Humor
Blind Roger's Blues
How Syd Barrett was destroyed by the music he loved
It is no secret that Syd Barrett wanted to be a blues musician. Like so many middle-class Englishmen of his generation, Syd felt he had less in common with the culture of his middle-class English parents than with the poor blacks in the rural American south.
 Young Syd Barrett practices blues riffs.
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Syd knew early on that his calling was to be an authentic Bluesman, and as such, he sought to live the authentic Blues experience. He looked for an appropriately backbreaking blue-collar job in Cambridgeshire, but only found work as a bicycle delivery boy for the local chemist. During the summer of 1962, he convinced his father to let him plant some cotton in the garden, which he tended faithfully. When he sold the meager harvest he arranged to be cheated out of fair market value, so he could feel "like a real sharecropper". He even headed north to Manchester during one school break to work in his uncle's butcher shop, just as so many American blues musicians had left their homes in the Mississippi River delta to work in the slaughterhouses of Chicago. Unfortunately, Syd's uncle was on holiday in Dover, and the shop was closed. Instead, Syd took in a matinee of Elvis Presley's Fun in Acapulco, then caught the next train back home.
While his friends were caught up in Beatlemania and similar English groups, Syd's record collection was made up exclusively of American blues artists. Among his favorites were Jack "Bald Head" Montgomery, Barking Dog Turner, Squealin' Pig Johnson, Brayin' Mule Lewis, Memphis Mike Brown, Mississippi Red, Tex McAvoy, Birmingham Slim, Fats Jordan, William "Blues" Jackson, Bill "Blue" Jackson, Blues Boy Billy Jackson, Willie "Little Boy Blue" Jackson, Little Tommy Walker, Big Tommy Walker, Tom "Big Boy" Walker, Walkin' Tommy, Ramblin' Tom, Strollin' Tom, Tom "Stay Put" Walker, Guitar Tatum, Washboard Murphy, Kazoo Martin, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Banana Guthrie, Blind Boy Johnson, Blind Man Wilkins, Blind Dog Turner, Blind Tommy Walker, Joe "No Eyes" Smith, and the ever-popular Nearsighted Sam.
 Though Syd played a few gigs as "Blind Roger Barrett", the persona failed to catch on.
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In fact, Barrett was so enamored of the many visually-impaired blues greats that he actually taped his eyes closed for several weeks. Calling himself "Blind Roger Barrett", he even concocted an elaborate history about a tragic train-jumping accident that had cost him his sight. But his parents refused to enroll him in the Cambridge School for the Blind, and when the pretty girls refused to waste their good looks by dating a blind kid who couldn't even tell the difference, Syd's social life dried up pretty quickly. Thus "Blind Roger" made a miraculous recovery.
Ultimately, Syd moved to London, where he made friends with a growing number of young blues enthusiasts. Chief among these was Roger Waters, who had experimented with his own blues persona ("Giant Nose George") at one time. Roger was in the process of usurping a student blues band called The Sigma 6. He and Syd hit it off immediately, and once Roger he had chased off all of the Sigmas 6's actual musicians, leaving himself in charge by default, he invited Syd to join the group.
The first thing Syd did was to re-name the band The Pink Floyd Sound Blues Revival and Travelling Show. ("That should have been my first clue that Syd was nuts," said Roger, years later. "Brilliant, but nuts.") Barrett followed the lead of the Rolling Stones, the Who, and Cream by playing traditional blues material in a modern (read: loud) way. And he embraced the wild fashions of the day, reasoning that if he couldn't be blind, at least he could dress like he was.
 When Syd arrived, the rest of the band dressed fairly conservatively. Though at first they found Syd's avant garde approach to fashion shocking, they caught on quickly.
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The group's core fanbase of blues lovers and deranged haberdashers was thrilled beyond belief when they released their first single in March 1967. "Arnold Layne" was a psychedelic reworking of the classic "Crazy Arnold Boogie" by 'talking blues' legend Peg Leg Simmons, first released in 1957 on the Checkers label. Hailed as 'revelatory' by Peter Green and 'really out of sight' by Jimi Hendrix, "Arnold Layne" was credited to Barrett himself, with no acknowledgment given to Peg Leg Simmons' original.
The second single, "See Emily Play", was indeed penned by Barrett, inspired by his trip to Birmingham that May to see Emily "Sweet Mama" Wilson, the self-proclaimed 'First Lady of the Blues'. Wilson's backing band was made up of a Who's Who of blues giants, and the show was Syd's first actual exposure to a live American blues band. Unfortunately, the promoter failed to advertise sufficiently, and when only a few dozen people showed up for the concert, the band cut their performance short after just three songs. Barrett was starstruck, however, and has since frequently cited Sweet Mama Wilson as one of his favorite blues singers.
The flip side of "Emily" was a cover of Clyde "Haystack" Hopkins' "Scarecrow Blues", with its famous opening verse:
The black and green scarecrow
As everyone knows
Stands in the field where
The barley grows
Blues musicians have a long tradition of copying ideas, melodies, and lyrics from one another. It was seen as a sign of respect for musicians to 'borrow' phrases from popular recordings and use them in their own work. Unfortunately for Syd, he was making a lot of money from these 'borrowed' bits. Peg Leg Simmons had been a degenerate gambler who died at the hand of a lover's jealous husband; he left no heirs. Clyde Hopkins, on the other hand, was still alive in 1967, and he wanted a piece of Syd's action. Funded primarily by his label, Okey-Dokey Records, Hopkins filed one of the most extensive lawsuits in the history of the recording industry, naming Syd, his parents, his cat, his bandmates, their management, EMI, Abbey Road Studios, the BBC, and even Queen Elizabeth herself as co-defendants. Hopkins also received a boost from the NAACP, which claimed it was racial bias that put Hopkins' song on the B-side of the release, instead of the A-side "where it clearly belongs".
The suit was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, and while the band could have benefited from the publicity, Syd was deeply shaken by this turn of events. "He had wanted to pay homage to the music he loved," said his boyhood friend Thor Stormgensen, "but instead he had been attacked. He was never the same." The rest is legendary. Syd slowly cracked up, while bandmates forged ahead. He left the group and returned to Cambridge and his beloved cotton patch, eventually withdrawing from music altogether.
