Proclivities wrote:
The Doors movie has been on recently, and it got me to look into the group a bit.   It's shocking that the remaining 3  band members recorded and released an album within 3 months of his death.  He died July 3...the album was out mid-October.

If you ever wonder how singularly amazing Morrison was, go listen to that album (Other Voices - like they needed to warn us).  It's like they are singing through a tin-can microphone.  You can imagine how Jim's huge voice would have changed those songs.

 kcar wrote:
Yeah, apparently Morrison wanted to "get away" for a while or something.  I guess the other members may have suspected he might never rejoin them.  But yeah, both of their stories were exploited - Morrison in particular - took on some sort of "mythical" status after his death.  It seems like the band  sold more records two or three decades after his death than before.  Those post-Morrison Doors albums weren't very good.

 Proclivities wrote:

I could be wrong about The Doors no longer being together when Jim died in Paris. They may have formally been together at that point but from what I've read the band really wasn't functioning at the time of his death. IIRC Morrison in Paris called one of his bandmates in the US to say that he wanted to get everyone back in the studio. However the bandmate (Densmore I think) didn't take the call that seriously because Jim was really drunk and had similar noises before. AfAICT his bandmates didn't think Jim was ever going to seriously work with them at that point.

The Doors put out two albums I believe after Jim died. I listened to parts of one and didn't think anything of it. 

Syd had a devoted following of fans while he was still in Pink Floyd. He was regarded as the creative leader before he started losing his mind. His supporters claim that the post-Floyd recordings like "Octopus" and "Maisie" are cruel jokes exploiting his mental illness.

I just think that with both men their downfalls were distorted and exploited for hype and PR.

 kcar wrote:
The "legend" status of Syd Barrett was not established until well after he and Pink Floyd had separated ways.  Really, Pink Floyd was just a moderately-known, psychedelic band with a few hits in the UK (Barrett's "See Emily Play" was a top 10 song in the UK) and a cult following until "Dark Side" was released.  Morrison apparently went to Paris as a sort of sabbatical and a break from his legal troubles in the States after they had released LA Woman, The Doors were not disbanded until '72 or '73.

 haresfur wrote:

I had both solos on 8-track and it made for good driving. I really like portions of them.

 Steely_D wrote:
It is what it is. I think there are some really fun bits in the stream of consciousness lyrics but you probably aren't going to listen to it for the guitar work. I listened to the two solo albums a lot when I was younger. Now I don't usually feel the need.

I suppose his "legacy" is opening up a space for non-musical music (aside from Pink Floyd making a shit-ton of money writing about him, or at least about insanity). You can decide if that is a good thing.

 Coaxial wrote:

Ikr?

 Steely_D wrote: 
I have this album.  Played it a couple of times and just could not get into it.  It has sat all these years and maybe it's time to try again.

So often I have found music that didn't do anything for me when it was new, with a second listen 30 or 40 years later, it becomes appreciated.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:

Nice piece of writing.

How many more frigging time does this poor man have to die?

 kcar wrote:

The cachet around Jim was always a mystery. Better to love the music and use the rest of the story as a cautionary tale. The bit about Syd not having any songs left in him was the most tragic, to me. I was never a fan but I think I heard some of his later stuff. Truly awful, as I recall. But still, there were people there to take his money and let him disgrace himself. I can't help but wonder if a stronger person had managed either of them, if they'd have been able to continue. 

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:

Thanks very much for posting this. I wonder if the lingering fandom/fascination with Syd and his "disappearance" has parallels with  posthumous rumors about Jim Morrison. Both treated like legends at their peak, but unfortunately fans couldn't accept the fact that their hero was gone. 

People had a lot of fun with Morrison's mysterious death. Found in a Paris hotel room, in a bathtub with the water drawn! Medical examiner's report simply concluded that Jim's heart had stopped! Surely something strange...

Not that long ago the mystery got replaced with a sad tale of a squalid end. Morrison was living in Paris after the breakup of The Doors, drinking heavily. Apparently he was doing heroin as well because the owner of the nightclub next to the hotel found Jim in one of the club's bathroom stalls, the needle still stuck in his arm. The owner freaked because he knew if Jim's death became a police matter, he'd lose his club. So he and he a friend carried Morrison up an unused back stair that used to connect the club and the hotel in the days when both were part of a private mansion. They used the hotel key in Morrison's pocket to get him into his room and then plopped him in the tub to make his death look innocent. 

The nightclub owner felt comfortable clearing up the mystery only after he'd retired. The whole Lizard King mysto dissolved after that. 

Syd Barrett: The Vanishing

Thoughts on his 77th birthday…

If Bob Dylan is the most scrutinized musician of our times, Syd Barrett must be one of the most pursued. Almost as soon as he’d slipped off the radar, in the dismal wasteland of February 1972, the dogs were in pursuit.

I was one of those dogs. You only had to listen to “The Face of Death” on the first Soft Boys EP to see how completely I’d marinaded myself in Syd Barrett. The song was not, as some assumed, about Syd himself, but another local character who haunted the streets of Cambridge with an expression of terminal hopelessness on a face which looked like it was upside down. The poor guy lived alone in a room full of milk bottles and apparently injected himself with insulin for his diabetes. Rumours travel fast in those small, cold byways. He walked slowly, as if he’d been punched in the stomach, and he wore a leather jacket; I *think* his name was Arthur.

