Syd Barrett: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Pink Floyd’s ‘Crazy Diamond’

Barrett, who was anything but “ordinary,” very nearly joined them. The 19-year-old traveled to a London hotel to become admitted by the sect’s leader, a guru called Maharaj Charan Singh Ji – known as “the Master” by devotees. “He asked the Master and the Master said, ‘I will not take an emotional request,'” says friend Andrew Rawlinson, a devout follower. “At that time it was very unusual for the Master to turn anybody down, but he did turn Syd down. He told him that his request to be initiated was emotional and not based on genuine spiritual research.”

By all accounts, the rejection crushed the young artist. Given Barrett’s future mental health struggles, a simple drug-free life of structure and meditation might have been the best thing for him. But regardless of whether such a conversion would have saved the man’s mind, it more than likely would have put a premature end to Syd Barrett: Rock Star.

2. Barrett wrote Pink Floyd’s first single about a real-life underwear thief.

While the track “Arnold Layne” is chiefly remembered as the world’s introduction to Pink Floyd, it’s also notable as the only ode to an underwear bandit to ever hit the pop charts. The lyrics were inspired by an unknown fetishist who briefly ran amok in Cambridge, snatching women’s undergarments from clothing lines – including the one in Roger Waters’ backyard.

“My mother and Syd’s mother had students as lodgers,” Waters said in a 1967 interview. “There was a girls’ college up the road. So there were constantly great lines of bras and knickers on our washing lines and ‘Arnold,’ or whoever he was, had bits and pieces off our washing lines. They never caught him. He stopped doing it after things got too hot for him.”

Waters relayed the unusual story to Barrett, who was moved to immortalize the local eccentric in song. “I thought Arnold Layne was a nice name and fitted well into the music I had already composed,” Barrett told Melody Maker in 1967. “Then I thought, ‘Arnold must have a hobby,’ and it went from there.”

Arnold’s “strange hobby” of transvestitism proved too much for some, and the song was banned on the popular offshore radio station, Radio London. “‘Arnold Layne’ just happens to dig dressing up in women’s clothing. A lot of people do – so let’s face up to reality,” said a defiant Barrett at the time.

3. One of Barrett’s Pink Floyd singles remains unreleased.

https://dailymotion.com/video/x3vfw6l

Considering Barrett’s relatively slight musical output, the absence of “Vegetable Man” and “Scream Thy Last Scream” leaves a sizable hole in his canon. The former was penned in 1967 as a spontaneous response to manager Peter Jenner’s request for a follow up to Pink Floyd’s then-recent single, “See Emily Play.” Though often interpreted as a self-portrait of his own mental disintegration, it actually vents his contempt for the vapid nature of fame and his own role as a pop star. Delivered with a sarcastic sneer, it’s disturbingly direct in its anger.