Similar to all-encompassing chronicle books on the Kinks (All Day and All of the Night, which I've reviewed previously) and Beatles (The Complete Beatles Chronicle 1962-1970, a book which I've owned for years and intend to review in the future), author Glenn Povey has spent years researching and writing a comprehensive day-by-day diary of Pink Floyd's career. Spanning the births of the band members through the band's official 1965 founding all the way up to 2006 (when it was published), Echoes documents every concert, recording session, single and album release, television, radio, and promotional appearance made by the band over their long and successful career.
The book is laid out in similar fashion to the aforementioned Kinks and Beatles books, moving chronologically forward year by year with entries for each appearance by date. Split into distinct eras of Pink Floyd's career, the beginning of each chapter consists of long and detailed write-ups describing the band's activities during that time period, accompanied by numerous photographs or the band and various bits of memorabilia. Following the chapter introductions, the entries themselves contain as much information as Povey was able to uncover in his research, and the amount that is included is rather impressive. Beyond set lists for the concerts, rehearsal times, track lists, and broadcast dates for the TV and radio appearances are included, as well as track and session notes for Pink Floyd's recording sessions. These entries include, when applicable, contemporary reviews from prominent newspapers/magazines/periodicals of the times, shedding an interesting light on how Floyd's music, both on record and in concert, was initially perceived. It can make for some fascinating reading, especially when reviews back then contrast so sharply with retrospective analysis (in particular, I'm recalling the scathing 1975 review for the Wish You Were Here album which was included in the book, especially when it's compared to modern views of the record). Also, it's interesting to see that certain obscure songs were actually played onstage, including some you'd never even consider, such as "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast" at the tail end of 1970! The book does a good job showing just how relentlessly punishing and grueling Pink Floyd's concert itinerary was up until the end of 1973, as well as how little they actually toured from 1974 onward. The book's timeline ends with the final ever Pink Floyd concert, their 2005 reunion for Live 8, and the death of founding member Syd Barrett in 2006. Short diaries of the solo careers of all five Pink Floyd members follow, and the book concludes with a comprehensive discography.
There's not too much more that can be said about a book like Echoes...these type of day-by-day chronicle books can either be done extremely well or they can come off as shoddy, poorly researched jobs. Echoes continues in the tradition of the Kinks and Beatles books mentioned earlier as one of the very best. The amount of research the author put into the book is staggering, especially considering what he was able to dig up for the band's early years when they had a loosely held together, constantly rotating membership and changed their name as frequently as their socks, playing various small student gatherings and underground gigs before solidifying into Pink Floyd in 1965. Echoes is readable from front to back, but it's also quite useful as a reference book; just pick a years or event of interest, flip to that section, and the information is right there at your fingertips. Echoes is a valuable and informative tome that is essential for any Pink Floyd fan, especially its value as a comprehensive reference for collectors of the band's live and promotional work. A few minor typos aside, this book is as good a day-by-day chronicle of Pink Floyd's history as there ever will be and is worthy of being on any Pink Floyd fan's bookshelf.
There is perhaps no other figure in rock music so shrouded in mystery and legend than Roger "Syd" Barrett, one of the founding members of Pink Floyd. With his distinctive looks and quirky, one-of-a-kind songwriting and guitar playing, Syd was the creative guiding force that launched Pink Floyd out of the underground London art and music scene and onto the charts. However, just when it seemed that Syd and Pink Floyd were poised for a successful career, he lost the plot and succumbed to mental illness barely one year and one album in, spending the next four decades as a remote figure of interest, mystery, and in many unseemly cases, obsession until his death in 2006. Author Rob Chapman aims to lay bare all of the myths, half-truths, and flat-out inaccuracies of Syd's life and sad demise while giving a greater appreciation of his creative gifts in his comprehensive biography A Very Irregular Head: The Life of Syd Barrett.