A few years previously, I even tried to call on Barrett himself, at his old family home on Hills Road. Thankfully he was out. But he was also no longer called Syd, it appeared. I stood on the doorstep pink with embarrassment, my stomach tight with dread - terrified of actually meeting this man who was rapidly becoming What I Wanted To Be - but the compulsion to see him was stronger than my anxieties. I rang the doorbell of the ample, suburban house and eventually a young student lodger answered. I explained my mission and she didn’t seem surprised:

“Oh, right - just a minute: Mrs B” she called up the stairs, “is Roger in?”

Who, I wondered, was Roger? I was about to explain that actually I was looking for Syd, when a calm lady with a faintly lizard-like aura and a print dress padded down the stairs towards me. She didn’t seem surprised to see me, either - pilgrims were already flocking to that door, I guessed. This dame with iron-grey hair, looking like an aunt of my own mother, this must be Mrs Barrett…

“Ah, no, you’ve missed him, I’m afraid - he’s in London now. Was there anything you wanted to see Roger about?”

“Oh, er, I - no, I mean.” I was flustered and breathing fast: pleased that I’d summoned the nerve to intrude on them (hardcore fan that I was) but somewhat relieved that the object of my quest was not actually there: “I - er - he’s in London?”

“Yes.”

“Is he… um… is he making a record?”

“We-ll”, said Mrs B, looking up at me with her head tipped slightly to one side, “I believe he’s by way of making a record, yes…”

Enough was more than enough, and I fled. It turned out that Syd’s real name was Roger, and had been all along. 

The more I looked for news of Barrett, the less there was. Rumours had already made their way out of that house, of Syd (or Roger?) living in the cellar of his childhood home, playing Pink Floyd records at the wrong speed and laughing hysterically. But he’d also been seeing playing local jam sessions. He’d been seen eating chocolate cake. He’d been seen but he was gone.

As the 1970s wore on, it became more and more apparent that Syd Barrett really was no more. When he made his famous visit to his old band at Abbey Road studios just as they were finishing their tribute to him “Shine On, You Crazy Diamond” nobody even recognized him for a while. Syd had been a lean, handsome and saturnine figure: Roger was fat, bald and had no eyebrows. Did he drop by that day just to make that point: that his old self was over?

He was no longer by way of making a record. Several attempts were made to lure him back into the recording studio, but when the tapes finally surfaced they turned out to be uninspired 12-bar noodlings: not even chaotic, just boring. Barrett clearly had no more songs in him. Nonetheless he continued to buy guitars until his royalties ran out. Part of him obviously wanted to believe he was still in the game, just as we, his fans, did.

Syd the musician was the flower that briefly blossomed on the cactus that was Roger, his host body. Minus Syd, that host body reverted to what he had been before, an art student. Roger returned to his mother’s house in Cambridge and spent the last 30 years or so of his life painting pictures. And then, apparently, burning them. 

I, meanwhile, had done my best to re-activate my vanished hero in my own Cambridge art-rock combo, the Soft Boys. Of course, you can only be Art-Rock posthumously - à la Velvet Underground or Roxy Music: during our career nobody knew how to categorize The Soft Boys - us included - so we were effectively unmarketable, and the music business soon gave up on us. We didn’t exactly help them sell us. One of our few definite markers was that I sounded very like Syd Barrett. We even recorded “Vegetable Man”, one of his rare unreleased songs. This magnetized the Barrett ghouls - and I’d long been one of those.

I may well have identity issues. Who are any of us if we examine ourselves from close up enough? Take somebody who no longer wants to exist (Barrett), and then add somebody who would rather be someone else (me) and…you get the picture. All I know is that if I like a kind of music I try to echo it, as closely as I can. Whether I absorb my influences or simply continue to echo them isn’t really for me to say. I write and play the music that I want to hear. Sometimes I do feel like the creature in the John Carpenter movie The Thing: that I’m just an amalgam of everything I’ve absorbed. Someone described me once as the Peter Sellers of rock: I’ve had worse compliments…

Roger Barrett, whoever he was, became a blank canvas onto which his admirers could project their fantasies. It became more about them, and less about him. He continued to live on a suburban backstreet, looking as nondescript as possible. His address had long ago been trumpeted on the Barrett grapevine, some of whom persisted in staking him out on his way to the shops or cycling around town. They were still looking for Syd, or traces of him. I’ve seen footage of what might or might not be Roger Barrett, in a string vest on a cloudy afternoon. I was based in Cambridge till the early 1980s and may have passed him a dozen times in the town centre - I would never have known. 

In the end, it’s the gap between who you are and who your admirers want you to be. You encourage them to think you’re something you’re not because - oh, boy: wouldn’t it be fabulous if you really were it? And in reality you’re just a lump of aging flesh shuffling along on a dreary avenue. One psychotic Beatles fan chose to rob the world of John Lennon because he felt that John was no longer whom that fan had imagined him to be. So it goes.

As an artist, I know that the best part of me is my art. I’m truly grateful for the music Syd left us, and I’m truly grateful that I never ran into Roger. 

RH, January 6 2023

(Robyn Hitchcock)