Syd Barrett guitar style

With the possible exception of “I Heard Her Call My Name”, last week’s solos are fairly unlike anything else by the people who played them. Syd Barrett and Captain Beefheart on the other hand, maintained their idiosyncratic and bizarre approach over a long period of time, and succeeded in saying more than most with the rock medium.

Not that Beefheart’s a guitarist, but the consistency and “un-learning” apparent in three of the players he’s worked with “Zoot Horn Rollo”, “Antennae Jimmy Semens” and “Winged Eel Fingerling” must largely stem from his manic energy and vision; ditto the work of the original Pink Floyd with regard to Barrett.

Plenty of people write about Barrett’s brilliant songwriting, tediously discuss his mental state, or argue about whether his departure from the Floyd made or broke them musically; but few acknowledge the fact of his being a great and inspired guitar player.

Much of his reputation in this respect must obviously rest on early live appearances, I was never fortunate enough to see him in action at that time, but I’m told he was utterly amazing – a revolutionary source of electronic racket.

However, there’s quite enough evidence on half a dozen recorded tracks to convince me of his importance. It matters little to what extent Syd was in control of what he was doing, and there are conflicting reports, but the results have an extraordinary originality, urgency and expressiveness.

Surprisingly, he has something in common with many of those I’ve mentioned already, notably Jeff Beck and Pete Townshend. For example there’s the unity of spirit between the song-writing and the guitar accompaniment, the clear conception of sound and the drawing on the Instrumental tradition in, say, the introduction to “Lucifer Sam”. Or the occasional surfacing of blues influences, the best instance of which is in the way “Smoklestack Lightning” becomes “Candy And The Current Bun”.

Aside from these basics, one should take into account the innovative use of slide, emulated only by a studious Dave Gilmour; brilliant and painful wah-wah playing; violent treble feedback and a disjointed, aggressive rhythm style.

His rhythm playing is in fact quite spectacular. One of the most telling moments on “Piper At The Gates Of Dawn” occurs on Roger Waters’ “Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk”, a fairly straight song built around a single descending chord phrase. The number consists largely of a long 4/4 jam in the middle during which a weird struggle takes place between on the right, a charmingly inept blues clichés on the bagpipe stop of the Farfisa organ, and on the left a non-stop barrage of clipped rhythmic noise from a Mr Barrtett, clearly on a totally different plane of existence from his fellow musicians. This is one of the strangest musical contrasts I’ve ever come across and one that lifts the song from the ordinary to the absolutely riveting.

The most complete example of his style, though, is on the single “Apples And oranges”. This is my favourite wah-wah playing of all time – incredibly incisive and articulate. He makes the pedal hang always in the edge of feedback, which eventually breaks through as the final sound of the song.

Overall, the guitar acts as a fixed entity in an excellent construction, giving coherence to the various departures. Considered in detail, it’s great the way the lines which underpin the first part of each verse are made up of tiny units, each contributing to something which becomes greater in concept than any of them.

The playing not only reveals an acute perception of sound, but explores a little exploited region and menacingly undermines the apparent harmless and half sense lyrics.

Like Barrett, Captain Beefheart often appears to attract more attention by his “weirdness” than any other way.

Both Beefheart and Syd Barrett have in the past exerted this powerful questioning force by redefining the medium in which they operated. It’s only a pity that, for the time being we have to refer to both of their achievements in the past tense.