Syd Barrett was a founding member of Pink Floyd. He recorded an album and a half of material with the band and two solo albums before quitting music for good around 1974.
The best obituary or appreciation I've read so far (and I've read at least 10) was the one in today's Washington Post.
1. It doesn't use the word genius.
2. It correctly I.D.s the three songs (See Emily Play, Arnold Layne, Astronomy Domine) that established him as an important artist.
3. It doesn't romanticize the sad reality of his drug-fueled mental breakdown.
4. It attempts to explain Barrett's ultimately debilitating predicament via the recollection of a contemporary, rather than simply assert what went wrong. This quotation from Pink Floyd's manager is particularly telling:
"The pressures which hit him were the pressures from going from just being another guy on the block to being the spokesman of your generation. Especially during the psychedelic thing, there was a lot of heavy messiah-ism going around. People would come up and ask him the meaning of life -- that put a young person who'd just written a song and played a bit of guitar under enormous pressure."
5. It ends with an odd, whimsical remark that could have been a lyric from one of Barrett's songs.
If you're curious to hear some of his music, let me know and I'll share. The old videos on YouTube are interesting, but I don't think they reveal why Syd Barrett's music inspired such love.
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