Watch Roger Waters Shares Syd Barrett’s Tragic Fate

Watch Roger Waters Shares Syd Barrett’s Tragic Fate | Society Of Rock Videos

via PowerfulJRE / Youtube

Roger Waters recently talked about the tragic fate of Syd Barrett when he sat down for an interview on The Joe Rogan Experience.

Waters recalled his early days with Pink Floyd and shared the few things he remembered about Barrett. The host asked Waters what they were like as a band during their early days, specifically the effect of drugs on their career in the rock and roll industry.

Rogan asked if, by any means, drugs affected Pink Floyd in their early days, assuming that drugs and rock and roll are always connected to each other. Waters responded by saying no, it wasn’t that relevant. He said:

“During the time I was smoking hash every day was 1970, ’71, ’70, it was pre-dark side, it is when we were making metals so it echoes, but I don’t think it had, I don’t think it impinged on my burgeoning writing career if you like when I was starting to write songs.”

He then went on to recall how Barrett became as time passed by and the transition from when he was still fine until he acted strange. Waters stated:

“Sid went crazy in 1967 and so by 1969, we weren’t seeing him anymore. He disappeared completely.”

The host asked him if that was because of LSD, and he responded:

“I don’t think so.

“But it may be, because he was mixing with people who were doing acid on a regular basis, I think, in 1967. I’m sure he did too much of it. Was he teachering to the edge of what might be called schizophrenia at the time? I think so probably.”

The Pink Floyd co-founder mentioned that when the band started doing TV shows in England, that’s the time when Barrett became very odd. For an instance, he’ll see Barrett looking frightened and worried. As per Waters, although, “he wrote a few more songs, but nothing of any real note. He just got more and more detached until he was completely wacky, not making any sense.”

Water said he tried helping Barrett by trying to figure out what was wrong with him. He even reached out to his family and asked for help. Although one of his brothers went to London to check out on him, he thought that Barrett was fine and assumed that his wackiness was just one of his “troubling times.”

Alan Styles, however, told Waters that something was really wrong with Barrett, he said “he’s not fine, trust me I lived with him.” The band tried to get him into shrink on several occasions, but he would never go. Until things get weirder and weirder and Barrett started becoming incommunicative. After their show in LA, that was the time when he noticed that Barrett was not making sense at all. He became disjointed and cannot get to do anything.

Eventually, Barrett went to live in Cambridge with some of his family. However, living there doesn’t help him and still, Barrett started becoming deteriorated and agitated as per his sister. Waters said:

“He gets very agitated and upset if he’s reminded of what happened before, whatever this is, he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want to see people from his past and rather be left alone. He used to paint a little bit and just lived on his own in Cambridge until he died.”

Barrett died at the age of 60 which is, for Waters, a tragic event. For him, losing Barrett is a huge loss to the band considering he does really well in terms of writing songs. Stream the full interview below.

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