Pink Floyd
The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

I will have no other Floyds besides Syd!

I never understood why, over all these years, EMI never released the concerts at the UFO Club, some bones thrown here and there, the London 1966/67 is nice too, but a really clean double "Pink Floyd Live at UFO" never. Years pass, the disappointment grows, turning into resignation, but then, one day, in an instant, everything connects for me as if by magic, and I know that EMI will never release those concerts, which they've had ready there forever, but it's precisely from there that the Pink Floyd-Syd Barrett misunderstanding started. We all know the story we've been told. But I see it like this: it’s the beginning, the group forms, Syd is the only one with fervor; the others take it more lightly, after a few months of testing Syd fine-tunes the machine. Pink Floyd is Syd, Syd is Pink Floyd, it will always be so. We start strong, heading to a point of no return, the concerts at the UFO, the involvement, the irrepeatability, the uniqueness of the act, the pink fluid as an elixir of life opens up new dimensions, expansion of consciousness, awakening, glimpses of truth, the energy’s power is unstoppable, everyone talks about the Floyd, everyone knows about the Floyd, and by everyone, it also includes those individuals who are constantly at war with the human species, but we'll come back to that later. Sure, LSD was around, some needed it to mediate all that energy, yes, that entirely misleading LSD regarding Syd as if that substance was at the basis of his genius. Every article or anything appearing about him and the Floyds disparages him, diminishing the conscious impact he unleashed, branding him as a crazy drug addict. I won't have it. The modern inquisition has changed its face and its methods, it evolves with us indeed. The enormous acceleration brought by Syd Barrett rang alarm bells, Syd like all mystics went directly to the heart, a human force accompanied by truth. A painful combination for the species at war against our human kind, that today, taking advantage of our psychic weakness due to an unfavorable cyclical phase, controls and inhibits our life and behaviors with money and other tools. And whereas before this inquisition operated to hide knowledge as much as possible, today those masters of everything and everyone infect information, create laughable topics to prevent and stop the dissemination by mixing credible contents, completely false contents, a pinch of true information creating an abstract picture, with the danger of easily falling into the trap and becoming unaware inquisitors ourselves. Syd knew. Syd warns the group, "screw art, it's the money that counts," someone exclaims in the car, shortly before signing the contract, and Syd in a soft voice: "You shouldn't say that. It's only the art that matters." Piper at the Gates of Dawn was produced by the spreader Norman Smith, that very Norman Smith, a real "hurricane" of mediocrity, already a producer of those miserable aligned ones and hired, next door at Abbey Road, appointed by the record label to steer the recording towards commercial ends and to respect the script of the film which we are all unconsciously inside, entertainment beasts for an elite of spectators. But imagine an actor inside the film wanting to change the film, Syd changes it, he was capable of not falling into the trap accepting martyrdom, being a champion of the human species working for us, with a very high type of understanding, and therefore others not at that level cannot understand the intentions and their way of acting. Here's the battle between Theseus Syd and the Minotaur Norman: "I often wonder how we managed to finish the album, to create something. Working with Syd was truly hell. I don’t think I ever left a single session without a severe headache. Syd didn't seem enthusiastic about anything. He would sing a song, I would call him to the studio and give some pointers, then he would return to the recording room and continue singing it in the same way, disregarding my advice. Sometimes he would even change the words, he had no discipline. Talking to him was like talking to a wall because his face was expressionless. His lyrics were simple and childish, like him: just like a child, for a moment he was up, and the next down." Dissonant statement confronted with these others, Roger Waters in 1987: "...there was a powerful charge of humanity in Syd's songs, they were human songs to the nth degree." Joe Boyd: “Who was Syd? Among them, he was the most surprising. He had eyes that emitted a glow." Alice Cooper from the USA tour 1967: "One morning I came in to have breakfast, and at the table was Syd staring at the cereal box, he was looking at something we couldn’t see." The sister: "Syd was just different, eccentric, his mind and ideas were simply different from the norm." Libby Gausten, teenage girlfriend: "His beauty was not just physical, but internal. The depth of his eyes, his magnetic and unique gaze. Two eyes that are hard to see again in a lifetime." There is an artist on stage, dear Norman. Unaware, the other members endorse some artistic choices, but Syd manages to save what he can. This partial victory doesn't sit well with the masters: "Subject non-aligned - dangerous - unrecoverable - decided definitive elimination - proceed." The album is a success with the public and critics, "the only thing the public contested (among many: Pete Townshend) was that the LP, compared to live performances, was a factory substitute that failed to completely recreate certain mystical moments." Hence my preamble, they are afraid of something and proceed to ultimatum, there’s someone here who is aware of eternity, this is unacceptable. The thought that he might have been deliberately drugged is not a mere suspicion, this solution is opted as the first phase, not yet having at their disposal the energy targeting weapons they use nowadays assisted by geoengineering. And as a second phase use someone sentimentally close to him to quicken the departure: David Gilmour. A classic tragedy, Gilmour used as the brother Cain, unaware (and I don't know) of the machination to oust Syd, but implicitly complicit. They know the points on which to leverage and obtain the infamous performance, the stab comes precisely from his fraternal friend, after a physiognomic analysis of David, it doesn't surprise me too much, those full lips of his are the lips of a sensual man, a pleasure lover. Some phrases from the guitarist to support the thesis: "I joined Pink Floyd (smirks) for fame and for the girls," the inevitable envy of the mediocre: "Most people, including me, would have been jealous of his brightness," a bit of mud on Barrett's collapse: "The thing had deep roots, the psychedelic experience may have acted as a catalyst. But I think he couldn't handle the idea of success and everything that came with it," and then contradicts himself: "Some parts of his brain were still brilliant." Well done, good David, but might it not have been exactly the opposite, that Syd, by setting up the madness theater, didn't want, manifesting an exalted humanity, to try to save others from the "machine"? Late January 1968 at the Middle Earth, Syd sits in front of the stage, staring into Gilmour's eyes throughout the concert. He knows.

