The Madcap Laughs At Us on the Border

This is the true story of Syd Barrett’s solo career – or, as true as he thinks it needs to be.

Syd Barrett: vocals, guitar, principle songwriter

David Gilmour: 12-string guitar, bass, drums on Octopus

Mike Ratledge: keys

Hugh Hopper, Willie Wilson: bass

Robert Wyatt: drums

Produced by Peter Jenner, Malcom Jones, Syd Barrett, David Gilmour, and Roger Waters

art by Hipgnosis

It’s July of 1967, the height of the Summer of Love. Pink Floyd are about to appear on Top of the Pops for the third week in a row with their latest single, “See Emily Play.” But something is wrong.

They can’t film their segment...because their frontman has disappeared.

When London’s psychedelic scene was launched into the mainstream, so was its beautiful shining figurehead, Syd Barrett. He embodied the counterculture: beautiful, whimsical, vibrant, and soaked in LSD. His grand debut to the debutante ball of hit paraders, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, was a defining LP of the era. But soon after its completion, the rest of Floyd realized promotion was going to be a problem. Something was up with Syd. He was doing odd things on stage: detuning guitars, refusing to lip sync, throwing interviews. A disastrous Fillmore West appearance royally pissed off venue owner Bill Graham; and Floyd’s subsequent US tour had to be cancelled. They regrouped, instead hopping on a package tour with the likes of the Move, the Nice, and Jimi Hendrix. But Syd hadn’t gotten any better. In fact, he’d gotten worse. His school buddy David Gilmour remembered that fateful evening when, on the way to a gig, Floyd unceremoniously decided not to pick up Syd. It was as simple as that. One night, Syd was leader of the band. The next, he was gone.

As the story goes, Syd Barrett faded away post-Floyd. Got lost in himself and his mysterious state; leaving more questions than answers. Even his own band wrote tirelessly for years trying to make sense of him.

No other figure in rock-and-roll history is shrouded in mystery quite like this pretty diamond. Was he a misunderstood genius? A mad poet? Was he everybody’s fool, the vegetable man? Was he playing an elaborate joke on us all?

This is the true story of Syd Barrett’s solo career – or, as true as he thinks it needs to be.

It seems our madcap was tailor-made to mythologize. Take the Madcap cover photo shoot, for example. Syd lurks about his bohemian apartment, complete with that famous striped floor, in various states of dress – and the mysterious “Iggy” in undress.

If you look very closely, you'll see wet paint on Iggy's feet - the paint job was finished the morning of the photo shoot!

It’s tough talking about Syd. He said it best himself: “I don’t think I’m easy to talk about. I’ve got a very irregular head.” No one wants to be remembered by their worst moments. What makes these reviews of The Madcap Laughs and Barrett so difficult is that these albums were made when Syd was on the edge of his worst moment. So much of the mythology of Syd Barrett hinges upon the worst moments. The mythology was steep, even in his lifetime:

“If you tend to believe what you hear, rather than what is, Syd Barrett is either dead, behind bars, or a vegetable. He is in fact alive and as confusing as ever…”

quoted from: Mick Rock, “Syd Barrett: The Madcap Who Named Pink Floyd.” Rolling Stone, 12/23/1971.

The wild speculation surrounding this man’s mental health is super invasive. I am an art historian, not a psychologist. I’m not diagnosing him with anything, and neither should you. I’m also not going to speculate about what exactly “set Syd off.” I’ll only say that yes, he used LSD, and yes, he took Mandrax. One or both exacerbated something that was already there. Again, I’m not at liberty to say exactly what. But these substances are important to keep in mind when mentioning significant events in Madcap and Barrett production. In short, there’s a lot of nuance to this man’s story.

