Rest easy Syd Barrett, who has died at the age of 60. When the news broke earlier today there were a few startled looks around the Guardian office. "Syd Barrett?" gasped one of my co-workers. "I thought he died years ago."

This, I suspect, is an impression he would have been comfortable with. The sardonic boy genius who founded Pink Floyd was one of rock music's more notable casualties; laid low by mental illness at the peak of his fame. While it has never been established whether Barrett suffered from schizophrenia, or Asperger Syndrome, or a combination of the two brought on by drug use, he never fully recovered. He spent his last three decades as a virtual recluse at his parents' home in Cambridge, apparently too scared to step onto the street. In the meantime he eked out a living on the royalties from 1967's Piper at the Gates of Dawn and his brace of anguished solo albums from the early 1970s.

In other respects, it seems safe to assume that the Pink Floyd legacy was a hindrance, if not an outright curse. Despite its reputation as a young and vital art form, rock music thrives on a kind of necrophilia, whether it be embodied by the image of the Rolling Stones still flogging the corpse of their 60s reputation or the notion of a sick man who has run home to live with his mum. Evidence suggests that Barrett's exile only served to fuel the myth. He became the emblematic nutty rock star, the madman in the attic, the visionary who saw so much that it pushed him over the edge. Over the years there have been stories of fans who have camped out on his Cambridge street, or snapped pictures of him as he walked to buy his groceries. I imagine these fans were motivated by the same impulses as the bozos who stake out JD Salinger because they love him and feel his pain and, like, totally relate to his desire to live apart from a world full of phoney bastards.

The sad truth is that Syd Barrett chose to retreat from the limelight and turn his back on his career. There was nothing glamorous or enigmatic about this decision. He was not "making a statement" or appealing for the love and support of his fans, or secretly planning some fiendish comeback. He got out because he could not cope. Had he not done so, it seems likely that he would never have lived to see his 30th birthday.

Syd Barrett died last Friday, although the news was not announced until this morning. In later years he had apparently passed his time painting pictures, or working in his garden. It might have been a sad life; it might even have been a happy one. Personally, I'm rather glad that we don't know, and that he never came out to tell us. Barrett went away and stayed away. He took his secrets to the grave.

Xan Brooks

source: The Guardian