The Night Syd Barrett Walked Into a Pink Floyd Recording Session — And Nobody Recognized Him

On June 5, 1975, a man walked into Abbey Road Studios carrying a plastic bag. He was overweight. His head was shaved. His eyebrows were gone. He stood in the control room where Pink Floyd were finishing the mix of an album, and nobody in the room knew who he was. The band assumed he was a record label employee. They went on working. Then someone looked more closely. And the room stopped. The man in the gabardine raincoat was Syd Barrett. The person who had founded Pink Floyd. The person who had named the band. The person who had written every song on their debut album. The person without whom none of them would have been in that room, in that studio, making that record. He was 29 years old. And his former bandmates — people who had known him since childhood — could not recognize him. In this episode you will discover the full, documented story of what happened that day, and everything that led to it. How Barrett named the band by combining the first names of two American blues musicians he admired. How he wrote both of Pink Floyd's first singles and every song on The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. How his mental state deteriorated through 1967 in ways that became impossible to manage — on stage, in rehearsals, in America. How he wrote a song called Have You Got It Yet that was designed to be unlearnable, changing the arrangement every time his bandmates tried to follow him. And how in January 1968, driving to a show, someone in the car said shall we pick up Syd — and someone else said no. You will also discover what happened on June 5, 1975 in exact detail. What session vocalist Venetta Fields said about the moment he walked in. What Storm Thorgerson witnessed. What Roger Waters did when he finally recognized who was standing in the room. What Barrett said when he heard Shine On You Crazy Diamond — the song written entirely about him — for the first time. And the fact that June 5, 1975 was also David Gilmour's wedding day, and that Barrett wandered from the studio into the wedding reception and left without telling anyone he was going. He spent the next 31 years in Cambridge, painting under his real name, tending his garden, not talking about any of it. The song kept playing. #PinkFloyd #SydBarrett #WishYouWereHere #ShineOnYouCrazyDiamond #PinkFloydHistory #SydBarrettPinkFloyd #RogerWaters #DavidGilmour #PinkFloydUntold #ClassicRock #RockHistory #WhatTheFloydNeverSaid #PiperAtTheGatesOfDawn #SydBarrettStory #AbbeyRoad