In March of 1968, managers Peter Jenner and Andrew King left the good ship Floyd with Syd. Their thought process being, “he’s The Guy from Pink Floyd, of course he’s gonna have a long and fruitful solo career!”Instead, his solo debut, The Madcap Laughs, took an agonizing 18 months and a whopping five producers – two of which were his ex-bandmates – to complete. Just as speculation about Syd’s mental state runs wild, so do conflicting accounts of recording with him. Peter Jenner threw the towel in, while Malcom Jones asserted in his history of Madcap production that he was just peachy. As for David Gilmour, who was given a whole three days to finish the album, it was “pretty tortuous...(Syd) was in trouble, and was a close friend for many years before then, so it was really was the least one could do.” Interviews Syd gave in promotion ofMadcap only muddy the waters; he locked himself in a room speaking to Melody Maker, then was clear as a bell for the NME with this quip:

“Yes, (Madcap is) quite nice, but I’d be very surprised if it did anything if I were to drop dead.”

quoted from: Julian Palacios, Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd: Dark Globe. 2010.

Oh, Syd. That’s the thing people forget when talking about him. He didn’t want to be a pop star in the first place.

In case you haven’t noticed yet, I am a whimsical bitch. In the almost 60 years since his band burst onto the music scene, Syd Barrett’s become the patron saint of whimsical bitches.

Ergo, you have to be okay with an inherent amount of nonsense and whimsy to get something out of Syd’s writing. In my poking around online, I’ve seen a lot of, “oh man, you gotta listen to Madcap. Syd’s toOoOtally craAaAzy on here!” Syd’s lyrics aren’t nonsense. His stream-of-consciousness writing may read as incoherent drabble to others. David Gilmour called it the “stream of subconsciousness.” There’s no real narrative, no clear-cut “you” or “I” to follow, and not everyone’s into that. Some producers are masters of ambiance; they create evocative soundscapes. Syd is a master of evocative wordscapes. Rarely does he directly say anything that makes you go, “Oh my god! He gets me!” It’s the feeling he creates with his word choice.

Syd himself described Madcap as “like a painting as big as the cellar.” There’s a lot to unpack here. Sonically, it’s half-naked...not unlike the lady on the back cover. Some numbers are fully-arranged, with guitars, keys, and drums. Others are just Syd and his guitar. It’s half-frizzy-fuzzed-out psych rockers, half-freak folk. The shifting, haphazard manner of this album’s production, especially its final mix, were spectacularly inefficient. But to those who feel “David and Roger sabotaged the album!”: I urge you to keep in mind they did the best they possibly could with the three days they were given.

There are things I'll miss in my analyses of Syd’s writing. Being the product of the American public school system I don’t know many British nursery rhymes. It’s been a long time since I studied the poets as well. Most any connections to literature will from Rob Chapman’s A Very Irregular Head. Rob is notably British and therefore more familiar with these things. He goes way more in-depth than I will; if you want to play lyrical detective, I recommend his book.

Madcap begins with one of the all-time great Syd songs, Terrapin. This song establishes two important themesthroughout Syd’s work: his penchant for unconventional chords, and his inescapable accent. He was just so British, it becomes an accidental thruline of all his music! “Terrapin’”s got a breezy, summery vibe with loosely-strummed acoustic guitar gently rock us back-and-forth. Subtle overdubbing on electric enforces the mood: being so in love you can’t think straight. Heads up: a lot of this album is about love. “Terrapin” is aprime example of Syd’s romantic side. He didn’t ever sing, “I like you, let’s go out!” Instead, he sang, “You’re the kind of girl that fits in with my world.” (And occasionally paired that with deranged goose noises.) While he is engaging in simplest terms on “Terrapin:” “I really love you, and I mean you,” its central line doesn’t. “Oh, baby, my hair’s on end about you.” Just thinking about this girl gives our narrator goosebumps. There’s a continuedmotif of two fish swimming: boulders below, light above, and glittering fins in the water. I’ve mulled over this aquatic image for over a week, and while the meaning still evades me – like a fish slipping through my fingers – it sounds quite lovely.

Wafting “Terrapin” is instantly juxtaposed with No Good Trying. This is much more in keeping with musical trends of 1968: fuzzed-out guitar and bass, several high-pitched guitar solos ending in descending jazz-influenced tangles of notes. It’s very psychedelic. There’s a noticeable reverb on Syd’s vocals too, creating more space in a spacey arrangement.

