A fallen angel behind a zombie mask, a talented genius who couldn't handle fame

BOOK OF THE DAY: Syd Barrett: A Very Irregular HeadBy Rob Chapman Faber, 441pp. £14.99

ROGER KEITH “Syd” Barrett occupies a rather nebulous place in rock ’n’ roll mythology, somewhere between the heart of the sun and the dark side of the moon.

He’s seen as the archetypal rock ’n’ roll burnout, a pioneering popster who unlocked the secret of flight, but flew too high and came crashing to earth. Rob Chapman’s biography attempts to crack through the dark lens and catch a glimpse of the ordinary fallen angel behind the zombie mask.

Syd was one of the special ones, all right. He wasn’t gifted musically – he was a better painter than a musician – but he had an aura about him which, coupled with his feminine good looks and an effortless sense of style, made him hugely popular with his peer group. That group – the privileged Cambridge set of the early to mid- 1960s – had a huge influence on the British counter-culture of the mid- to late-1960s; Syd’s band, Pink Floyd, were perfectly placed to become the house band of the burgeoning underground.

The story of Syd's idyllic youth in the leafy, sun-speckled cradle of Cambridge is pieced together through interviews with his family and with the ever-widening circle of friends he grew up with, including Bob Klose, a founding- member of Floyd, and Storm Thorgerson, who would go on to design the iconic sleeves for Dark Side of The Moon, Animalsand Wish You Were Here. There's a caveat, however: the surviving members of Pink Floyd declined to be interviewed for this book, although David Gilmour agreed to add some last-minute corrections.

This actually proves a blessing in disguise – with the other members of Floyd relegated to the background, Chapman is free to let Syd’s story breathe without Floyd’s giant inflatable reputation looming over the proceedings.

Chapman also serves warning to those who seek to cast Barrett as a shaman who sacrificed his sanity at the altar of rock ’n’ roll. For Chapman, Barrett was a typical young English romantic of the time.

Syd's muse was also whooshed along by the ready availability of LSD – and he proved more than willing to explore its psychedelic possibilities. It wasn't acid alone though that fried Barrett's brain, according to Chapman – Syd never recovered from the sudden shock of fame that came when Floyd hit the pop charts with their debut single Arnold Layne.

While Barrett was comfortable performing lengthy improvised soundscapes in the cavernous comfort of the UFO club or such “be-ins” as the 14-Hour Technicolour Dream, he was like a fish out of water in the rarefied atmosphere of the pop charts.

From the band's first appearance on Top Of The Pops, alongside middle-of-the-road acts, Barrett rebelled against the machine, refusing to lip-synch or mime playing the guitar.

As Floyd rode the rollercoaster of sudden stardom and the band were sent off on gruelling tours up and down the regions, Syd became increasingly recalcitrant and aloof; psychologically and spiritually, he was clocking out.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when Barrett’s mind broke off from its moorings and began to drift into the fog, but Chapman meticulously chronicles his slow, steady dislocation from the world over the six years following his departure from Pink Floyd.

Along the way, he dispels numerous myths about Barrett’s descent into mental illness and gives more measured versions of some of the more lurid stories, such as the legendary Brylcreem- and-Mandrax hairstyling incident and the chaotic rehearsal at which Barrett is supposed to have constantly yelled: “Have you got it yet?” to his bemused bandmates.

From the mid-1970s up to his death in 2006, Barrett lived in quiet seclusion at his family home in Cambridge. Chapman keeps up the interest in Syd even through these non-eventful years and keeps reminding us that, although Syd was no great guru of pop, he was a talented genius who simply couldn’t handle the weight of fame – or the volume of drugs.

Kevin Courtney is an

Irish Times

journalist