Do you think syd barrett is overrated

With some cult artists whose careers were cut short it is difficult to quantify their effect while with others it's piss-easy, anyone who dares to say Jimi Hendrix is overrated would be laughed out of the playground for example. It is easier still of course if that career was cut tragically short so elevation to cultdom was guaranteed by posthumous decree and universal public mourning. With Barrett it's not so easy because he didn't die so wasn't taken away leaving a hole of unrealised potential, but just withdrew from the public glare and with that sort of faded away. Yet with the benefit of hindsight and some understanding of context we can begin to see behind the myth and fable that has grown up around him. 

Speculation of his mental state, and the causes thereof, didn't really enter into the public consciousness until after the release of Wish You Were here, five years after his last solo album and some three years after Barrett had withdrawn from the music business. Between 1970 and 1973 Pink Floyd and Syd's Floyd were regarded by the media and fans alike as two separate entities, even their record company recognised this and tried to capitalise on the success of Meddle and Dark Side of the Moon with a budget-priced compilation and a retrospective repackaging of the two psychedelic-era Floyd albums as a toofa. As early as 1971 it was acceptable in Pink Floyd fandom to dismiss Piper and Saucerful, and all the 7" singles associated with them, as being relics of a different age, and with that to some extent, Syd Barrett. It seems strange today, but back then knowledge of a five-man Floyd was more of a rumour or myth than universal truth such that when David Bowie (following the release of Pin Ups) claimed to have seen a five-man Floyd perform on stage around 1967/8 it was met with doubt.

The seeds of Barrett's cult-status germinated around 1972 with the formation of the Syd Barrett Appreciation Society and its club fanzine 'Terrapin', but were sown a year or two earlier following rumours of aborted sessions for a third solo album; the hole of unrealised potential that appears as a gaping chasm moments after the untimely death of a musical hero was beginning to form around Barrett while he was still alive, much like it had around Brian Wilson for similar reasons. The promise that Barrett revealed on Piper At The Gates was yet to be seen in his solo work (which in itself was fast becoming eclipsed by Pink Floyd's rise to stardom following the #1 chart success of Atom Heart Mother released a month prior to his second album), people were expecting more and that pressure to deliver shows in later analysis, not only in the documented accounts of the recording sessions that have subsequently surfaced, but also in Barrett's reaction to the reception the albums and his sporadic live shows received.

If everything stands or falls on just the body of work he released then the record is not a great one if you measure it at face-value fifty years later. It would seem incongruous that such a fractured and some would say naive collection of songs would have spored such a far-reaching reaction in so many people that you would be forgiven in mistaking this for misplaced adulation of the myth rather than recognition and appreciation of his work. This suggests there is far more to his work than just surface detail just as there is far more to the man than the myth that surrounds him, his innovation and creativity are reflected below any superficial evaluation of mere notes and words, and analysis of guitar and studio technique (though all are a worthy place to start). The sections covering his creative impact and cultural influence given on Wikipedia, while far from being am exhaustive summary, suggests there is far more to this than just a bit of journalistic hype, nostalgia and faddish hipsterism. 

His style was raucous, blues-based rock, so it's more raw and has more slop in it. He was more effect than technical display--except on songs like Little Wing. But he could do things with it that other people tried to match and failed. You have to know how many different finger positions were in one of his signature slide mordants, and how effortlessly they blend together in sound. And yet, you can watch Jimi on tape take a breath from singing and throw effortless fills in

Also, like any ground-breaker, kids picking up the guitar, started copying his technique. And so enough of his innovations are within the toolkit of a standard player these days. It's like watching Citizen Kane and noticing that you don't see anything that modern filmmakers don't do. And that's 100% true. But Well's techniques started to define film-making. (Still plenty of filmmakers these days don't construct mundane scenes from 4 overlays and glass mattes).