Listening to “No Good Trying” and take five of Golden Hair (as a YouTube commenter said, “Syd had his own sense of harmony, theory be damned!) I can’t help but wonder what “psychedelic Syd’s” version of this LP would’ve sounded like. (And the 20-minute “Rhamadan” makes me long heavy for a jazz fusion Syd album with the Soft Machine. Oh, what could've been!) Again, a lot of Madcap is songs about love: having love, losing love, being in love. Or a strained love, proving unable to reconcile fundamental differences. It makes sense, Syd was going through two breakups at once. One with his band, one with a girlfriend. The narrator of “No Good Trying” isjust fundamentally different from his lover. Maybe they were one in the same at one point, but they’ve grown apart. One partner pretends to be something they’re not: “I understand that you’re different from me, but I can tell that you can’t be what you pretend.” It sounds like the woman is caught in the runaround of keeping up with the fast life: “spinning around and around in a car with electric lights flashing very fast.” Of note is the line, “It’s no good holding your sequined fan where I can’t see.” Sure, a sequined fan can be part of a flashy ’60s going-out ensemble. Instead, I thought of fan code.

There was this idea in Victorian times that a lady would use her fan to communicate. It wasn’t real, just a device to sell fans, but nonetheless it’s made it into media; notably in Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan. Despite his protests in interviews – he said he wasn’t much of a reader to Melody Maker – Syd was, in fact, a reader; and would’ve likely been familiar with Wilde. Hell, even I read him in high school! With this “fan code” interpretation in mind, the “sequin fan” line is another wording of this song’s central theme: “It’s no use trying to hide what you really are and what you really feel.”

Producer Malcom Jones wasn’t fond of “Love You.” Syd was. Syd had the right opinion.

This is one of the cutest fucking songs ever. Vaudeville with a twist; accented with what I think is a Moog or Minimoog. Madcap was recorded at EMI, Syd and Co. would’ve had access to one or both synthesizers. The rubbery Moog and jangly keys create “Love You’”s bouncy feel. Syd’s offbeat sense of humor shines. No one knows what “Ice cream, ’scuse me” is supposed to mean, but I think the words sound great together! Dare I say it’s one of Syd’s most memorable lines, up there with the one about the mouse called Gerald. Writing “whoopee!” into a lyric is enough, but his deadpan delivery makes it even betterThis is a wonderful, spirited delivery by Syd. For lack of better phrasing, you can just tell Syd liked the song. If he curates feelings with words, he’s created the feeling of a guy who sees a good-time rocker woman and is just falling all over himself trying to flirt. The chorus is giddy, giggly word vomit as he rhymes every word he can think of with “honey.”To those who dislike this song: how does it feel to hate joy, fun, and whimsy?

In Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd: Dark Globe, Julian Palacios goes as far as to call No Man’s Land a proto-punk tune. As one of the resident proto-punk girlies (my only real qualifications are the peanut butter cold open and making a tier list of Rob Tyner’s hairstyles) I’d call “Nile Song” more proto-punk than this. Most of this track is an instrumental; it shifts into a cool humming key change over Syd’s unintelligible mumbling. For the life of me, I can’t find a transcription of what he’s saying here. But again, it’s about the feeling. “No Man’s Land” is of Syd’s more obscure writing – fitting considering the title. From what I can gather, narrator’s girl is quite brazenly seeing someone else. It revolves around all-time great Syd lyric: “We awful, awful crawl.” A hint at the darkness the next track brings.

