Wow this really sucks. I just started getting into his solo work a few months ago, and love Piper at the Gates of Dawn. RIP.

you''ll be missed you crazy drug-addled bastard :(

shine on, dude...

Thanks Syd.
Rest in Peace.

He made some of the best music with Pink Floyd and solo.

Did he OD or something? He wasn't that old. I know he was a nutter, but still.

Shine on, you crazy diamond.

fuck, and whats really fuked up is ythat i was trippin balls earlier listening to Piper and mad cap laughs
when i started peaking...
ugh nevemrind.
its too sad to think about it.
and i cant beleiv ei had to find out this way
this is fucked up

they think it was cancer

:(
'

What I read was it was complications due to Diabetes.

http://www.nme.com/news/pink-floyd/23570

"other reports suggest the cause of death was cancer"

I was just came on to start a thread about this, i should have known you guys would have got there first. This is indeed a sad day. I've always thought he was an amazingly talented guy, but over the last few months i've REALLY gotten into his work. The work he could have done in the years he lived, its so sad that we never got to see just how good this guy could have been. But perhaps the saddest thing is that like kurt (and everyone before him) people are gonna take a beautiful human being and turn him into deity, just another face on a rock poster! RIP Syd!

One of my favorite Syd stories from 1967:
'Another eager host [for the band] in Los Angeles was Alice Cooper, who invited Syd and the others to dinner with his own band - thus enabling rock's most ersatz psycho to come face to face with a more authentic speciman. Cooper guitarist Glen Buxton came away convinced that "Syd was definitely from Mars." Though Barrett said hardly a word all evening, Buxton did not find him altogether uncommunitave. "All of a sudden I'd pick up the sugar and pass it to him," he recalled, "and he'd shake his head like 'Yeah, thanks...' It's like telepathy, it really was. It was very weird. You would find yourself right in the middle of doing something, as you were passing the sugar or whatever, and you'd think, 'Well damn! I didn't hear anybody say anything.' That was the first time in my life I'd ever met anybody that could actually do that freely. And this guy did it all the time."'

== A Saucerful of Secrets - The Pink Floyd Odyssey ==

A great read...the first third of the book is all about Syd and the early years. In light of this tragedy, why not pick it up? Or read it at a bookstore.

RIP, Syd.

ok here's the live show from olympia in 1970

It's not the best recorded audio though, at times the instruments are much higher in the mix than the vocals.

1.Terrapin
http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=B7AB958003C15B1F

2.Gigolo Aunt
http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=3629B2B85232D8B4

3.Effervescing Elephant
http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=61B0BA396D749633

4.Octopus
http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=573654CD75CBDCB3

I never got to hear his solo stuff, but Piper was pure genius. He will be missed.

I can't believe how many talented people the world has lost in the past year or so...Hunter S. Thompson, Mitch Hedberg and now Syd Barrett. It's all too much, man.

I've never been a big fan of Pink Floyd. I really like certain songs, but never really educated myself when it comes to them. But they've definitely done good things. I saw one of their songs on a music channel today actually and really dig that song, even said so when it came on.

Indeed RIP.

he had a profound affect on music, psychedelic, folk, space rock, and even experimental noise, and Im not just saying that b/c hes dead, i have been thinking about it for a very long time. And Pink Floyd can attribute all their later success to him considering everything they wrote afterwords had to do with syd....

they have syd to thank as syd made the name with his two amazing pop songs- emily and arnold.
its totaly wrong to see pink floyd with syd as the same band after he left, its the same kinda thing as the velvets after cale left.
and from what i know, syd was not a drug addict. he took alot of acid in the 60s which fkd him up, but since his solo albums he seemed to want no part in the music industry, probably due to being fucked over by his band mates. i admire him for getting out and living his life quietly rather than doing what everyone else does and carrying on till death or till he severely shamed himself. (think the rest of pink floyd-beatles etc)
i read everything and watched everything i could about syd, but it all focuses on what a poor tortured soul he was, and i dont think its right or true. i think he made a clever desicion and stuck to it. and i think the books and documentarys should be focused much more on the amazing stuff he acheived and not about what a sad story he was.
cuz he wasnt.
he left his mark then lived the rest of his life with a quiet dignity. which is more than anyone can say for his x band "mates" the rotten scumbags.

syd rip
one music genius less in the world

Arnold Layne had a strange hobby......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoPnu...arnold%20layne