Recently there were a couple of screenings of Have You Got It Yet? The Story of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd and of course I was in the audience for one.
The movie was co-directed by Roddy Bogawa, whom I’d never heard of, and Storm Thorgerson, friend of Syd Barrett (and Roger Waters) starting in childhood. Thorgerson, a graphic designer by trade, co-founded Hipgnosis which devised most Pink Floyd album covers plus countless others for a bevy of bands.
The movie is a typical mix of archival photos and film along with talking head interviews by the members of Pink Floyd – minus Richard Wright, and a variety of Barrett’s friends, former lovers, and his sister. Thorgerson is the interviewer here and, since he died in 2013, these interviews are likely 12 years old or thereabouts.
But this doesn’t really matter. Since he personally knew most of the people he talks to, the interviews are more like conversations and have an ease about them that most documentaries lack. They often come across as friends having a chat and reminiscing rather than someone investigating a subject and scrutinizing their interlocutor. No music journalists are consulted for an “objective” view and, aside from a couple television clips featuring Barrett on TV, all of the interviews seem to have been done just before Thorgerson’s death. This movie is a bunch of people who mostly know one another looking back at the days of their youth and mourning the loss of their friend, lover, brother.
Very early on, we are given orthodox rock history: Barrett took too much acid and it fried his brain so he had to leave Pink Floyd and become a recluse. We then get an account of our tragic hero's childhood and see him mature into a handsome young man who joins a band doing American blues and R&B songs. They abandon the trendy covers act and go their own way. Barrett re-christens the group Pink Floyd and the rest is history.
Friends gush about Barrett’s charisma and playfulness while fellow musicians can say nothing less about his musical and songwriting talents than he was simply a genius. Former girlfriends describe how they were attracted to his quirky personality. One of them says something to the effect of a goofy musician being a much more attractive proposition than a banker. So there’s an element of hagiography here.
But we also get some great early Floyd footage. Presumably the filmmakers were given access to people’s private collections of old 8mm or 16mm films from back in the day. I’m not intimately familiar with the extant Syd-era footage so perhaps the movie features stuff largely already available. Regardless, that scene of them playing “Astronomy Domine” with the psychedelic liquid projection and the lights, in color, no less, was just fantastic. Like most music documentaries, Have You Got It Yet? suffers from the we-can’t-play-a-whole-song syndrome. But I did appreciate that “Bike” got an extended examination.
In the latter part of 1967 Barrett started to lose it, I guess you’d say. One interviewee says that the burgeoning pop star simply didn’t want to be in the music business anymore, that the taste of fame he'd already had was enough. While I can certainly believe this, his behavior and eventual seclusion suggests there was more to it than that. He became withdrawn and undependable. At first, David Gilmour was brought in to augment the increasingly erratic front man but he would go on to replace him. I was happy that “Vegetable Man” and “Scream Thy Last Scream Old Woman With a Casket”, Barrett songs from his last days with the band, were brought up as I adore both of them.
He was kicked out of Pink Floyd in 1968 at the tender age of 22 and his recording career was done within a couple of years. I had no idea that he occasionally played gigs with other folks until 1974 or so but we find out that he did. The section of the movie where Barrett turns up at the Floyd’s recording session for Wish You Were Here in 1975 was heartbreaking.
At first, the band didn’t know who he was. Someone – I cannot recall whom – noted that he had a new still camera in the studio that day and took some photos of the revenant band leader in the control booth that I had never seen. We are told that Barrett picked up a guitar and strummed a bit as the band looked on, not quite knowing what to do or say.
Barrett lived the rest of his life painting and his sister says that he cared for him because he was unable to do so for himself. An ex-girlfriend vehemently denies the legend that people dosed Barrett’s coffee daily with LSD so that he ended up tripping all day. But, in the end, no one really knows what happened to Syd Barrett. While he did take a lot of LSD, we cannot definitively say that his usage caused a mental breakdown. Maybe it exacerbated another problem. Or perhaps it had nothing to do with it.
Near the end, Gilmour remarks that the guys in Pink Floyd did all they could for him but they were young. In a tender moment, he admits that he regrets not having gone to visit Syd despite Barrett’s family discouraging visitors.
Even though Have You Got It Yet? covered a lot of territory that was familiar to me, it was interesting to hear people relate tales of events that they were present at that I’d only read about. I loved seeing the old performance footage on a big screen with a good sound system. There is a brief clip of Pete Townshend talking about Barrett’s status in the London music scene and his influence on other musos. I do wish there was a bit more of this because Barrett's musical output is rather paltry so I’d love to hear more to better understand his outsized legacy. So much that is said about him relates to his tragic life instead of how his creative genius influenced others.
Lastly, watching this movie gave me the desire to really investigate Barrett’s solo albums, something I’ve never done.
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