Dark Globe is a killer. I am shocked to learn this dates back to 1965, it feels so on-the-nose to Syd’s situation at the time of Madcap. With the goofier tunes like “Love You,” a listener can forget that this was a tenuous time for the artist. I don’t want to romanticize a man in crisis one bit, but it’s hard not to feel him walking a tightrope between genius and oblivion. “Dark Globe” is a moment where he wobbles on the tightrope and your heart stops. This song is uncomfortably close. I feel like I’m hearing something I shouldn’t be. “Oh where are you now, pussy willow that smiled on this leaf?” It might just break the fourth wall, directly addressing all of us in the distant future reliving Syd’s very public decline. His voice is rubbed raw, harsh as he wails, “My head kissed the ground, I was half the way down!” He wrings every last drop of breath out of “please,” before pleading,“Please lift a hand. I’m only a person.” I hear anger and resentment. He spits venom as he hollers, “Won’t you miss me? Wouldn’t you miss me at all?” and slams away on his guitar strings.

“Dark Globe” was this project’s tonal shift. After this song, Syd was no longer a mythical figure in my mind. He was a man.

And to follow that up with Here I Go. A sweet little song about a pop star’s girlfriend leaving him, so he goes off and dates her sister. That’s emotional devastation on par with “Without You” followed by the goddamn coconut song!

Last week with Nilsson Schmilsson we talked a lot about Harry’s sense of humor. He undercut vulnerability with a punchline. Putting “Here I Go,” where the narrator calls his ex’s dancing bad and makes ego-stroking quips like “kinda catchy,” after something so deeply confessional as “Dark Globe” does something similar. I’m not sure how much control Syd had over sequencing, but I like to think this creative choice was reflective of his sense of humor and not a joke at his expense.

Entire essays have been written about Octopus. No, really, Paul Belbin wrote a whole essay called “Untangling the Octopus.” It’s a bummer that only Julian Palacios’s edited version is available online, but if you want to go line-by-line through “Octopus,” that essay will be linked here.

Syd was proud of this song: “I carried that about in my head for about 6 months before I actually wrote it so maybe that’s why it came out so well...” He had reason to be proud. For one, it’s the namesake of this album...sort of. At some point during the final mix, David Gilmour misheard “the mad cat laughed at the man at the border” as “the madcap laughs at the man on the border.” I think we all misheard that one at some point!

Syd’s creativity most certainly did not atrophy after Floyd. He’s flexing his ability HARD on “Octopus.” Hecombines nods to Shakespeare with British nursery rhymes, poems, limericks, literary references, even fairground rides, with ease. Not just any writer can make dream dragons, little minute gongs, and grasshoppers catchy, but I’ve found random lines from this thing pop into my head when I least expect it. Musically, this reflects another quintessential Syd-ism: the buoyancy of his melodies. “Heave and ho, up, down, to and fro!” Chris Welch was right, Syd does screw with the time signature. He’ll throw in an extra beat and the drums have to regain their bearings. Whether an intentional move or a symptom of drummers struggling to keep up with him, we’ll never know.

Being a known Slowdive girlie, I have vested interest in Golden Hair. Hearing the original, the humming organ drone, reverb-soaked vocal, drums and vibraphone occasionally peeking through the haze, I now hear exactly how Slowdive were able to stretch this atmospheric two minutes into an epic jam.

If you have not seen “Golden Hair” live. You have to fix that.

I love tracing musical DNA back this way. Syd traces the DNA too; collectively lauded as one of his greatest songs, he adapted the lyrics from a James Joyce poem. Some covers are so well-suited to the singer they feel like they should be originals. Syd and “Golden Hair” fall into this category. Dreamy in both sound and lyric, it plays perfectly into the fantasy worlds he constructs in his writing. The narrator calls up to the tower, beckoning Rapunzel, “Lean out your window, golden hair…”

Long Gone is a song about a lover who’s physically there, but emotionally checked-out. Everything is haunting. The melody descends into the basement of Syd’s vocal range, abandoning his natural buoyancy. The organ overpowers your senses. Syd’s harmony vocal drifts from talk-sing to a shout, through dissonant chord to falsetto.

She Took A Long Cold Look, Feel, and If It’s In You. These three, which Palacios dubbed the “lost love trilogy,” remain controversial today. Malcom Jones took great issue with these songs being on the finalalbum. He felt all the false starts and studio banter made Syd look incompetent. David has gone to bat for this decision: “Roger and I both thought that it was important that some of Syd’s state of mind should be present in the record – to be a document of Syd at that moment – and to explain why some of the songs had these, how should I say it, unprofessional moments.” He’s also reflected differently on it.

