Flying high ... Syd Barrett (second from right) with Pink Floyd in the late 1960s. Photograph: PA
There can't be many people under the age of 55 who have firsthand memories of Syd Barrett as a working musician. By 1971, he'd already left Pink Floyd, released his two solo albums and given his last press interview. He was then just 25, and decades of productivity should have lain ahead. Instead, he became rock's most graphic illustration of the damage drugs can inflict on a fragile psyche.
Barrett was mythologised from the moment he left Pink Floyd in 1968, after the release of their first album. Music magazines brooded over the loss of the band's core talent, and a fanzine called Terrapin ran for years, exclusively devoting itself to conjecturing about what might have been if his mind hadn't succumbed to the hallucinogens he avidly consumed from the mid-60s.
Barrett became an iconic figure - his whimsical, often inspired, songcraft was matched by striking physical beauty - and, remarkably, his legend was untarnished by the ensuing decades of physical and mental decline. The evidence of snatched photos and monosyllabic encounters with fans (who camped outside his house in Cambridge in the hope of seeing him) suggested that, in middle age, Barrett was very unwell, but in the mind of the public, he was still, somehow, the brilliant young talent of his glory days.
Barrett left his enduring mark on the Floyd catalogue with the typically gentle, whimsical singles See Emily Play and Arnold Layne. Released in 1967, when both were Top 20 hits, and were the only Floyd singles to chart until Another Brick in the Wall in 1979.
To younger generations of bands, he's more a spiritual inspiration than a musical influence - his quirky, surreal Englishness hasn't found its way into much modern music, though Blur in their Britpop days might be the exception. But his place in posterity is assured. Enigmatic to the last, Barrett was one of the few pop stars about whom almost nothing is known beyond the fact that he had it all, and gave it all away.
