The final song Syd Barrett wrote for Pink Floyd
Although his time in the limelight was brief, the late Syd Barrett left a tremendous legacy. He was the frontman and guitarist of Pink Floyd during their early period when they were one of the most exciting psychedelic bands around. His spacey compositions perfectly toed the line between the heady tendencies of hippiedom and the darker side of the movement that was starting to rear its head as its various pitfalls emerged.
The story of Syd Barrett is well known. While he was Pink Floyd’s leader when the band broke out, due to his mental health issues – which are attributed to biological factors and extensive drug abuse – he departed the group in 1968. At this point, Pink Floyd had released only two albums, 1967’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and the following year’s A Saucerful of Secrets.
After leaving the group, his mental state continued to plummet, and Barrett released a pair of cult solo albums in 1970, The Madcap Laughs and Barrett, which were helped into life by his old friends and former Floyd bandmates, David Gilmour and Roger Waters. Not long after releasing this duo of records, Barrett withdrew from public life, remaining a recluse until his death aged 60 in 2006.
Despite the tragedy of Syd Barrett’s life, his musical efforts speak for themselves, reflecting his undoubted genius and, in parts, the gravity of the decline that saw him become one of the more mythologised characters in rock. One of his most significant compositions is ‘Jugband Blues’, the final song he wrote for Pink Floyd.
At the time of writing in late 1967, Barrett’s mental state was deteriorating rapidly, with ‘Jugband Blues’ regarded as a musical embodiment of his schizophrenia. The track was released on Pink Floyd’s second album, A Saucerful of Secrets, in 1968. Written by Barrett, it was his sole contribution to the album, making it his final published effort for the group. Reportedly, Barrett and Floyd’s management wanted the song to be released as a single but were vetoed by the rest of the band and producer Norman Smith.
One of Pink Floyd’s managers, Peter Jenner, reflected on ‘Jugband Blues’ in Rob Chapman’s biography, Syd Barrett: A Very Irregular Head. He described Barrett’s final Pink Floyd contribution and two others he wrote around the same time, ‘Scream Thy Last Scream’ and ‘Vegetable Man’, as “amazing songs”.
Comparing them to ‘Bike’ and ‘The Scarecrow’ from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, he said: “You think, ‘Well, OK, those are all right, but these are powerful disturbing art.’ I wouldn’t want anyone to have to go as mad and disturbed as Syd did to get that, but if you are going to go that disturbed give me something like that. That’s great art”.
Jenner also called ‘Jugband Blues’ “an extraordinary song, the ultimate self-diagnosis on a state of schizophrenia, [and] the portrait of a nervous breakdown.”
Listen to ‘Jugband Blues’ below.