“Syd was always experimenting. He had a very open sort of mind, to an almost dangerous degree”: the truth behind the myth of Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd’s original singer and psychedelic icon

Original Pink Floyd frontman Syd Barrett died on July 7, 2006. This is the story of the rise and decline of a psychedelic icon

You will no doubt have read the obituaries for Syd Barrett, who died of cancer on July 7 2006. You will have read about how he was the original guiding light of Pink Floyd, who wrote, sang and played guitar on their first hits, including their classic debut album The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, released at the apex of the Summer Of Love in 1967.How he was the poster boy for the psychedelic revolution, whose over-fondness for powerful hallucinogens eventually cracked an already fragile psyche – and how the band then dumped him, leaving him to record two extraordinary if appallingly shambolic solo albums, before he disappeared from the scene for ever.

About an exploded star whose legend nonetheless continued to grow with each passing year, becoming both an inspiration for all those who tried to follow in his musical footsteps and a salutary lesson in what drugs can do to anyone foolish enough to abuse them to such horrific lengths, whatever the so-called justification.

But is that really the whole truth about Syd? That he was a musical genius whose madness was simply the flip-side of that enviable talent? The crazy diamond who shined just a little too brightly and whose fall into permanent darkness was somehow justified by the, admittedly highly unusual, albums and handful of singles he left us to pore over? That he was the supreme – in that dreadfully overused phrase – rock’n’roll casualty?

Or was there more to it than that? First and foremost is this idea that Syd was ‘mad’. Although the noted psychiatrist RD Laing – himself an exponent of both LSD and the idea that madness can be an adjunct of genius – once pronounced Syd “incurable” after listening to a tape of him in conversation, Barrett was never officially sectioned. He did, however, spend two years in the early 80s in Greenwoods, a charitable ‘halfway house’ in Essex, where he willingly submitted to group and other forms of therapy, and seemed perfectly happy, say staff – until the day he walked out after a misunderstanding, tramping by foot all the way back to his mother’s house in Cambridge.