thought this was a neat article about Syd, and that maybe some of you would like to see it.  Cheers.

My lovably ordinary 
		brother Syd

        Tim Willis - The Times - 
		July 16, 2006

        The ‘crazy diamond’ founder of Pink Floyd was no 
		acid casualty or recluse. He loved art and DIY, his sister Rosemary 
		tells his biographer Tim Willis in her first interview for 30 years

        When the death of 60-year-old Roger “Syd” Barrett 
		was announced on Tuesday, the media raised an astonishing last hurrah 
		for the founder of Pink Floyd, the “crazy diamond” who had shunned the 
		public gaze for decades. 

		The descriptions of him as a “mad genius”, “recluse” and “acid casualty” 
		were far off the mark, however, according to his sister Rosemary. 

		When I wrote Barrett’s biography, Madcap, four years ago I had 
		off-the-record guidance from Rosemary — his junior by two years and 
		closest friend. Last week, after his death, we spoke again and this time 
		she went on the record — the first time she has given a press interview 
		for more than 30 years. 

		She described him as a loving man who “simply couldn’t understand” the 
		continued interest in his distant Pink Floyd years and was too absorbed 
		in his own thoughts to spare time for fans. 

		While her account is naturally fond, one should remember that she has 
		spent much of her working life as a nurse and therefore sees no stigma 
		in mental illness. As children, she and Barrett shared a bedroom and she 
		recalls him leaping from his sheets to conduct an imaginary orchestra. 
		He always had an extraordinary mind, bordering on the autistic or 
		Aspergic. He had a rare talent to exploit ambiguities in language and 
		also experienced synaesthesia — the ability to “see sounds and hear 
		colours” — which was to be a huge influence on his music in his 
		psychedelic phase. 

		As a performing artist, signed to a label, he was under enormous strain. 
		Not only did he find fame a two-edged sword, he was also deeply 
		resistant to his record company’s commercial demands. He was run ragged. 
		Between January 1966, when the Floyd turned professional, and January 
		1968, Barrett played 220 gigs around Britain — not to mention 
		broadcasting and performances abroad — as well as writing, recording and 
		co-producing two hit singles, most of the band’s first album and part of 
		the second. 

		While his enthusiastic ingestion of any drugs available might have 
		triggered some disturbing behaviour, such stress might tip anyone into 
		nervous collapse. 

		From 1981, when he returned from London to the suburbs of his native 
		Cambridge, resumed the name Roger and set up home in his mother’s modest 
		semi, he made faltering but significant progress. 

		Rosemary is adamant that he neither suffered from mental illness nor 
		received treatment for it at any time since they resumed regular contact 
		25 years ago. At first he did spend some time in a private “home for 
		lost souls” — Greenwoods in Essex — but she says there was no formal 
		therapy programme there. (“And besides, he didn’t mix, because he was 
		very content to be basket weaving and making things.”) Later he agreed 
		to some sessions with a psychiatrist at Fulbourn psychiatric hospital, 
		Cambridge, but neither medication nor therapy was considered 
		appropriate. 

		He might have continued to find social interaction difficult — when I 
		knocked on his door while writing my book he greeted me in his 
		underpants and avoided conversation by saying that he was just looking 
		after the house — but the idea that he “didn’t recognise he was Syd” is 
		nonsense. His troubled years had been so painful that even thinking 
		about his former incarnation upset him, so he made a conscious effort to 
		avoid that trap. 

		Because he was so interested in his own thoughts, his sister said, he 
		often forgot about the mundane chores essential to comfort. To keep an 
		eye on him, she would visit or phone every day and sometimes accompany 
		him on expeditions into town. 

		Earlier this year an old friend saw the pair in Robert Sayles, the 
		Cambridge department store, and went up to renew their acquaintance. 
		“Hello, Syd,” he said. “Do you remember me?” 

