Dare to Be Different?

Born on January 6, 1946, Roger Keith Barrett was raised in Cambridge England. He was given the nickname "Syd" as a youngster, while attending the city's High School, where his friends included Roger Waters and David Gilmour, and it stuck with him as he grew up. In his late teens, after his father died, he started producing paintings and music. He was an originating member of The Abdabs, The T-Sets, Sigma 6, and other names such as The Meggadeaths, in 1965. He worked with people like Bob Close, Roger Waters, Nick mason, and Richard Wright.

When Bob Close left the band, Syd renamed the group The Pink Floyd Sound, named after the cover of an album of two American bluesmen, Pink Anderson, and Floyd Council. Syd wrote almost everything for The Pink Floyd Sound, then The Pink Floyd finally renamed just Pink Floyd), he played guitar, sung, and wrote the music and the lyrics as well. The other Cambridge native forming The Pink Floyd were Roger Waters (bass), Rick Wright (keyboards), and Nick Mason (drums).

Syd's influences were the Stones, Beatles, Byrds and Love," the group's first manager, Pete Jenner, told Nick Kent, adding at Barrett wore out his copy of the last-named group's debut album. "I was trying to tell him about this Arthur Lee song I couldn't remember the title of, so I just hummed the main riff. Syd picked up his guitar, followed what I was humming, and went on to use the chord pattern he worked out for 'Interstellar Overdrive'.

Pink Floyd then began to experiment, however, stretching out songs with wild instrumental freak-out passages incorporating feedback, electronic screeches, and unusual, eerie sounds created by loud amplification, reverb, and such tricks as sliding ball bearings up and down guitar strings. In 1966, they began to pick up a following in the London underground; onstage, they began to incorporate light shows to add to the psychedelic effect.