The life and times of a Crazy Diamond

Wright, who was to become progressively isolated from the other members of Pink Floyd during the 1970s, felt Barrett’s departure more keenly than was ever recognized. As well as losing a musical foil, he lost his only ally in a band which, as Gilmour robustly points out – and he should know – “was never a jolly bunch of friends. Things between the four of us were always pretty rocky”.

Long before Waters called for Wright’s resignation in 1979, the two were at loggerheads. They began arguing at college. “We would never have been friends if it weren’t for the band.” As personalities, the two were clearly ill matched. Waters, abrasive and assertive; Wright, sensitive and slightly dithery. In addition, as Peter Jenner points out, “Rick was Roger’s real rival. He was better looking and he had the better voice.” The other non-Cambridge Floyder, Mason, stuck close to Waters, the college friend whose bolshy spirit of independence he, initially anyway, admired.

That left Gilmour, considerably more reasonable than Waters but equally hardheaded. All in all, the discovery that Wright nearly left the band when invited to do so in the spring of 1968 seems hardly surprising. “Peter and Andrew (Jenner and King, Floyd’s managers) thought Syd and I were the musical brains of the group, and that we should form a break-away band, to try to hold Syd together. He and I were living together in a flat in Richmond at the time. And believe me, I would have left with him like a shot if I thought Syd could do it.”

A wonderful picture of Syd, in double effect.

Syd Barrett