***special thanks to Sean at Da Capo Press for sending me a copy of the book to review!***
Pink Floyd was one of the biggest and most commercially and critically successful bands of all time, releasing their greatest works throughout the 1970s. However, their origins in the mid-1960s show a much different band that could have gone in a far different direction had that short-lived configuration stayed together longer than it did; this was down to one man, Syd Barrett. A Very Irregular Head is the story of Syd's long, sad, and confusing life, from his idyllic childhood in Cambridge, his years as a popular and talented student and artist, and his stint in Pink Floyd, to his sudden decline and collapse, the public deterioration of his mental health, and his final decades in seclusion when he became a reluctant and unwitting icon. Starting with detailed background on young Roger Barrett's birth and childhood in Cambridge, Chapman uses the extensive research he's done and the numerous interviews he's conducted with Syd's siblings (especially sister Rosemary, who was Syd's caretaker for the final 25 years of his life), friends, teachers, and colleagues in order to paint the picture of a boy who was very popular. With his striking good looks, cultivated manner (being the product of a comfortable middle-class upbringing), and eccentric but charming personality, Syd (a nickname he picked up during his teenage years) by all accounts was a normal, well-adjusted young man. The death of his equally eccentric father when he was sixteen affected him as it would anyone, but it wouldn't be until years later that the true impact of this loss was seen by those around him. A talented artist, Syd followed in the tradition of so many other of his rock music peers in 1960s England and attended art school, in his case Camberwall in London. A very interesting revelation made by his close friends and families when discussing those years was their surprise that he ever made a foray into music. While he had a great love of music and played passable guitar, everyone around him was stunned by his talents as an artist and claimed that, in agreement with them, Syd considered himself first and foremost an artist who played in music and not the other way around. By 1965 he'd met up again in London with old friend Waters and two of Waters' classmates at architecture school, Nick Mason and Rick Wright. Forming a band and initially playing R&B and pop covers of the day, after several name changes Syd gave them the name with which they would eventually find eternal fame: Pink Floyd. During this same time, they began to play gigs in and around the London underground scene as Syd developed his highly idiosyncratic guitar technique and songwriting talent. (Let me note here that I will not be giving a potted Pink Floyd history in this review, nor does the book do this...it's been done before and isn't relevant seeing as Syd was in the band for less than three years). Eventually attracting management eager to guide them in recording some demo tapes, they were signed to EMI in 1966 and proceeded to release two seminal psychedelic singles ("Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play") and their epochal debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. However, with fame came an increased workload of promotion and touring and Syd was ill-equipped to handle this. Fairly early on the cracks began to appear and by the end of 1967 his behavior had become so erratic, unpredictable, and potentially career-damaging that the drastic measure of bringing in another of his childhood Cambridge friends, David Gilmour, made the band a five-piece until the end of January 1968 when Syd was jettisoned in a frankly cowardly manner (something the four remaining members of the band have acknowledged in subsequent years). What the book makes clear in a way I had never thought of before is that the decision was driven more by a rather ruthless desire to save their burgeoning young careers than an altruistic attempt to help Syd, although it should be noted that they did try to help him. Unfortunately, you can only help people who want to be helped and Syd, whether knowingly or as a victim of his illness, did not want to be helped.
After his expulsion from Pink Floyd, it still seemed as though Syd had a promising solo career in front of him. With his unique songwriting gifts and the anything-goes musical climate of the late 1960s, Syd could have been a more eccentric and electric/eclectic version of Ray Davies or Bob Dylan with his observational songs. Instead, he sank deeper into mental illness, exasperating numerous producers (including David Gilmour, Roger Waters, and Rick Wright, all three of whom helped to produce Syd's two solo albums) such that the tortured and torturous sessions for the albums The Madcap Laughs and Barrett would be the last music he would ever make. A few more aborted attempts at recording and performing new music (including a VERY short-lived band, Stars) resulted in nothing of substance; Syd was by this point almost impossibly difficult to work with. A final collapse led to one of the most famous myths about him that turned out to be true: he walked back to his mother's house in Cambridge and, barring a few stints living in London hotels throughout the 1970s, remained there for the rest of his life. There was the famous occasion an overweight and cleanshaven (including head and eyebrows) Syd showed up unannounced and unrecognized at a 1975 Pink Floyd recording session, as well as an encounter with a journalist friend who didn't recognize him when attempting to visit him at the hotel he was living at, but otherwise he never saw anyone from the old Cambridge scene ever again apart from his first love, Libby Gausden. Syd (reverting back to his true name of Roger and discarding any vestiges of his past life as a rock star) lived the remainder of his days in a mundane but relatively peaceful existence in Cambridge, disturbed only by his declining mental health and the obsessive door-stepping and stalking by "fans" that, frankly, was disgusting, cruel, and intrusive. His ill health (both physically and mentally) eventually claimed his life in 2006, but did nothing to dispel the interest in his life and career and, if anything, actually heightened it.
