Insane? Blame Rock

They say I'm crazy, but I have a good time.
I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime.
Life's been good to me so far.

Joe Walsh, “Life’s Been Good”

 After that brief madness from fever last week, I’m brought back to music and reality, including Pink Floyd and Hawkwind.  So the topic is: rock and insanity, focusing on the craziest people in popular music.  And by that I mean truly insane, not “Keith Moon drives Rolls Royce into swimming pool” or “Brian Jones dresses in SS gear”, or even “Marilyn Manson installs fake tits in his chest”, outlandish behavior by rock stars who may do things we non-rock-stars would consider …ill-advised…but who really can’t be considered insane by any legitimate analysis. 

 Syd Barrett.  Bar none, the top “acid”/”rock” casualty, but Toby Manning (writer of The Rough Guide to Pink Floyd, an excellent guide on Pink Floyd) astutely points out that (A) some bizarre cult has developed around Syd, and (B) Syd’s actual musical output was rather thin.

            Syd acted as Pink Floyd’s original musical genius for most of Piper of the Gates of Dawn and two major singles, “Arnold Layne” and “See Emily Play” in 1966-67.  Then during a disastrous US tour, Syd started behaving erratically.  By 1968 David Gilmour was in, replacing his school chum, and Syd was reduced to “Jugband Blues”, his only tune on the second album, A Saucerful of Secrets.  Soon he was out, but resurfaced for a brief, eerie visit to the studio in 1975 when Floyd were working on “Shine on You Crazy Diamond”.  Gilmour tried to help him with his solo material, with modest success.

            Reading the Manning book, and the more I read about Syd (much of which I’d read before, from other sources, such as Mason’s book) the more it occurred to me that Syd’s madness might not be 100% sincere.  I start with his extreme eccentricity at making his solo material AFTER the others had kicked him out of Floyd, especially that “Have You Got It Yet” tune, which really seems like he was f**king with them deliberately. 

            Look at who was the #1 co-conspirator on this stuff: GILMOUR, the guy who replaced him.  I can just imagine Syd thinking, “ok, you bastards.  You hijacked and stole this band from me, the band I created, and now you want to throw me this bone of helping me on my SOLO material.  F**k off!”  A bit like a Randite character refusing to give “the sanction of the victim” (e.g. Rearden refusing to sell them the Rearden Metal and saying, “go ahead and take it, I won’t help you pretend this is a voluntary transaction”).

            So then the response (from Waters or Mason) to this is, “listen, Syd.  We tried to work with you.  But you were impossible.  Like this business of playing the song perfectly in rehearsal and blanking out ON AIR, then back to perfect on rehearsal again.  Or giving Pat Boone the silent treatment.  You know what we’re talking about.”

            Syd’s response?  “It’s MY band.  I’m the artist.  I’m entitled to be difficult, especially if you’re putting us on ‘Top of the Pops’ or ‘American Bandstand’, that inane crap for the masses of teeny boppers who can’t possibly understand what we’re all about, all they can relate to is ‘Arnold Layne’ and ‘See Emily Play’.  You’re trying to make Floyd a POP band and that’s NOT what we’re all about.  I had to sabotage it because it was turning into something completely different than it was supposed to be.  I had to destroy the band to save it.  This madness was feigned all along, just an act.  I can handle the acid; that was never the problem.  The real problem was Floyd’s success on terms I don’t agree with.” 

            Well, none of the albums they made immediately after Saucerful were particularly pop-oriented or calculated to sell lots of records, they were highly experimental.  It was Dark Side which clearly blew it all up.  Maybe Syd saw that coming.  Who knows.  While I know that The Wall was based on Waters’ own experiences as a successful rock musician and as a boy growing up in post-war England without a father, it’s hard not to see Syd in the Pink character who trashes his apartment, lapses into catatonia, then emerges as a fascist demagogue (ok, that part may be pure Waters). 

            Whatever the case was, Syd retired to almost complete seclusion with his mother in Cambridge, not even seeing his fellow band members, until his death in 2006. 

 Robert Calvert.  To me Syd gets too much attention, and Bob Calvert gets too little, but then again I’m a huge Hawkwind fan and probably always will be.  Calvert was definitely over the deep end, but contributed to the ‘Wind’s 70s stage act, often dressed in pilot’s gear on stage.  Lemmy describes him in sympathetic terms in White Line Fever.  His Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters concept album – about the West German Luftwaffe’s disastrous fighter-bomber, the Starfighter – was practically a Hawkwind album, and contributed several songs to HW’s live set: “Ejection” and “The Right Stuff”.  With Hawkwind, he was on Space Ritual, Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music (produced by…David Gilmour!), Quark, Strangeness and Charm, the Hawklords album, and PXR5.

 Peter Green.  The original guitarist for Fleetwood Mac, before the Rumours era broke them loose to the big time.  Back then, FM was a blues band with no commercial pretenses.  I like “Oh Well”.  Green went nuts and fell out of the spotlight for ages, only resurfacing fairly recently with a resurrected music career.

 Roky Erikson.  The guitarist/singer of the 13^th Floor Elevators, an Austin, Texas psychedelic band from the late 60s.  He fried his brain on too much acid, was committed to an asylum, where he endured electro-shock therapy.  I’m not sure exactly how far he’s recovered, but he’s making music again.  I like to refer to 13FE as “Iggy Piper”, a punky cross between the first Floyd album and the Stooges.

 Section 8.  “Section 8” is the “Catch 22” insanity exemption for the military, famously invoked by Max Klinger (Jamie Farr) in “M*A*S*H”, cross-dressing in an unsuccessful attempt to get a discharge and sent home.  As mentioned above, Marilyn Manson’s behavior is 100% shock value.  Likewise, I don’t think Axl Rose is insane.  To me, Rose simply suffers from “adult immaturity syndrome”, i.e. he’s a petulant asshole who does whatever he feels like and deliberately cultivates a persona of jaded, difficult rock star to attract attention -  because if he showed up on time at studios and concerts and played the music as expected, or released Chinese Democracy after 4 years and not 14, he fears no one would worship him as AXL and he’d be just another musician.  Boo f**king hoo.  Slash still wears the goofy hat and perpetual sunglasses, but he’s cleaned up his act and hasn’t been consigned to oblivion.  Get a clue, Axl.