Peter Robinson on the loss of a Madcap
Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett died last Friday (July 7) at his home in Cambridgeshire, England at the age of 60. Barrett, who was all but invisible in the three decades since abandoning his very brief (but very brilliant) post-Pink Floyd solo career and reverting back to his real first name, Roger, reportedly died of diabetes.
Barrett was a mythical figure in rock music, his strange and never fully explained disappearance from the public eye following a long, possibly LSD-fueled breakdown that got him kicked out of the Pink Floyd and made recording and performing music seemingly impossible.
His death had a special significance for mystery writer Peter Robinson. In Robinson’s most recent novel, Piece of My Heart, the plot turns on a series of murders possibly committed by a very Barrett-like figure. Robinson, whose love of music — especially canonical late-60’s rock — permeates many of his novels, says that the character in the novel is “99% pure imagination,” but that “there are certainly images of Syd as a young rock star.” Robinson, who admits that, as a young man, he “wouldn’t even listen to a lot of the stuff [Pink Floyd] did after Syd left,” never met Barrett in person, but, interestingly enough, only recently met someone in Cambridge who saw Barrett “around fairly regularly and knew him to say hello to, so it definitely [came as] a bit of a shock.”
Robinson says that he “has always been interested in those figures who didn’t quite survive the ’60s lifestyle – Nick Drake, Janis, Hendrix, Jim Morrison and others. Syd was especially interesting because he did survive but turned his back.”
Related links:
Read about Syd Barrett’s death at NME.com
Read Q&Q’s recent profile of Peter Robinson
Watch Pink Floyd lip-synch to ‘Jugband Blues’ in 1968