Chapman's book is more than just a telling of Syd's life and career; it's also a scholarly look into the influences that affected his work and the its attributes. As both an artist and musician, Syd left behind a very small but unique and rich body of work and Chapman sifts through it with an almost overzealous attention to detail in his analysis. In fact, oftentimes it seems he goes a bit overboard reading too much into some of Syd's more nonsense/throwaway lyrics. There are also several passages dedicated to miniature history lessons on many of the writers and artists who influenced Barrett, so much so that the book begins to feel like an esoteric biography on these figures before Chapman reels himself back to Syd's story. While these sections don't ruin the book, they do make it a slog in places and almost (notice that I said almost) make it feel as though they were included in order to pad the pagecount. I'll admit to being initially surprised that a book about someone who made only three albums in his entire career and then disappeared weighed in at over 400 pages. However, the book does excel at painting a rich and detailed portrait of the Cambridge arts scene of the 1960s, as well as the underground London scene of 1964-1967, drawing on new interviews with nearly all of the central figures who give a vivid picture of those heady times. The only figures who were not involved in these discussions were the four members of Pink Floyd, who though they were quoted extensively, did not contribute directly to Chapman's research. Chapman also uses many parts of the book to play Mythbuster for the various "Syd Stories" that have popped up over the decades, using a combination of dogged research and logical empirical thinking to determine that for every story like Syd walking back to Cambridge or physically abusing one of his girlfriends in a drug-induced stupor (both true) there are many that are false (Syd being locked in a cupboard during a bad acid trip or crushing Mandrax and Bryllcream in his hair onstage, among others). These are valuable pieces of truth to finally have, although I do think the author's bias shows a bit as he tries to dispel myths about Syd's hopelessness in the studio post-Pink Floyd when a thorough listen to the same albums he uses as proof shows that while Syd wasn't completely incapacitated, he also was clearly not in complete control of his faculties. Finally, there are many theories discussed as to the mental illness(es) Barrett suffered from and whether they were caused by LSD (not fully) or were exacerbated and irreversibly triggered by it (more plausible, in my opinion). Had Syd been born in 1976 instead of 1946, societal attitudes and the mental health profession would have been much better equipped for understanding and treating him successfully, but unfortunately in the 1960s there was a stigma attached to mental illness as well as a warped romance of madness, neither of which did Syd any favors at all.
A Very Irregular Head is the story of just that: Syd Barrett's strange, sad life and the aura around his decline. But it's also the story of a young man who, even if he hadn't been sick, was most likely not equipped to deal with the sudden pressures of stardom, fame, and the 1960s music industry. It also brings up the poignant question of whether Syd's life could have or would have been different had he stuck to art and become one of the famous young 1960s artists he appeared destined to be. While there's the danger that the pressures of the art world could have been equally as damaging, it can't be denied that the music industry was (and still is) far more unforgiving than the art world. However, had that alternate history happened it's more than likely that Pink Floyd as we know them would not exist. Since I've not read any other books on Syd Barrett, I can't say for sure whether this book is definitive (although I think it would be safe to assume it is based on the depth of the author's research), but Rob Chapman's book is a dense, information-packed, and scholarly look at a true creative genius who burned brightly for a short burst before tragically and slowly flaming out over a lifetime. It's absolutely a must-read read for any Barrett and Pink Floyd fan.
Pink Floyd is one of the most critically and commercially successful bands in rock history, carving out their own uncompromising niche as sonic pioneers who revolutionized music and the live concert experience in the 1970s in a manner analogous to the Beatles in the 1960s. However, even to their legion of hardcore fans, there has always been an air of mystery and the unknown around Pink Floyd. Much of this is due to their carefully cultivated anonymity (these are not four distinct personalities the public knows in the way other bands are), how insular and closed-off they were during their heyday, and how little they spoke to the press. Additionally, there has been much myth making behind some of their biggest albums, and especially surrounding their gifted and ultimately doomed original leader Syd Barrett. In Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd, author Mark Blake (whom I interviewed a while back about his excellent Who book which was reviewed here a while back) cuts through all of the murk from the past in order to separate fact from fiction and present the entire Floyd story as accurately as possible.
