singemonkey wrote:
When I was really huge into Barrett, I noticed that you can actually see the change in pictures. There's the normal guy - then there's the death-owl stare. Once he started looking like that in pictures, he never seemed to look normal again. "Now there's a look in your eye/like black holes in the sky."
From everything I've heard, schizophrenia can hit quite suddenly. My friend said his brother was standing in the pool one day (about the same age as Syd) and suddenly realised he was God. Heartbreaking whackiness ensued.
From Joe Boyd's book
White Bicycles
"One evening in May (1967) I ran into Syd and his girlfriend in Cambridge Circus.... Syd was sprawled on the kerb, his velvet trousers torn and dirty, his eyes crazed. Lindsey told me he'd been taking acid for a week. A few weeks later Floyd fans were lined up three deep along Tottenham Court Road for their return to UFO (the club that Boyd ran, where Pink Floyd had made their name). There was no artist's entrance, so one by one they squeezed between me and the crowd, headng for the tiny dressing room in the back. I had exchanged pleasantries with the first three when Syd emerged from the crush. His sparkling eyes had always been his most attractive feature but that night they were vacant , as if some one had reached inside his head and turned off a switch. During their set he hardly sang, standing motionless for long passages, arms by his sides, staring into space. Dave Gilmour was added to the group soon afterwards to cover for him and by the end of the year Syd was gone."
Looking at the list of UFO shows in Boyd's book, and the info on "See Emily Play" on Wikipedia, the first encounter he relates would have been round about the time the group were recording that single IE May 1967. The show he refers to would have been June 2nd 1967.
