|
 |
 |
| . |
| "The song's just absolutely about him, you know it's a really good song and it describes, it describes how I experienced his disintegration and it describes as well the great desire I had then and still have now and the passion I have to celebrate him and his talent and his humanity and to express the love that I have for him." - Roger Waters on "Shine on you Crazy Diamond" "Well we all still desperately miss him because my memory, my memory of him in my head of Syd is what he was like before he went crazy. I haven't seen him grow up since he was 24 years old so my memories of Syd are very warm, if you like, of how he was before." - Rick Wright "He just was a bright light on the scene; sure, most people including myself had certain jealousies of what a bright light he had been." - David Gilmour "He was, you know, physically beautiful, witty, funny, the way he talked, the way he walked--he was, and I don't want to make this sound like a love song but he was much loved by pretty much everybody around him." - David Gilmour "We became close when we were teenagers, talking about smoking dope but not doing it, you know those days." - Roger Waters "He was a great rhythm player; he may still be a great rhythm player for all I know. Just terrific sense of time and then he sort of took that and took it in directions that no one could've imagined really" - Bob Klose "Syd was a bit more inventive and he was in with the chemists trying any known concoction, unfortunately." -Mike Leonard "They used to invite me down to a Sunday lunch which was always a bit frightening because Syd used to cook it and you'd find a half cabbage rolled in your direction." -Mike Leonard "You heard the early things; you kinda thought: 'Well maybe it's the Stones'-you recognize Syd's voice, Roger's voice but it's not Pink Floyd sound yet; it needed me to leave to do that." -Bob Klose "Certainly I loved him; he was a very lovable person. He was very different; he never tied his shoe laces, he wore very tight jeans, he was called Syd the Beat--he was a beatnik. He was extraordinary--he wrote, he acted in plays, he painted, he wrote letters to everyone and to me everyday. He was an incredible boy." - Libby Chisman, former girlfriend "I liked the noise, you know, and you could come round the end of the road 'bout half a mile away from the Archery(?) Road you could hear the sounds sorta booming across the rooftops." -Mike Leonard "They used to play at the UFO club and we used to go down there Saturday nights, but what always used to come through to me was there were these kinds of rather sorta mesmeric rhythms, this endless bass line *imitates sound of bass line* that kind of thing, and suddenly you'd have Syd in there with a Zippo lighter on a fender guitar, cigarette hanging out of his mouth, hair straggling in front of him, sweating profusely, just running the thing up and down the frets giving this incredible screaming pitch." -Aubrey 'Po" Powell, Friend "That insane goose *imitates* really kind of used to confuse me and make me feel like I was gonna faint so I thought if anyone can make me feel like that then it's gotta be pretty good." - Graham Coxon, Guitarist, Blur (Describing "Bicycle") "Why does it all got to be so terribly loud?" -host, Look of the Week, BBC TV "If we took 'Interstellar Overdrive' outside London, people hated it." -Nick Mason "I haven't done any acid for a good 32 years probably so--I don't know whether it was strong or just we weren't used to it. Very much a quasi-sorta religous thing, all quite serious. This was the way you were going to change the world by everybody opening their minds and it was going to end the Vietnam War and it was going to change everything because we were all going to see are true inner whateverness." -Peter Jenner, Pink Floyd manager 1966-1968 "Syd was a changed person; he didn't appear to recgonize me at first, sorta stared right through me and had, what Roger has very aptly put as 'black holes in the sky' for eyes." - David Gilmour "We were recording a radio one show and Syd didn't turn up and I think it was a Friday and when they found Syd, which was I think was a Sunday or Monday, they told us, 'Well something's happened to Syd.' And something had happened to him--total difference. He took too much. Like he-gone. He was still looking the same but he was somewhere else." - Rick Wright "Shall I roll with laughter or shall I try and kill him? I don't, certainly as far as I am concerned, I don't remember being overcome with compassion." - Nick Mason on Syd's disintegration "'Jugband Blues' is perhaps a bit earlier, you see, it's a bit more poetic. 'Vegetable Man' and 'Scream thy Last Scream' were the later songs and they're becoming more and more sort of open sores and more and more naked." - Peter Jenner, Pink Floyd manager 1966-1968 "We never managed to actually get him through the front door. We got him to the door a couple times but never got him thru the door." - Roger Waters on getting Syd to therapy "I think someone said that they described all of Syd's symptoms to him and he did say something like 'Well are you sure this is Syd's problem?' Which maybe was a good thing to say." - Nick Mason "Which was obviously the start of a very difficult and strange time with both Syd and I turning up together to rehersals and going out and doing shows with 5 of us where I would be playing and learning Syd's parts and singing Syd's songs while Syd would be sorta standing there sometimes singing a little bit and sometimes playing a little bit--very odd." - David Gilmour "We had a sort of style almost--if