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Syd Barrett: A Very Irregular Head (2010)

by Rob Chapman(Favorite Author)

3.96 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0571238548 (ISBN13: 9780571238545)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Faber & Faber

review 1: Biography of Pink Floyd founder and frontman Syd Barrett.Solid biography paints a compelling portrait of his life and evokes the psychedelic era in London, based on plenty of interviews with Barrett's friends and contemporaries. Chapman's efforts to contextualize Barrett's work and analyze his influences are maybe a bit too wordy and need to be organized better. He also explores the influence his subject had on the larger world of pop and rock music via interviews with Robyn Hitchcock and Blur guitarist Graham Coxon.Chapman is a staunch defender of Barrett's body of work, and his contempt for Pink Floyd's non-Barrett output is obvious. He also works to rehabilitate Barrett's image as an "acid casualty" and to debunk many of the myths that have grown up around him, although... more a few are based on his own conjecture as opposed to any anecdotal evidence. (He does imply rather strongly that the other Floyd members--particularly Roger Waters and David Gilmour--and their associates exaggerated their accounts of Barrett's behavior for their own purposes.)Overall, a flawed but exhaustive and engaging portrait of this most enigmatic figure.
review 2: Despite the 3 star rating, I did enjoy this book. I especially appreciated the way Chapman humanized Syd, something that is all too uncommon in most press or bios about him. For this looking for tales of madness and insanity, this is not your book. But if you want insightful writing about an artist as a real human being, then read it by all means. I gave only 3 stars only because at times Chapman goes to far off track on tangents about other artists and writers and the book could perhaps be a more serviceable read if it focused more attention to Syd. That being said, I think Chapman did a wonderful job cutting through the mythology of Syd and choosing instead to work with available records, archival footage and the recollections of friends and family to tell the story of a real flesh and blood person who, yes may be inclined to mental instability, but may also have relished playing the part of the crazy...and in his own sly way, just may have been shining us all a little bit. less

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