Shine on you crazy Syd

Roger Keith Barrett, the founder of prog/space rock group Pink Floyd and pop music's most famous recluse, died on Friday. He was 60.

Better known as Syd, a name he copped from a Cambridge jazz drummer, Barrett stands alongside Jim Morrison and the Grateful Dead as a one of rock's most important musical explorers, moving the fledgeling genre away from its blues roots and into newer, more sophisticated soundscapes not yet explored at the time. Barrett's psychedelic songwriting, jazz-influenced arrangements and unique singing accent (the first real British one) helped establish Pink Floyd as the premier psychedelic rock band in a world flooded with pyschedelia; in his three years with the band, Barrett helped inspire the glam-rock movement perfected by David Bowie, the ambience of progressive rock, and later artists looking to tap into Pink Floyd's modern, jazz-infused 'mood' such as Brian Eno, REM, Led Zeppelin and Kraftwerk. Scores of other bands including The Who, Phish, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Sonic Youth, the Smashing Pumpkins and Blur have also drawn from Barrett's then-peculiar dissonant guitar style, now identified as part of the founding language of punk, grunge, post-punk and garage rock.

Although Barrett quit Pink Floyd before the group recorded either of their biggest prog/space rock albums, Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, he set the band on its track to prog-rock stardom. Barrett's longstanding mental instability formed the subject matter/inspiration for my favourite Pink Floyd Album, 1975's Wish You Were Here. A fat, completely bald Barrett (including eyebrows) allegedly sat in on the recording session of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" — a tune about him — and went completely unnoticed by the band. When Roger Waters finally recognized him, he was reduced to tears.

If you've got the time, pay homage to one of Rock's greatest (and most confused) artists; put on Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the Pink Floyd debut album that Syd penned almost by himself, or Shine on You Crazy Diamond, the aformentioned post-Barrett tribute. If you don't have either of those, The Wall, Dark Side of the Moon, a kaleidoscope, or simply a psychedelic, philosophical thought or two should do just fine.

You were caught on the crossfire
Of childhood and stardom,
Blown on the steel breeze
Come on you target for faraway laughter,
Come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr
and shine.