Now this will change your mood. It and the music of Pink Floyd are the antithesis of Wham! Anything but obvious and simple. This film and Pink Floyd have an ethereal quality, there's no context, they exist on their own and you can either buy in or reject them. But if you dive in...beware, you might not end up where you started.
This film does not delineate what happened with Syd Barrett. Oh, there are facts, but what was going on in Syd's head? That remains elusive. Psychosis usually arrives in one's late teens to mid-twenties. But although there are doctors in this film, that element is never addressed. There were people who burned out from LSD, acid casualties. They indulged regularly and never came back from where they went. Is that what happened to Syd? This film does not tell you.
But it does tell you about the psychedelic sixties.
At the turn of the last century the script flipped. There was more action at home than there was out. A deeper, more scintillating experience. And the oldsters denied this, pooh-poohed it, saw screens as vapid addictions, the same way their parents judged the youth and their music in the sixties.
It's hard to describe the sixties if you didn't live through them. You can listen to oldies radio, 60s on 6, and think it was just one continuous thread of hits, first American and then British and...it wasn't really that way at all. The Beatles incited a revolution. It went beyond the music. You were told to think for yourself, by these blokes who were unrestricted by society, who were pied-pipers for the younger generation. And they caused so many to pick up instruments and play.
And by the latter half of the sixties there was a confluence of art, music and movies, all swirled into one, like an ice cream cone at Carvel. A veritable candy shop, with too many offerings to consume, but you wanted to taste them all.
But to gain the full experience you had to be out of school and living in the city. We knew we were one step removed. We couldn't wait to grow up and partake. To live in the city free from our parents and experience all life could deliver, pushing the envelope into new territory. This was back when living was cheap and you were urged to love everybody, very different from today.
So if you were in the city and you went out...
You could not capture the scene on wax or film. You had to be there and experience it. The Acid Tests, the noodling music, the underground films and the emergence of cutting edge above ground movies.
And not everybody was hip. Some were afraid. Others lived too far away. But if you got the memo, you searched out information, pieced together the story from newspapers and magazines. It required work to be hip, but it wasn't work at all.
So Syd Barrett went to art school. That paradigm seems to have died with the Talking Heads. And it's why David Byrne is still revered today. That view from one step removed, not begging for acceptance, constantly challenging the audience, that is art.
So the people who changed the world back when were middle class. They weren't starving. They wouldn't do what they were told just for a buck. They weren't building brands. As Bill Graham so famously said when he managed the Airplane, whenever the band made money they wanted to stay home and smoke dope, they didn't want to work. It was your life and you wanted to live it.
So Syd came from a culture of exploration, commercialism was not paramount. You didn't want to sell out, you didn't want to be burdened by the audience, you wanted to do your own thing and be recognized for it. You wanted to lead people into your own private universe, not to control them, but to open them up to the possibilities.
So Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd were the paragon of psychedelia in London. You had to go to their show to experience it. And it was not locked down, synched to hard drive, it was different every night, experimental. There was a light show and no dance steps.
And all of this is in the movie.
As well as all the people who had contact with Syd. Roger, Dave and Nick. And Storm Thorgerson, who he grew up with. And other childhood and adult friends. They're still alive, somewhat worse for wear, and they're testifying. Well, some died before the film was finished, but the amazing thing is they don't seem to have sold out, they seem to have made lives pursuing their dreams. These are not has-beens working at the 7-11, but thinking people.
So you've got to know "See Emily Play" didn't break through in America. As a matter of fact, the first time I remember hearing it was on David Bowie's "Pinups" album. You see, it influenced Bowie.
And the Pink Floyd of today is very different from Syd's era. Everyone acknowledges that there'd be no Pink Floyd without Syd, but once he was gone the band was no longer burdened, and inspired by Syd's ethos, they became one of the biggest bands of all time.
Syd Barrett was an enigma in America. And although this film sheds some light on his story, he still is. We knew "The Madcap Laughs," by 1970 we knew who Pink Floyd were, Syd's previous membership in the group, and I already owned "Ummagumma." There was not a news blackout, Syd was referenced, but he never came back like Peter Green, and then he died. Not from abuse, but pancreatic cancer, which was a death sentence back then and mostly still is.
And his sister is somewhat resentful, which is understandable after caring for him for the last decades of his life. And Syd was around, but nobody visited him and then he died.
So what did we learn?
That we have more questions than answers.
And you'll have so many questions that you'll want to watch this movie again.
Will this movie influence younger generations the way we were influenced by so much of the past, from W.C. Fields to the Marx Brothers to the bluesmeisters...
Well, you're either a member of the club or not, on the bus or off.
This film opens doors. Where you go once you pass through is up to you. That's what our music delivered, a starting point, an instruction booklet, and then we were on our own.
This is a weird movie. It's not that it's not for everybody, but more that not everybody is interested. Today too much is surface. If you have money you're not only rich, but intelligent, you know better. We didn't used to feel this way. And just because you had hits that did not mean we placed our faith in you. We were looking for something more, something three-dimensional that we could believe in.
This is a peek into what once was.
You know whether you have to take a look.
But those who do not... That's evidence of who you are. And we're judging you just like we did in the sixties. It's about more than long hair, it's about what's inside your brain, how you think. People were hungry for knowledge, wanted to be in the know. To be conservative was to be dead. Change was embraced.
I'm sorry if you didn't live through it. But this film will give you a glimpse of the way it used to be.
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