Syd Barrett
Stratopaul/Flickr
Rumor has it that during a 1975 recording session, the founding Pink Floyd member showed up to the studio and no one recognized him because of the weight he had put on. That would be the last time that most of Pink Floyd saw Syd Barrett, known by some as the “original acid casualty.”
The pioneer of 1960s psychedelia was the principal songwriter on the Pink Floyd album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. However, he suffered a full-on, psychedelic drug-induced mental breakdown.
He dabbled in a couple other failed music projects before living out the rest of his post-Pink Floyd days in his mother’s Cambridge, England home. He spent his time gardening and then indulging in crazy DIY house projects after his mother passed away.
Barrett’s sister, Rosemary confirmed stories of her brother’s strange behavior: “The house, he wrecked … Every wall would be painted a different color. The idea of painting a room with the same color was just nonsensical to him. I used to say to him, ‘Do two walls the same color.’ ‘But why?’ he’d say. ‘They’re all different walls.'” She also offered the following possible explanation for his exile, “He found his own mind so absorbing that he didn’t want to be distracted.”
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