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DVD review: “The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story”. Review by Michael W. Dean

Quick description: If you love Pink Floyd or just love a good story with a lot of human heart and beauty, watch “The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story.”

(This film was originally the 2001 BBC Omnibus documentary called “Syd Barrett: Crazy Diamond.”) Omnibus is the BBC series that produced that “KLF burn a million pounds” movie I blogged about a few weeks ago.

“The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story” is a well-done documentary, directed by John Edginton, about legendary Pink Floyd co-founder, Syd Barrett. Syd started the band, was the heart of their vibe, even named the band. He did a few records with them, then went mad. He was institutionalized, got a tiny bit healthier, and dropped out of society. He moved in with his mother, got fat and bald (to the point that the rest of Pink Floyd did not know who he was when they ran into him seven years later). He refused to give interviews, and hibernated in his mom’s suburban cottage.

Syd died at age 60 last year, after this film was finished. He died of pancreatic cancer, as a complication from diabetes.

Syd Barrett’s story is kind of like “The Devil and Daniel Johnston”, or the Roky Erickson story (”You’re Gonna Miss Me”), except with someone who had a few number-one hits at one point and also started one of the most famous and long-running bands ever. This film even manages to get David Gilmore and Roger Waters on the same screen, when no one’s been able to get them into the same room, except a courtroom, in almost two decades.

(Yeah, I know Erickson had a hit once, but not one that blew my mind. And I met Roky one time; I wasn’t impressed. And he bummed a dollar off of me.)

Pink Floyd was my favorite band when I was a kid, and still are one of my favorites. I venerated them. I wanted to BE Syd Barrett when I grew up. I sort of met this goal, (without the ongoing madness)….I’m an artistic genius, I’m plump and I live in the suburbs. (Though he was cuter at 20 than I was, but I’m cuter now than he was at 43. Does that mean I win?)

I loved that photo of him in the empty room on the cover of his first solo album, “The Madcap Laughs.” I liked the back cover with the naked girl too. I thought, “When I grow up, I’ll have a room like that. (And the girl too!)”

I tried to kill myself when I was 20, and ended up in a mental institution for a spell….As dark as I was, I still dug that I was in the same kind of place that Syd had been. I wrote the contrapuntal middle part of “I Loved You then I Died” on a piano in the mental institution. (Short MP3 excerpt here). I felt I WAS Syd.

“The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story” is sweet, informative, heavy and even psychedelic. It’s edited with that common mix of talking heads, still photos and archive footage that so many documentaries (including the ones I direct) use, and that the BBC is so good at.

It’s a standard-style documentary. The very British version of the standard-style documentary, but hey, the BBC helped invent that standard. Love the foxy very English female narration too.

Standard-style documentary is fine, if you have a great story and interview the correct people who are part of the story, and edit it well; it works. And Syd’s rise, fall, and disappearance from society is a great story.

The archive footage is old TV shows, old interview, Super 8 footage of Pink Floyd gigs in front of 30 people, and somehow, home movies of Syd’s first acid trip.

There are good (and even loving) interviews with the rest of Pink Floyd, Syd’s old girlfriend. One of my favorite interviewees is Syd’s old landlord…a great guy with funny stories.

I like Bob Klose in this doc. I was amazed that I’ve never heard of this guy, because I have always been a huge Pink Floyd band, and Klose was apparently their first rhythm guitarist. Bob was the Pete Best of Pink Floyd…the guy who helped start the group but left before they did their first record. He’s funny…he basically says that “I had to leave for Pink Floyd to be what they were. To stop being a blues band.” He also says it’s as if Syd made a bargain with the Universe to “make his mark”, to be brilliant. So I suppose instead of dying young and having the devil get his soul, he got to grow fat and middle-aged and cranky, unable to deal with humans.

Syd wasn’t in the movie at all, and there’s no explanation of that fact. I would guess they probably asked him and he said no. He was fiercely private and turned down interviews ever since leaving the band.

This two-disc set is full of extras, including complete interviews with Pink Floyd about Syd, Robyn Hitchcock singing Syd songs in a garden, and a museum of early Floyd posters. That stuff AND the movie will be like tablets from Moses to hard-core Syd and Floyd freaks. But the movie is so well done that it will be enjoyable by people who don’t even like rock music. It’s that good.

You can get the film HERE.

This entry was posted by Michael W. Dean on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 6:04 pm and is filed under Other people's cool stuff, The world is a SEXY and beautiful place. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.