The Sunday Times published an interview with Syd Barrett's sister ("My lovably ordinary brother Syd"). The same issue has another article about him ("Psychedelic poster boy who fell and went home to mum"). Parts of the Pink Floyd saga are straight out of "This is Spinal Tap," but some of it still resonates for me (Meddle and Obscured by Clouds). The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967, above) seems a completely different band from anything afterwards, connected most to Barrett's first solo album The Madcap Laughs (1970). I hadn't known about Pink Floyd recording their first album at Abbey Road studios next door to the Beatles, who visited them and let them observe the recordings for Sgt Pepper's. Or that Barrett came to see Pink Floyd at Abbey Road studios in 1975, where they played several new songs for him. In an interview earlier this year, David Gilmour said he hadn't seen Barrett since 1975. His renunciation of music seems like such a dramatic and difficult choice.
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In other matters, I just came across this interview with Michael Hofmann from 1999:
"Even Celan of all people said, of poetry, “What a game!” I feel accountable to the poem, and the language, but I hope not to anything else."
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