SEE YA SYD!

4/6/1968 - No surprise whatsoever to the family and friends of Pink Floyd, weary of the energy required to continue pretending he is still a viable performer with the band, the group officially announces that songwriter and guitarist Roger Keith "Syd" Barrett, is no longer a member as the musician becomes yet another cautionary tale of the hazards of rock-and-roll fame.

Barrett

Born to a middle-class family living in Cambridge, England on 1/6/1946, Barrett is the fourth of five children born to a prominent local pathologist and his wife.  Leading a normal life growing up, Barrett is well liked (one of his childhood friends is future Pink Floyd member, Roger Waters), and though he doodles on the ivories of a piano occasionally, at first he prefers writing and drawing to music. At ten years old though his focus changes when he gets a ukulele ... a natural, that instrument mastered, at eleven he begins playing banjo, and at fourteen he takes up acoustic guitar.  By fourteen, he also begins using the nickname, Syd (as a tribute to a jazz bassist named Sid "The Beat" Barrett).  And as a teenager, he has his world disrupted for the first time when his father dies of cancer in 1961. Huge hole in his life, his mother encourages him to move past his grief by opening her living room to musical gigs by Barrett and the group he is playing in (and formed), Geoff Mott and the Mottoes.

Barrett - 18 Months

Barrett With Chimp - Six

Camping - Thirteen

High School - 1961

Off to the Cambridge Technical College's art department, where Barrett becomes friends with future Pink Floyder, David Gilmour, the guitarist becomes a huge fan of the Beatles, and then the Rolling Stones (and once those influences take hold, he becomes inspired by Bob Dylan), influences that push him towards songwriting (he begins playing a raw version of his song, "Effervescing Elephant," in 1964).  At the same time he begins writing his own tunes, he joins the band that will become Pink Floyd ... a group of musicians (Barrett on guitar and lead vocals, Roger Waters on bass and vocals, Nick Mason on drums, and Richard Wright on keyboards and vocals) that calls themselves "The Adabs," then "The Screaming Adabs," then "Sigma 6," and then "The Meggadeaths.  When Barrett joins the band in 1965, the group is performing under the name of "The Tea Set" (sometimes also spelling it, "The T Set") ... there is a problem though with the name that surfaces during a concert ... another band playing at the same concert is also calling themselves "The Tea Set." No problem, in an instant, Barrett comes up with a new name for the group based on two blues musicians he admires, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council ... and so the group becomes the "Pink Floyd Sound" (the "Sound" part will of course soon be dropped).  Also in 1965, Barrett begins his descent into drug addled psychosis when he takes his first acid trip (during one of his first trips, Barrett sits naked in a bathtub, screaming over-and-over again, "No rules, no rules!").

Original Members - L To R - Waters, Mason,

Barrett, and Wright

Playing cover versions of American R&B songs mixed with original material, the band, pushed by Barrett (at the time he is reading Grimm's "Fairy Tales," Tolkien's "The Hobbit" and "Lord of the Rings," and Carlos Castaneda's "The Teachings of Don Juan") begins improvising riffs during concerts on guitar and keyboards like jazz musicians.  Quickly gaining a following, the band has it's first successes in 1966 and 1967 as they acquire a competent management team, record their first album ("The Piper at the Gates of Dawn ... a title copped from the name of the seventh chapter of Kenneth Grahame's classic childhood tale, "The Wind in the Willows" ... of the eleven songs on the album, six are written by Barrett, two are co-written by Barrett, and his guitar playing and vocals are featured on two others ... the first single released is "Arnold Layne," which reaches #20 on the British music charts, the second, "See Emily Play," does even better, getting to #6 ... both are Barrett compositions), have their music appear in the film, "Tonite Let's All Make Love in London" (a 16-minute version of "Interstellar Overdrive" and "Nick's Boogie"), and become the house band of the London haven for psychedelic movie playing gigs at London's UFO Club.