***special thanks to Sean at Da Capo Press for sending me a copy of the book to review!***
Like so much having to do with Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett is a central figure in their story even beyond his all too brief tenure in the band. It's well known that much of the Pink Floyd mythos, at least in the early years, was due to Barrett's songwriting and his subsequent mental health issues, but he remained an almost constant influence on the band and their music for the bulk of their career. Having grown up together in Cambridge, the three principal Floyd songwriters (Barrett, bassist/vocalist Roger Waters, and guitarist/vocalist David Gilmour) had known each other as kids. Along the two other members (drummer Nick Mason and keyboardist/vocalist Rick Wright), Syd's mental decline and eventual absence from the band and their lives left a wound that never really healed and had a profound emotional impact on them, borne out in much of their later music and lyrics. Drawing on extensive research as well as his numerous interviews with the members of the band, their friends, and associates, Blake lays out the complete story of the band from their beginnings as boys in Cambridge to the top of the music world in the 1970s, through the bitter legal proceedings and fallings-out in the 1980s to their eventual one-off reunion in 2005 and their status as elder statesmen of rock. As with everything to do with the band, it always comes back to the place of Waters', Gilmour's, and Barrett's youth: Cambridge, England. Born within a couple years of each other in the middle of World War II, the three men grew up together through school and were all part of the burgeoning Cambridge scene, where numerous creative young people floated in and out of each others orbits. (The legendary Hipgnosis album art team of Storm Thorgersen and Aubrey Powell, who designed almost all of the band's album covers, also came out of the Cambridge scene). Beyond their geographical roots, Barret, Waters, and Gilmour also had in common their upper-middle class upbringings, and in the case of Waters and Barrett, a further connection of having lost their fathers: Roger's was killed in the war when he was an infant, and Syd's died when he was a young boy. Making their way through school, Roger, Syd, and Dave all played in loosely associated bands after being bitten by the rock n' roll bug like so many other British boys of their generation in the mid-to-late 1950s. Syd ended up continuing the great English rock tradition of attending art school, joining the likes of John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, Ray Davies, and and Graham Coxon, while Waters studied architecture in the city, befriending two fellow upper-middle class students and budding musicians, Nick Mason and Rick Wright. The duo joined up with Barrett and Waters in 1965 and began playing around London as The Pink Floyd Sound before eventually shortening their name to Pink Floyd. Becoming part of the burgeoning underground psychedelic rock scene and led by the quirky and idiosyncratic songwriting and guitar playing of Barrett, the band were signed by EMI and released a successful debut album, The Piper At the Gates of Dawn, as well as the two popular non-album singles "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play." However, the eccentric but light-hearted behavior Barrett had always displayed in his youth was disturbingly exacerbated by his increased consumption of hallucinogens, such that by the time the band undertook their first US tour in 1967 he had become a liability. With their promising career suddenly in jeopardy, they made the decision to bring in old friend David Gilmour as a second guitarist and so, for the first month of 1968, Pink Floyd had five members (although Barrett spent most live gigs wandering around the stage barely playing). Eventually they made the decision to jettison him and so began Pink Floyd's classic, most commercially and critically successful period.