Jugband Blues, watch the video, look at Syd's face, look at the eyes, what he says... There isn't a more lucid and conscious person, LSD is the least of it.

But you have always been somewhat superficial, David, but this allowed you to approach him empathetically and record those two spaceship of LPs. The highest price was paid by Waters, torn apart by guilt which reached its negative peak in 1973 with that best-selling champion Dark Side, him who does shows against financial power, him who appears, and Gilmour, and Mason, in those videos on the net where they describe how much money they have, what villas they own, their family joys spread with numerous women, the power of their cars... Syd isn't in these videos, you've evoked him for all the records, but the interstellar journey had already been done. After the crisis and full depersonalization with Dark Side of the Moon (but what do we need the moon for when we've already had the Universe), there was a moment of sincere redemption with Wish You Were Here, and indeed he came to see you, and upon listening to the final mix he told you: "It has a bit of an old sound," perhaps remembering the old times and sharing his compassion transfigured before leaving the studios shortly after. Wish You Were Here is autobiographical of Waters, Gilmour, Mason, Wright, it's them who accepted the cigar, it's them who got in the car, it's a message of apology, accepted by Barrett. Something that will throw Roger even more into devastation, who will give birth to those three suffering albums to come, a redemption attempt from betrayal and acceptance of servitude. In front of Syd's purity, everything manifests. But look at him in those videos, interviewed by Keller in May 1967, but also in those photos from the '80s, he is of an imaginative beauty. Brilliant life? Has he paralyzed his will? Was the group inclusive to Jugband Blues out of charity? Oh, please... A certain Ozzie, a fan, is sure that Syd "contemplates everything from another spiritual level, he has excluded everything else and lives inside himself." Barrett warnings in 1967: “Apart from being a good guitarist, I don’t really have any ambitions...” and evolving in 1971, he enlightens us in his last interview for Rolling Stone: "I was never that introvert you say, it's thought that everyone has fun when they’re young, I never did," "I'm disappearing, I avoid almost everything, I’m moving backward." Bernard White's intervention in 1982 helps: "If he had wanted, he would have become a guru and people from all over the world would have come to him." But why didn't he want to? Why did he want nothing? Syd takes us into the impersonal where life is lived as a spectator, free of ties that constrain and condition. Storm Throgerson reminded us that "you cannot deny the voluntary part, Syd's choice to undertake such a journey." Indeed, in Barrett, there is nothing dark, a joker who voluntarily made his choice, the last unnumbered card of the tarot. How to inquire a awakened one? Call him catatonic... Ronald Laing, the anti-psychiatrist, concludes on Roger: "But we can do nothing for him... No longer." We for him or we for us? And Robin Hitchcock who expected "that towards the end of his life, Syd would emerge from the mist and express some comment, describe the mist." Maybe he's never been in the mist, maybe we were and continue to stay unknowingly in the mist... Superficially, I agree to place Piper "between 2001 and Lewis Carroll," unfortunately Kubrick wasn’t one of ours, but on the record, we perceive that invisible that exists. That's the great message: if we don’t realize we’re in an imperceptible reality and there's a game going on not to have it revealed, it’s all pointless. The human being always recognizes the truth, but often cannot yet accept it, hence Syd's discomfort who sees and others do not.

“I am none of that which you think I am” Roger Keith Barrett?

We miss you so much, brother.