I raise the question after watching too much youtube where the man is glorified, patronized, and disrespected. It seems as if we glorify and make fun of what we don't understand. I want to set it all straight--the man suffered from schizophrenia, exacerbated by LSD. He suffered greatly from this I believe and we don't need to be disrespecting him by making a spectacle of him when all he wanted was privacy. RIP Syd...
2007-05-01 18:56:30 · 4 answers · asked by jayresupc 2 in Entertainment & Music ➔ Music
Looks like Stephen has been partaking of the "electric kool-aid" as well. Syd was the initial driving force behind Pink Floyd. No Syd, no Pink Floyd, and I mean that quite literally. If Barrett had not gone out the way he did, Gilmour never would have been needed in the band. As it turned out, however, Syd did start to crack up, but before he dropped out, he was responsible for giving Pink Floyd their distinct sound. If he hadn't have written the songs and lyrics, The Pink Floyd, as they were once called, could have turned out to be yet another Rolling Stones rip-off, and faded into obscurity.
To answer your question, he was both.
2007-05-01 19:13:28 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
How can you be so sure he was schizophrenic when there have been so many conflicting reports? Though there obviously is the question of whether his band members in Pink Floyd were too busy pursuing fame to care for Syd, they didn't completely forget him. He certainly did some brilliant stuff on The Piper and his solo records, and lived off the royalties of just a few years work for the rest of his life. People's reactions, following him and posting movies, etc, are just part of celebrity, which he did want at some point during his life. From what I have heard he was in relatively good health for a time with the Floyd and began deteriorating during their first American tour. I suppose he's kind of glorified that self-destructive image. It's such a pity he's dead, so yes, RIP. I hold great respect for him. He was the 60s embodied.
2007-05-02 05:04:23 · answer #2 · answered by jack_sullivan_09 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
He certainly was a tragedy of mental health. He also wrote some really good psychedelic rock songs. But I do think he sometimes gets overestimated. Waters and Gilmour were both far more important to the genius of Pink Floyd.
2007-05-02 02:05:21 · answer #3 · answered by Stephen L 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Well, we can also be fans. I don't glorify or disrespect him, but I like his tunes and I like to read biographies to learn how artists and others cope (or not). YouTube probably isn't the place to go for fair and balanced, don't let it get you bummed.
2007-05-02 02:13:37 · answer #4 · answered by Eddie Sea 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