First Album

At The UFO Club - 1967

As Pink Floyd's stocks begin their rise to super-stardom, Barrett's sadly go into rapid decline.  Whether from a genetic source, his personality, repeated acid trips (and dabbling with other drugs), or a combination of all factors, Barrett, once described as a happy, friendly free soul, becomes increasingly depressed and begins to withdraw from the band and society at large ... increasingly he hallucinates, talks in meaningless riddles, has intense mood swings, memory lapses. periods of catatonia, vanishes for days and weeks, and develops a blank, dead-eye stare that freaks out his band mates and friends.  And his train wreck moments become legendary ... he thanks Las Vegas for their applause while on stage in Los Angeles, a often strums only one chord through an entire performance, during a San Francisco performance of "Interstellar Overdrive" he slowly detunes his guitar, asked questions on Pat Boone's talk show, he answer each by just blankly staring into the television camera, he similarly stares and offers terse answers during the band's appearance on Dick Clark's American Bandstand, locks his girlfriend in a room for three days, feeding her by shoving biscuits under the door, during a bad trip has his friend's lock him in a linen cupboard, beats a girlfriend over the head with a mandolin, more than once during recording sessions he forgets to bring his guitar, damages studio equipment, and is often unable to hold his pick, before a 1967 performance he paints his hair with crushed Mandrax tranquilizer pills and a full tube of Brycreem (which the stage lights turn into a goo that melts all over his face), and teaching the band a new song he calls, "Have You Got It Yet?," Barrett changes the arrangement each time the band tries to play his song as he screams at them, "Have you got it yet?"

Barrett

And the band reacts in stages, first supplementing their sound by having David Gilmour join the group to keep the music moving while Barrett more and more often mindlessly wanders around the stage at first believing they will be like the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson, with Barrett staying home creating new works of art that the other members of Pink Floyd then take on the road ... but even that doesn't help as the guitarist sinks deeper and deeper into his own world (the group asks renown psychiatrist R. D. Laing for help, but after listening to a taped recording of a conversation of Barrett's, the mind doctor declares the musician "incurable.").  Deeper and deeper to the point where he is cut out of the band's activities almost totally ... in 1968, driving to a concert at Southampton College, the band decides not to pick up Barrett for the gig (and the guitarist doesn't even notice), an operational mode that continues until Barrett gets the boot.  Caught between living with Barrett and being a member of Pink Floyd, Richard Wright begins lying to his roommate each time the band has a concert or recording session, telling him that every time he leaves, he is going out for cigarettes (and is horrified to often return after hours or days, to find Barrett in the same position as when Wright left, sometimes with a burnt out stub of a cigarette or joint in hand ... with Barrett asking when he returns from another adventure in catatonia, "Have you got the cigarettes?"  Too much finally, on 4/6/1968, Pink Floyd announces what has already taken place ... founding member Syd Barrett is no longer a member of the band (big change from album #1 to record #2, on "A Saucerful of Secrets, Barrett will have only one song, "Jugband Blues").

1968 - Gilmour Joins The Band

Front Cover - A Saucerful Of Secrets - Artwork Created 

By Hipgnosis 

No More Barrett

But Barrett's story doesn't end with his bouncing from Pink Floyd. For a year, the guitarist drops out of the public eye, but returns briefly to try a solo career that produces two very forgettable albums, ("The Madcap Laughs" and "Barrett," both released in 1970).  And for a time, like some kind of musical ghost, unannounced, he shows up at Pink Floyd concerts and recording sessions (in one famous incident, trying to join his former band for a concert in Ibiza, he skips check-in and customs and runs out on to the runway and attempts to flag down a jet to Spain).  In 1972, he forms a band with friends called "Stars" ... which he quits the day after the group receives a bad review for a Cambridge concert that takes place at the city's Corn Exchange.  His last moments as a professional musician take place in 1974, when his former friend a Pink Floyd manager convinces him to put down some tracks at the Abbey Roads Studios (three days working on 11 "songs," only one of which is titled, poignantly, "If You Go, Don't Be Slow."

First Album Cover

Second Album Cover

Barrett

The Look

Falling Apart

Madness!