From here, Blake does a wonderful job taking the reader through the band's entire career, moving through each era and album and breaking down the various songs and sonic experimentation they were pioneering, as well as the developing power struggles as they became more successful. Up to and including the release of the landmark album Dark Side of the Moon in 1973, the band as a whole was truly greater than the sum of its parts, with all four members pulling together as one and creating some truly astonishing work. By this point, Roger Waters had long since taken over as the primary lyricist, and though he was starting to exert his influence as a songwriter more and more, Gilmour and Wright were still contributing quite a lot. As Blake points out via the band's own words, though, by the time they'd achieved superstardom with Dark Side of the Moon, they were left wondering where to go next. From Dark Side through the end of the decade they would make the best music of their career and solidify their place as the rock band that put on the best rock concert experience in both musically and visually, with landmark albums such as Wish You Were Here, Animals, and The Wall rounding out their discography in the 1970s. However, now that they were wealthy and successful, they were a bit adrift. In an eerie parallel to what happened with the Beatles in the wake of Brian Epstein's death, Roger Waters (shades of fellow bass-playing songwriting genius Paul McCartney) stepped into the breach and exerted his control and drive over the rest of the band, dominating the remainder of their classic period work such that there was very little room left for contributions from the others. Gilmour managed to fight and claw his way to some co-writing credits, but while Mason was content to be the mediator, drummer, and sound effects guru, Wright stopped contributing to the writing to such an extent that he frustrated the other three enough that they sacked him during the making of The Wall in 1979. The final album from the classic Floyd, 1983's The Final Cut, had music and lyrics credited solely to Roger Waters, the only time this happened in their career. After this, there were lawsuits and nasty comments lobbed back and forth between Waters and Gilmour as the former sought to dissolve the band's interests while the latter wanted to carry on. A few more albums under the Floyd name came out in the 1980s and 1990s, and while not matching by any stretch their earlier work, they and their accompanying tours were hugely successful on a financial level. A mellowing over the years led to a reunion of the four men during 2005's Live 8, which was to be the final time Pink Floyd would ever reform. Barrett's death in 2006 and Wright's in 2008 put paid to that.
What is utterly fascinating about this band and the way Blake tells their story is how three things loom so large in their history: the Cambridge roots of Waters, Gilmour, and Barrett; the psychological decline and mental illness of Syd Barrett; and the death of Roger Waters' father during WWII. First, Cambridge was host to a vibrant scene of young musicians, artists, actors, and directors in the 1960s, many of whom decamped to London to form what many in and around Pink Floyd would dub the "Cambridge Mafia." Beyond the three band members, their lighting director, roadies, and the Hipgnosis visual arts collective all hailed from the city. Second, regarding Barrett: his sad decline and subsequent withdrawal from music and their lives had a profound effect on them, not only on a personal level as their friend but also on their music. The themes of mental illness, emotional distance, doomed rock stars, and absent friends inform much of Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here (indeed, they are the theme of that particular album), and The Wall. Finally, the death of Waters' father was a wound from which he never truly healed and impacted his writing to such an extent that The Wall and the Final Cut almost exclusively centered around this pivotal event, much to the eventual chagrin of his bandmates. Blake does a good job pointing out when each of these aspects reared their heads during specific events throughout Pink Floyd's career. In particular, the mental decline of Barrett is the most tragic as his friends and family saw it happen over a relatively short period of time in 1967, but it was dramatic and severe enough that he was never the same. To their credit, the band kept their distance as Syd requested, but always made sure that Syd's royalties made their way to his bank account while never once downplaying his contribution to their early sound and career.
When all was said and done, Pink Floyd were a collection of five well-educated young men who joined together to make some of the most interesting, boundary-pushing, experimental, dramatic, and successful music of the 20th century. Mark Blake has written an eminently compelling and readable book on their entire career that manages to cut through much of the myth behind the band and tell the true story. Their purposely cultivated anonymity, eschewing becoming a band of identifiable personalities in order to let their music and visuals do the talking, would go on to become both their blessing and their curse. It is but one of the many interesting aspect of their career that may not have been apparent to many fans before reading the book. However, Syd Barrett is the constant thread at the heart of the band's story and indeed, of the book. To Blake's credit, he never allows Barrett to overwhelm or overtake the story of Pink Floyd. He also doesn't shy away from including passages that make Waters look like an egomaniacal rock star, nor the moments when he later admitted he was wrong. Likewise for not always showing Gilmour to be the "good guy" in the whole feud with Waters...in many instance, his behavior was as petty as his rival's. This balanced approach is what keeps the reader from taking sides in the dispute (unless you have preconceived notions going into the book, in which case you'll ether have them strengthened or confounded). This is one of the rare band biographies that I can find little or no fault with...if I were to have one complaint, it's that I wish it had since been updated to include Richard Wright's death in 2008 and the more recent controversies Roger Waters' touring of the Wall has attracted in recent years. This are but minor quibbles, though, and for any fan of Pink Floyd this has to be considered as the best comprehensive biography on this unique and beloved band.