there was a problem, ignore it. It finally sort of came to the point where we ignored it by not picking up Syd one day; just going off with the other 4 of us." - Nick Mason "I think he painted the floorboards sorta quite quickly, he didn't prepare the floor, don't even think he swept the floor actually." - Duggie Fields, describing Syd's room in the flat they shared "He hadn't planned his route out from the bed that was over there; he painted round the bed and I think there was a little problem with him getting out of the room 'cause he painted himself in." -Duggie Fields "I think Syd's lack of motivation was his biggest problem and that once he left the band then his sense of direction and his sense of purpose had gone and he never reconnected with that." -Duggie Fields "I was never convinced that he was quite as nutty as a lot of people assumed him to be because there were definitely times when I personally witnessed him using his nuttiness, if you like, faking it almost." -Jerry Shirley (Humble Pie) "He was seemed to me to be on something like Mandrax during most of the sessions for 'The Madcap Laughs' album." -David Gilmour "Randy Mandie's was their nickname; I can't say they were especially good for sexbut they did make people feel like having sex. I certainly think one day he took too many Mandrax because basically we found him frothing at the mouth and somebody confessed that they had given him four not thinking he'd take them all." -Duggie Fields "He didn't seem to have to search for a melody or for a word." - David Gilmour "Nutters have moments of clairty all the time. They see things probably a whole lot clearer than a lot of us do so certainly I saw Syd be just laughing at the whole room and he was seeing--he literally stared right through you and at the same time could see right through you; no flies on Syd." - Jerry Shirley (Humble Pie) "I think he spent quite a while lying in bed; I used to be in the next room and I'd be painting and it was kinda like the wall between us would sort of cease to exist, and I knew he was lying in bed sorta thinking, my interpretation is that he was thinking that while he lay there he had the possibility of doing anything in the world that he chose, but the minute he made a choice he was limiting his possibilities so he lay there as long as he could so he had this unlimited future. But of course that's a very limited presence when you do that and a very depressing one also." - Duggie Fields "He knew an awful lot about what not to play; he was not ashamed to keep it simple if necessary but the words were very dense thickets of imagery, actually I hate that word imagery, they were basically thickets of words where you just keep the camera running in the mind and you take everything in." -Robyn Hitchcock, Singer/Songwriter "Syd stopped and walked off but it wasn't one of those "I'm a rockstar who's walking off stage!" throws his guitar down, moment of drama. It wasn't remotely fashionable. All he did was literally just stop. Like someone was playing a typewriter and pressed the "Stop" button." - Jerry Shirley, discussing June 1970 Olympia live performance "I remember looking across at Syd and just thinking, 'You don't wanna be here, do you?'" -Jack Monck, Bass Guitarist, The Stars "My friendship with him and his illness combined provide an enormous opportunity for grief. It's sad, it's very sad, I'm still very sad about it." - Roger Waters "Quite how much the spectra of Syd haunted us subsequently--I mean obviously we went back to it with "Wish You Were Here" in a major way." - David Gilmour "I sorta knew that really we were over as far as the 'band of brothers' notion of a pop group was concerned, we just weren't anymore and were never going to be that again, and so I was mourning that loss as well as the loss of Syd as a friend and as a colleague." - Roger Waters "One thing that really stands out in my--and I'll never forget it--going in to do the "Shine On" sessions and we went in the studio and I saw this guy sitting in the back of the studio, he's only as far away as you are from me, but I can recognize him. 'Who's that guy behind you?' 'That's Syd.' and I just cracked up, I couldn't believe it." -Rick Wright "He'd shaven all his hair off, he was probably 17, 18 stone, his eyebrows-everything." - Rick Wright "He was jumping up and down brushing his teeth; I mean, it was awful, and I mean, Roger was in tears, I think I was tears--we were both in tears, it was very shocking." - Rick Wright "When I think about it I can still see his eyes but it was everything else that was different." - Nick Mason "Seven years of no contact and then to walk in while we're actually doing that particular track-- I don't know, coincidence, karma, fate, who knows, but it was very, very, very powerful." - Rick Wright "He doesn't like contact with people from that part of his past--it upsets him, you know, so I stay away from him. I think, in a way, that's all I can do because it would not be cool to upset him but it would upset me as well--here's somebody you've been a friend with, you've had laughs with, you've spent your youth with and you've had all that history with and to not be--*hand motions as if trying to catch one's attention* you know it's like 'hello?'" - Roger Waters "You know if you'd said to a young Syd, 'Look, this is your bargain with life. You're going to do this fantastic stuff but it won't be forever, it'll be this short period, there's the dotted line, you're going to sign for this'--I suspect maybe a lot of people would sign for that, for making their mark." -Bob Klose |
 |