Roger Waters Tells the Tragic Story of Syd Barrett

The Joe Rogan experience, so when they like in the early days of the band, what it was was always the connection with rock and roll and drugs, that's how that's the narrative, yeah, it was that in the early days of Pink Floyd was that the In case it wasn't really relevant, I mean, during the time when I was smoking hashish every day was 1970 71 70. So the pretty dark side is when we were doing Metals, so it's Echoes and, but I don't. I don't think it influenced my burgeoning writing career, if you like, when I was, you know, I started writing songs because Sid um went crazy in '19, '67.

And by '69, I wasn't, we weren't seeing it. . He disappeared completely and it was because of the LSD, no, I don't think so, but you know, that's the narrative, yeah, that's the narrative or one of the narratives, um, it could be because he was mixing with people who were taking acid. on a regular basis, I think in '67. um and and um, I'm sure he did too much, he did too much, he was teaching on the verge of what you could call schizophrenia at the time, I think probably a lot of the things that he was saying and it was right at the beginning of us getting our first record on any chart, which was Arnold Lane, now it was after we were online, that's when "See Emily Play" came out and we were starting to do TV shows in England and it got really weird and it started.

I remember him at the top of the pop in the dressing room one day. He had his hair a little like that picture on the wall and he looked like and then he looked worried and a little scared. so to say that John Lennon doesn't have to mean this, you know, which was a bit strange, this was like three quarters of the Beatles' career because they'd only really had that decade, so, I had doubts about being on a pop mime show, you know, and we said this is what we've been working on for the last four or five years: getting on top of the puppies and gaining a few pounds, you know, buck up, let's move on and uh. but he never really backed down from that point on, he wrote a few more songs but nothing of any real note and he became more and more distant until he was completely crazy and pointless and we can I mean, I made a lot of attempts to figure out what was wrong and involve his family.

You know he had older brothers, so he would call and say, "Hey, something's really wrong with Roger, since they called him because he wasn't his." His name was Roger Barrett, not Sid Barrett. I said he's not well, I think, and one of the brothers came to London and went to see him, and he called me and said he's fine. You know he's had some troublesome terms, but he's actually fine and that's when Alan, isn't he, he's not right, believe me, I've been, I live with him, you know anyway, and we tried to get him to a psychiatrist, um. , on several occasions, but he never wanted to enter and then it became more and more strange. how strange how it was uncommunicative it doesn't make any sense at all it doesn't make any sense it's like I actually mentioned one of the periods one of the moments is in the show because that's when we play Wish You Were Here and I do Wish You Were Here and I mean it's partly about that song and Shine On You Crazy Diamond is completely about Sid, but he told us the

story

in text on the show and he says, "We had been in a meeting at the Capitol." Tower in Los Angeles and Sid and I were walking down the street behind him and we stopped at the light at Hollywood and Vine Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street in Los Angeles and he looked at me and smiled and said it's nice here in Los Angeles.

Vegas, right? We were in Los Angeles, so he had no idea where he was, but then he was saying what you'll see in the show, he says, then his face darkened and he looked down. to the ground and I spat a word and that encapsulates what it was like nothing made any sense disjointed blank disjointed you know and there we were all young or very young and we were trying to make our way and at that moment David already joined the band played the guitar because Sitka didn't play. I'm not saying he couldn't, well actually he couldn't because we both did solos, his solo records and he helped produce his solo records after that point and he went. quite disjointed and difficult to get him to do anything, he continued to deteriorate even more after that, yes, and then he went to live in Cambridge and lived a very lonely life.

I talked to his sister Rosemary about him after that and said, could I? Does it make any sense? You know, go visit her. She doesn't like him, she doesn't want to see people from her past, she would prefer to be left alone and she did, and he used to paint a little and live alone in Cambridge until he died when he was 60. so I don't know what else to say about it, he really was

tragic

, obviously, but those of us who were in Pink Floyd at the time also experienced it as an existential threat. Yo, what are we going to do, he writes damn songs well.

I wrote about 20 of them before, but there was nothing. Sid's songs were the things that were different. They had that strange English romanticism. You know they were beautiful. I have a boat. You can write it if you want. It has a basket and a bell. that sounds like and the things that make it look good. He'd give it to you if he could, but I borrowed it. It's so peculiar in terms of meter, the way the lyrics join both the melody and the beat and the tempo. of the thing is remarkable um and it wasn't just that there were a lot of quirky little songs like that in a very English romantic tradition and whatever, how could we survive if the guy writes the songs and the band goes crazy? basically unless someone else learns to start writing, luckily I did, I started writing, no, no, no, I don't want to love because it was a big loss and I loved him.