Music career over, Barrett returns home to Cambridge and lives with his mother for a time, moves back to London for a few weeks, and then goes back to Cambridge, living off royalty checks from Pink Floyd (inducted into the Rock And Rock Hall Of Fame as a member of the group in 1996, Barrett does not attend the ceremony) and basically becomes a recluse (only his sister Rosemary will have any kind of regular contact), while gardening and working on abstract paintings.  His last contact with the world of music he once was a major player in takes place in 2002 when he signs 320 copies of photographer Mick Rock's book, "Psychedelic Renegades," that includes a number of shots of Barrett in his prime.

Induction

Health destroyed by acid and not taking care of himself for years and years, he fights diabetes for several years before dying at the age of 60 in his Cambridge home from pancreatic cancer.  Gone but not forgotten, upon his death his boyhood friend and fellow Pink Floyd member, David Gilmour will state, "We are very sad to say that Roger Keith Barrett - Syd - has passed away.  Do find time to play some of Syd's songs and to remember him as a madcap genius who made us all smile with his wonderfully eccentric songs about bikes, gnomes and scarecrows.  His career was painful short, yet he touched more people than he can ever know."  Indeed, for the record, Paul McCartney, Pete Townshend, Blur, Kevin Ayers, Gong, Marc Bolen, Tangerine Dream, Julian Cope, David Bowie, Jimmy Page, Brian Eno, the Sex Pistols, The Damned, XTC, and Robyn Hitchcock will all acknowledge Barrett as a musical influence, a person that liked to have work with, or both ... once upon a time, he was that good!

Transformed

Barrett

4/6/1968 - "See ya Syd!" ... Pink Floyd gives the boot to founding member Syd Barrett.

Barrett's Favorite Guitar - Mirror

Covered Fender Esquire

Once Upon A Time

KING TUT'S REVENGE?

4/5/1923 - A story better played out on a rainy, lightning filled, windy night full of dread, rather than a fine Spring day, at the Continental-Savoy Hotel in Cairo, Egypt, George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon (a man who provides funding used to locate old Egyptian burial sites), dies at the age of 56 from a mosquito bite infected with erysipelas (an acute skin infection associated with high fevers, shaking, vomiting, fatigue, headaches, and chills) that is then acerbated by his cutting the bite while shaving ... setting off rumors (it is said that at the exact moment that he dies, the lights of Cairo flicker, and in distant England, his dog howls once and then drops over dead) that he is the first victim of a "Mummy's Curse" for participating in the opening of the tomb of the ancient boy-king (only nineteen when he begins his tomb stay), Tutankhamen (and adding more weight to the story, the bite is said to be in the same spot as a lesion discovered on the mummified face of the dead pharaoh).

Lord Carnarvon

Tombs actually being cursed extremely rare (and of dubious potency), the first account of a "mummy curse" is reported by Louis Penicher in 1699 when he relates the story of a Polish traveler bringing two mummies back to his country from Egypt, and suffering horrible nightmares for it, until he pitches his prizes into the sea. Dam opened, a variety of authors over the years begin crafting lurid tales of pharaoh curses and mummies arising from the dead ... and the public eats them up.  Planting seeds for what is to come, the curse of King Tut's Tomb comes to life by way of famed Egyptologist James Henry Breasted claiming to see a canary in the home of archaeologist Howard Carter eaten in its cage by a cobra (the symbol of Egyptian royalty), and to keep intruders away from the digs, Carter himself plants stories with the press about the site of his dig being cursed.  Pump primed, when fabulous artifacts are found in the tomb, and then Lord Carnarvon dies, the story of a curse goes viral around the world ... and still exists to this day (one of the people that buys into the story is famed writer, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he of Sherlock Holmes fame, who postulates that Egyptian priests might have created "elementals" to guard the graves of the country's royal rulers).  But does the tale have any merit whatsoever?

Carter

The Site

Sealed Door Into Tomb - Cursed?

Carter Opening Door

Treasure!

Layout Of The Tomb

Treasure Removed

Though studies are run that show the death rate for the group of individuals that enter King Tut's tomb is no different from that of the general public in various countries ... and Carter living 16 years after he makes his discovery of the boy king's treasure appears to be proof enough to negate the stories of ancient curses (along with the fact that the last survivor present for the tomb and sarcophagus being opened, American archaeologist J. O. Kinnamon lives to be 84, dying in 1961), there are enough participant deaths involved that a supernatural explanation never quite goes away.