“The problem was not knowing how far one should go with someone else’s angst or pain, especially when it was difficult to tell if they wanted it to sound like that. I was simply unable to get a more professional version of those songs. It was possible he was incapable of performing them in the way he wanted them to be. I worried about it less at the time than I did later. To be honest, I’m still not sure.”

quoted from: Julian Palacios, Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd: Dark Globe. 2010.

I don’t know whose horse to back in this issue. Both have their reasons and both have their side-eyeable points. If Madcap is a painting as big as the basement, this “lost love trio” is the spot on the canvas where Syd’s impasto didn’t quite make it. If this were one of his furniture pieces, it’d be unvarnished; the rawest of raw. On “She Took A Long Cold Look,” we hear page-turning as Syd flips through lyrics, and the occasional “um” and open strum when he loses his place. Is a symptom of the rush-job the end of Madcap production? Probably. Nevertheless, I quite like how intimate it feels. These songs are just Syd and his guitar; among the most naturalistic songs in his catalog. He seems to have liked “Feel.” At the end, he casually mutters, “That one was diamond, actually.” I agree, “Feel” is a diamond. Though his thought may have been foggy, his performance is no less expressive. I love the sarcasm dripping from his voice as he sneers, “How I love you to be by my side, they WAIL!” Who’s “they?” Maybe the fangirls incessantly showing up at his apartment? I’d understand if he wanted them to get the fuck out! Do I feel called out? A little bit!

Syd lays it all bare on my favorite of the three, “If It’s In You.” If “yummy yam yoom yum” is any indication, either the lyrics weren’t finished or he forgot them. We hear him insist upon singing it in this key, even if it’s just a smidge too high for him. He has to take a few cracks at it, but he does eventually get there with a fabulous memorable vocal run. “Yes I’m thiiiiiiiIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIInking of this, yes I am!” I'll admit, it's not the easiest listen, but I like it nonetheless.

Dating back to 1965, Late Night is kind of a funny closer after these naturalistic few tracks. The instrumentation is fuller, but it’s got a relaxed vibe. David’s dexterous slide guitar stretches wide arcs over Syd’s lyrics of, again, a lost love. The narrator wakes up one morning – or night – ruminating on the girl no longer sleeping by his side; a girl who totally changed his world. But there’s still one last flicker of hope: “All alone, such a spark/Spark of love just to stay with you.”

Overall, I had a wonderful time listening to Madcap. I got more relistens out of this disc, despite the truly harrowing moments this album as a whole was more palatable. This album was how I got acquainted with Syd’s writing quirks. I got to know how he made music on his own, without much interference from Floyd – we can’t say the same for the next LP.

Half the fun of Madcap is Syd’s musical prowess; his melody and lyric-crafting, entirely singular guitar playing style. The other half is his uniqueness. Sure, psychedelic folk music has plenty of eccentric or otherwise mythical figures. Tim Buckley, Linda Perhacs, one of my personal favorites Jeremy Harmer. All are masters of their hyper-specific craft. None were quite like Syd. There were plenty of cats through the ’80s, ’90s, and 2000s who tried to imitate what Syd did here but there’s no use in trying because there’s only one Madcap. I will be basking in Syd’s whimsy, joy, and touching vulnerability for many listens to come.

Personal favorites: “Terrapin,” “Love You,” “Dark Globe,” “Golden Hair,” “If It’s In You”

– AD ☆

This is part one of a two-part review. Click here to read part two.

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Welch, Chris. “Confusion and Mr. Barrett.” Melody Maker, 1/31/1970. https://www.worldradiohistory.com/UK/Melody-Maker/70s/70/Melody-Maker-1970-0131-OCR.pdf

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“Syd Barrett The Madcap Laughs” 8/8/2021. https://classicrockreview.wordpress.com/2021/08/08/syd-barrett-the-madcap-laughs-1970/