With random precision: in Syd's own words

edited by Dave Ward

Barrett: "I picked it [a banjo] up in a second-hand shop and plunked away quite happily for about six months. Then I decided to get a guitar. The first one was a #12 Hofner acoustic which I kept for a year. Then I joined a local Cambridge group called Jeff Mott and the Mottos and splashed out on a Futurama 2. At the time I thought it was the end in guitars. Fantastic design and all that. Incidentally, Jeff Mott was a great singer.... We [Jeff Mott and the Mottos] did a lot of work at private parties. And some of our material was original, but mostly we stuck to Shadows' instrumentals and a few American songs. Eventually the group dissolved and I moved into the blues field, this time playing bass. It was another Hofner, and I played that for a couple of years."–Beat Instrumental, October 1967

Barrett: "One day I met a guy guy called Roger Waters who suggested that when I come up to a London Art School we got together and formed a group. This I did, and became a member of the Abdabs. I had to buy another guitar because Roger played bass, a Rickenbacker, and we didn't want a group with two bass players. So I changed guitars, and we started doing the pub scene."–Beat Instrumental, October 1967

Barrett: "Roger Waters is older than I am. He was at the architecture school in London. I was studying at Cambridge–I think it was before I had set up at Camberwell [art college].... I was living in Highgate with him, we shared a place there, and got a van and spent a lot of our grant on pubs and that sort of thing."–Melody Maker, 27 March 1971

Barrett: "We were playing Stones numbers. I suppose we were interested in playing guitars–I picked up playing guitar quite quickly...I didn't play much in Cambridge because I was from the art school, you know. But I was soon playing on the professional scene and began to write from there."–Melody Maker, 27 March 1971

Barrett: "During that period we kept changing the name until we ended up with The Pink Floyd. I'm not sure who suggested it or why, but it stuck."–Beat Instrumental, October 1967

Barrett: "The choice of material was restricted, I suppose, by the fact that both Roger and I wrote different things. We wrote our own songs, played our own music.... I don't know that there was really much conflict, except that perhaps the way we started to play wasn't as impressive as it was to us, even, wasn't as full of impact as it might've been."–Melody Maker, 27 March 1971

Barrett: "Arnold [Layne] just happens to dig dressing up in women's clothing. A lot of people do, so let's face up to reality."

Barrett: "I had fallen asleep in this wood after a gig up North, when I saw a young girl coming towards me through the trees crying and dancing. It was Emily."–Rock 100: The All-Stars from Rock & Roll's Hall of Fame, David Dalton & Lenny Kaye, 1977

Barrett: "What I was more involved in was being successful at arts school. But it didn't transcend the feeling of playing at UFO and those sort of places with the lights and that, the fact that the group was getting bigger and bigger."–Melody Maker, 27 March 1971

Barrett: "Really, we have only just started to scrape the surface of effects and ideas of lights and music combined; we think that the music and the lights are part of the same scene, one enhances and adds to the other. But we feel that in the future, groups are going to have to offer much more than just a pop show. They'll have to offer a well-presented theatre show."– Melody Maker, 9 December 1967

Barrett: "It wasn't really a war. I suppose it was really just a matter of being a little offhand about things. We didn't feel there was one thing which was gonna make the decision at the minute. I mean, we did split up, and there was a lot of trouble. I don't think The Pink Floyd had any trouble, but I had an awful scene, probably self-inflicted, having a mini and going all over England and things. Still..."–Melody Maker, 27 March 1971

Barrett: "The guy who lives next door to me paints, and he's doing it well, so I don't really feel the need.... A lot of people want to make films and do photography and things, but I'm quite happy doing what I'm doing."–Barrett audio interview, ca. 1970

Dave Ward is a contributor to Spare Bricks