Kinnaman

Fifty-eight individuals present, only eleven die within a dozen years of the big reveal.  Here is a list of the individuals that some believed are struck down by the curse (beyond Lord Carnarvon):

*Denver and Rio Grande executive, George Jay Gould I, contracts a fever after visiting the tomb, and dies of pneumonia on the French Riviera in the summer of 1923.

 Gould I

*Prince Ali Kamel Fahmy Bey of Egypt is shot to death by his wife in the summer of 1923.

*Hugh Evelyn-White, an archaeologist who helps with the excavation of the tomb, hangs himself in 1923, leaving behind a note stating, "I have succumbed to a curse which forces me to disappear." 

*Colonel Aubrey Nigel Henry Molyneux Herbert, Lord Carnarvon's half-brother, dies of blood poisoning in September of 1923 ... after a failed dental procedure.

 Herbert

*American Egyptologist Aaron Ember dies in a house fire ... trying to save a book he has been working on translating ... The Egyptian Book of the Dead.

*Sir Archibald Douglas-Reid, the radiologist that x-rays King Tut's mummy, dies from a mysterious illness in January of 1924.

*Sir Lee Stack, Governor-General of the Sudan, is assassinated driving through Cairo in 1924.

 Stack

*A. C. Mace, a member of Carter's excavation team, dies in 1928 from arsenic poisoning.

*The Honorable Mervyn Herbert, another Carnarvon half-brother, dies in 1929 from "malarial pneumonia."

*Captain, The Honorable Richard Bethell, Carter's personal secretary, dies in bed at the Mayfair Club in 1929 in a suspected, but never proven, smothering murder.

*Richard Luttrell Pilkington Bethell, 3rd Baron of Westbury, father of the smothered captain, throws himself out of seven-floor apartment in 1930 (leaving behind a suicide note mentioning not being able to stand "more horrors").

And also included in the curse, is Sir Bruce Ingham, a dear friend of Carter's who receives a mummified paper-weight hand bearing a scarab bracelet that reads, "Cursed be he who moves the body.  To him shall come fire, water and pestilence."  Ingham's house burns down twice after receiving the ancient gift (and is hit by a flood too during one of the rebuildings).

Fake News Is Not Something New!  

Too much for Universal Pictures to resist as they look for a new franchise monster to join Dracula and Frankenstein's monster, using bits of myth and King Tut tales, in 1932, they star Boris Karloff in another profitable horror movie, The Mummy (a money maker still, there will be a series of Universal mummy movies through the 1930s and 1940s, Hammer Films will make a number of mummy movies during in 1950s and 1960s, Universal will reboot the monster films in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and redo the redo with a Tom Cruise mummy vehicle in the summer of 2017) ... that begins with an ancient curse being ignored that resurrects Karloff's character, the mummy Imhotep.  And so the legend of the ancient Egyptian's death curse lives on.  Mumbo-jumbo almost certainly, but just in case ... I will be accepting no tanna leaves, mummified hands, or scarabs ... now, or anytime in the future!

Karloff

Christopher Lee

4/5/1922 ... a mosquito bite and a bad razor blade cause a good portion of the world to go bonkers! 

 

Lord Carnavon

THE BATTLE OF BLAZER'S MILL

4/4/1878 - Lincoln County War now going full steam once English businessman and rancher John Tunstall is murdered by gunmen supporting the Murphy-Dolan faction in the region's troubles, Ab Sanders, Charlie Bowdre, Doc Scurlock, Frank Coe, George Coe, Frank McNab, Henry Newton Brown, Jose Chavez y Chavez, Jim French, John Middleton, Tom Peterson, Vincente Romero, Yginio Salazar, John Scroggins, Fred Waite, Steve Stephens, Dick Brewer, and Billy the Kid convince Lincoln Justice of the Peace, John B. Wilson, to make them deputies so they can bring justice to the men that killed their employer (additionally making things appear to be on the up-and-up, Regulator Robert Widenmann secures an appointment as a Deputy U.S. Marshal).  The group calls itself "The Regulators" and their justice takes the form of murdering anyone they think might have been involved in Tunstall's death.  The group's first victims are two suspect cowboys, Frank Baker and William Morton, who are gunned down trying to "escape" after being arrested by Billy and his friends.  Then, on April Fool's day, 1878, in daylight on the main street of Lincoln, members of the group ambush Lincoln Sheriff William Brady and his deputy, George Hindman, killing both men (48-year-old Brady will die from over a dozen gunshot wounds).