		“Yup,” replied Barrett. But Rosemary cut in with “Roger is only 
		interested in buying some ties today”, and led her brother away. Now she 
		admits she might have been over-protective. 

      Barrett lived in the semi 
		with his mother until her death in 1991 and then remained there alone. 
		“So much of his life was boringly normal,” said Rosemary. “He looked 
		after himself and the house and garden. He went shopping for basics on 
		his bike — always passing the time of day with the local shopkeepers — 
		and he went to DIY stores like B&Q for wood, which he brought home to 
		make things for the house and garden. 

		“Actually, he was a hopeless handyman, he was always laughing at his 
		attempts, but he enjoyed it. Then there was his cooking. Like everyone 
		who lives on their own, he sometimes found that boring but he became 
		good at curries. 

		“When Roger was working he liked to listen to jazz tapes. Thelonious 
		Monk, Django Reinhardt, Charlie Parker and Miles Davis were his 
		favourites — he always found something new in them — but apart from the 
		early Rolling Stones, he’d lost interest in pop music a long time ago.

		“As for a television or radio, he didn’t feel the need to own one 
		because he didn’t want to waste any energy concentrating on it. It’s not 
		that he couldn’t apply his mind. He read very deeply about the history 
		of art and actually wrote an unpublished book about it, which I’m too 
		sad to read at the moment. But he found his own mind so absorbing that 
		he didn’t want to be distracted. 

		“He did have leisure interests. He took up photography, and sometimes we 
		went to the seaside together. Quite often he took the train on his own 
		to London to look at the major art collections — and he loved flowers. 
		He made regular trips to the Botanic Gardens and to the dahlias at 
		Anglesey Abbey, near Lode. But of course, his passion was his painting.

		“Roger worked in a variety of styles — though he admired no one after 
		the impressionists — and you could say he came up with his own type of 
		conceptual art. He would photograph a particular flower and paint a 
		large canvas from the photograph. Then he would make a photographic 
		record of the picture before destroying the canvas. In a way, that was 
		very typical of his approach to life. Once something was over, it was 
		over. He felt no need to revisit it. 

		“That’s why he avoided contact with journalists and fans. He simply 
		couldn’t understand the interest in something that had happened so long 
		ago and he wasn’t willing to interrupt his own musings for their sake. 
		After a while he and I stopped discussing the times he was bothered. We 
		both knew what we thought and we simply had nothing more to add. It 
		became easiest to pretend those incidents never happened and just blank 
		them out. 

		“Roger may have been a bit selfish — or rather self-absorbed — but when 
		people called him a recluse they were really only projecting their own 
		disappointment. He knew what they wanted but he wasn’t willing to give 
		it to them. 

		“Roger was unique; they didn’t have the vocabulary to describe him and 
		so they pigeonholed him. If only they had seen him with children. His 
		nieces and nephews, the kids in the road — he would have them in 
		stitches. He could talk at length and he played with words in a way that 
		children instinctively appreciated, even if it sometimes threw adults.”

		He was quite a sharp dresser, too. “He didn’t follow fashion — he just 
		bought what he liked for himself — but he liked to look presentable. His 
		clothes were always clean and pressed. In fact, if he had an obsession, 
		it was with that.” 

		Barrett suffered from stomach ulcers for 30 years — which he managed by 
		drinking milk — and also developed diabetes. “But he simply refused to 
		admit it to himself. For days at a time he wouldn’t take his pills — 
		which, being a nurse, could have worried me. But to be honest, it can’t 
		have been very severe because he never showed any ill effects.” 

		What he did show, she said, was love: “I gave it to him and he gave it 
		to me. He was incredibly supportive when our mother died. And in the 
		past week I’ve been surprised to learn how popular he was with the local 
		tradesmen. He was simply a very lovable person. 

		“He showed his personality in lots of different ways — which some 
		outsiders found confusing — but underneath he was solid as a rock. It 
		may have been a responsibility to look out for him, but it was never a 
		burden.”