Nick Mason: “Pink Floyd handled and cared for Syd very badly”

“Wish you where here”, the Pink Floyd classic, which has just turned 50 and for the occasion is back in stores in the form of a special reissue in various formats for Sony Music (purchasable at this link) with unreleased songs and rarities, would not have existed without Syd Barrett. Word of Nick Mason. The former drummer of the legendary British rock band on the occasion of the celebrations linked to the fiftieth anniversary of the 1975 album gave a long interview to Variety in which in addition to telling what happened when Barrett made a surprising and fleeting appearance at Abbey Road Studios in June 1975 during the recording of “Wish you where here”, meeting his former bandmates for about an hour and then disappearing again, he admitted: “I think we handled Syd very badly, but we didn’t really know how to behave. I mean, when Sid left the band in ’68, we still thought that if we took a day off, maybe he would recover. I mean, the naivety… Now, people are much, much wiser, but it’s amazing to look back and realize how little we knew or could do for him.”

To understand the meaning of that epiphany, however, we need to take a step back. Barrett had been removed from the band seven years before the genesis of “Wish you where here”, in 1968, due to his increasingly unstable and unreliable behavior, caused by an abuse of psychedelic drugs – mainly LSD – which made him incapable of playing and interacting with his bandmates. But in 1975 Barrett reappeared with Waters and his companions. According to legend, unrecognizable: bald and fat. It was a totally unexpected visit: Barrett arrived out of nowhere and returned shortly after (that was the last time he met his former bandmates and only Roger Waters met him one last time a few years later, while he was shopping in the Harrods department store in London: the artist would die in 2006 from pancreatic cancer). But for Nick Mason Barrett it was “a catalyst for the making of the record”.

In the interview with Variety, in fact, recalling that appearance, Mason said:

I think Syd’s arrival at the studio played a huge role in what happened next. I don’t think there was a clear theme on the record until Syd’s visit, and that gave a little more clarity and direction, especially when it came to Roger’s lyrics. But not only that, I also believe that the way in which the various elements of the album developed contributed significantly to songs that could have been about overcoming a relationship and paying particular attention to Syd.

Mason admitted he didn’t recognize Barrett at first:

I didn’t recognize him at all. It was David who said to me, “You know, that’s Syd,” and that was quite shocking, really – unsettling I think, is the right word. The others, I think, had seen him more in recent years, but I hadn’t seen him for about five years.