Brady

The Ambush - True West Magazine

Blood lust still up three days later after the attack on Sheriff Brady and his men, led by Dick Brewer, seeking more culprits in Tunstall's death, a thirteen man Regulator posse that includes Brewer, Billy the Kid, Bowdre, Scurlock, McNab, Frank Coe and his cousin, George Coe, Middleton, French, Brown, and Waite decides to stop at Blazer's Mill for a bite of lunch (owned by dentist, Dr. Joseph H. Blazer, the small site on the Rio Tularosa consists of a large two story house, a square office building, a grist mill, several adobe structures and homes, a post office, corrals and barns, a general store, and a sawmill).  Expecting to receive a check at the post office for selling his ranch so he can leave the area and avoid taking part in the Lincoln County War, wrong time, wrong place, Dolan-Murphy supporter and member of the posse that kills Tunstall, Andrew L. "Buckshot" Roberts (he gets the nickname from carrying a load of buckshot in his once wounded right shoulder), sadly decides to stop at Blazer's Mill too.

Blazer's Mill

Buckshot Roberts

Both sides initially surprised by the encounter, unarmed (the restaurant on the property owned by Mrs. Godfroy has a rule that no one wearing a gun will be served, so the weapons of The Regulators are all placed on a large table outside), Frank Coe walks over to his former friend Roberts (they have neighboring spreads), and tries to talk the former buffalo hunter into surrendering, vouching for his safety (Roberts wisely believes he too will never make it to jail if arrested).  Regulator Brewer though quickly grows tired of the palaver (thirty minutes have now passed), and orders some of the men to go arrest Roberts without further delay.  Both sides in deadly earnest, when Roberts sees armed men headed towards where he and Coe are sitting chatting, he jumps up, grabs his Winchester rifle, and from his hip, opens fire ... just as the Regulators also begin blazing away (Bowdre calls out, "Roberts, throw up your hands," to which Roberts responds, "Not much, Mary Anne!" as he begins firing).  Struck in the stomach by a bullet fired his way by Bowdre, Roberts counters with a shot that hits his opponent in the belt buckle, severing the cowboy's gun belt as it knocks out his wind.  Gravely wounded, Roberts retreats into the doorway of a small adobe building (Dr. Blazer's office), pumping slugs at anything that moves ... Middleton is wounded in the chest (his lung punctured), bullets graze Scurlock and Billy the Kid, and George Coe loses the trigger finger on his right hand to a Roberts piece of hot lead.

The Gunfight Begins - True West Magazine

 

Bowdre & Middleton

 

Scurlock & Coe

In the momentary interlude that follows, Roberts makes his way to where he has tied up his mule earlier.  Realizing his mount and stomach wound will not allow successful flight, he makes his way into another small adobe structure and readies for more action ... which arrives almost immediately in the form of Billy the Kid.  Hearing Roberts' rifle click on empty, the Kid rushes forward to shoot the man ... and is knocked silly when he gets withing range of the formidable warrior, rewarded for his boldness by having the rifle's hard butt crown his noggin with sleeping stars.  Then Roberts backs into the adobe building he has selected for his last stand, barricades the door, and with a new weapon, the owner's single-shot .50-70 Government Springfield rifle, lays prone on a mattress and starts looking for new targets.

Believed To Be A Newly Found Shot Of Billy The Kid

Where Roberts Takes Cover

And a new target soon presents itself.  Incensed that an old man has taken out five of his men, Brewer tries to convince a man visiting the community, David Easton, to go talk Roberts into surrendering, then makes the same pitch to Dr. Blazer himself.  No soap from either man, the Regulator leader grows even angrier at the men's refusal to do his bidding, and decides to take matters into his own hands, coming up with a plan to gain the flank of the adobe building, fire into the structure, and flush Roberts out the front door and into the fire of his men that haven't been hit already.  Moving across the river over a small foot bridge to the side of the sawmill, Brewer takes up a position behind a stack of logs and pops away at Roberts (about 125 yards west of the adobe building).  Almost hit inside the building by a bullet from Brewer, Roberts looks around for his antagonist, but doesn't seen an enemy in the open.  What he does spot however is the tell-tale smoke from Brewer's firing ... lining up his sights on the spot where he believes his enemy is hiding, Roberts waits and waits ... then pulls the trigger on the Springfield when Brewer peaks out from the logs to ready his next shot.  Boom!  Expertly aimed, the bullet hits Brewer in the left eye, before blowing out the back of his head with a good portion of the Regulator's skull.  Dead before he hits the ground, 28-years-old and no more, Brewer misses hearing Roberts begin to laugh as he exclaims, "I killed him!  I killed the son-of-a-bitch!"

Brewer

A third of the posse put out of action, their leader killed, and facing an accurately shooting maniac, the remaining Regulators decide they have had enough (asked about the battle later, Billy the Kid will respond, "Yes sir, he licked our crowd to a finish.").  Hitching up a wagon, they gather their wounded and head for the relative safety of the village of San Patricio.  On the road, they meet the area's medicine man, Dr. Appel, who has been summoned to Blazer's Mill by telegraph.  The doctor treats the injured men's wounds, then proceeds on to the scene of the gunfight ... there, treating Roberts, he tells the old man his wounds are fatal.  A correct evaluation, in great pain (it will take two men to hold down Roberts as he withers away his life in agony), Roberts passes away from his stomach wound the next day at around noon.  No more animosity in death ... for lack of proper casket materials and out of sheer laziness, both Roberts and Brewer are buried in the same hole, inside an open "V" of two wooden boards.

Resting Places

Two men dead, and five more wounded, the battle is just a warm-up to the events that take place in 1878 during the New Mexican war as it builds to a crescendo ... there will be a gunfight at the Fritz Ranch in which new Regulator leader, McNab, will be killed, Ab Sanders wounded, and Frank Coe arrested, a jail escape by Coe, the killing of four members of the Murphy-Dolan faction in the town of Lincoln, and the death of another suspected Tunstall killer, Manuel Segovia, when after being arrested, he too tries to "escape" ... culminating in the five-day firefight known as the Battle of Lincoln in which roughly two hundred gunmen on both sides of the clash make the town into a bloody mess, that sees the McSween store burnt to the ground, seven men killed, including businessman Alexander McSween, and over a dozen people wounded before order is restored by a cavalry detachment under the command of Lt. Colonel Nathan Dudley from nearby Fort Stanton.

Dudley

As for Billy, he is just getting started in becoming a legend, and in the coming months of his short life, there will be his first capture, murder trial (with a guilty verdict and sentence of death by hanging), the betrayal of a promised amnesty from Governor Lew Wallace (the Civil War general, President Grant friend, and author of the religious novel, Ben-Hur), escape, the slaying of Joe Grant at Hargrove's Saloon in Fort Sumner (the killing in which the Kid inspects Grant's weapon before their gunfight, and secretly positions the revolver's cylinder so that it will hit an empty chamber if fired ... Grant gets the first shot, which is a click ... then Billy shoots him in the head), three shootouts with posses that end in the Kid's arrest by Lincoln County Sheriff Pat Garrett, his escape from the Lincoln jail (during which he kills Deputies James Bell and Bob Olinger), and his execution at the hands of Garrett in a darkened bedroom in the Fort Sumner home of rancher Pete Maxwell ("Quien es?  Quien es?").

Billy The Kid

4/4/1878 ... the Lincoln County War flares up again at a remote location in New Mexico called Blazer's Mill.

Memorial (With Incorrect Date of 4/5/1878)

Battle Survivor George Coe In 1934 - Note Missing Trigger

Finger - Coe Dies In 1941 At The Age Of 85