The Gnome

19 Jan 2012 1 Comment

by ladygarfunkel in 60's Music Tags: Pink Floyd, Roger Waters, Syd Barrett

You wont’ recognize this as Pink Floyd if you grew up hearing Another Brick In The Wall on the radio. (I have a real problem with douchebags who say they’re Pink Floyd fans but don’t know who Syd Barrett was.) Roger Waters certainly had a different worldview than Barrett. He may well be a charming fellow in real life, but on he’s long used his music as a means of therapy for himself. He likes to write about Mommy issues, shitty relationships, the trauma of WWII and other depressing things. Syd Barrett wanted to write about gnomes named Grimble-Gromble. It’s possible that besides the blinding drug abuse, Syd’s fall from grace had something to do with his disconnect from the other visionary in the band. They obviously had vast personality differences, and David Gilmour in his short overlap with Barrett was no help. Though Waters and Gilmour hate each other now, they made a brilliant partnership for many years. Those two were much more simpatico than Waters and Barrett. Perhaps Barrett’s decline was (like that of Brian Jones) precipitated by frustration of losing creative control and not liking the direction his band took as they gained increasing success. After Barrett dropped out, they did for a while carry on in a similar mystical, psychedelic vein. Then they got insanely popular, and increasingly depressing, and got no less pessimistic about the human condition after Waters took off too. I’m exactly disparaging their evolution, for it did yield a lot of classic material. On the other hand, I don’t like any Pink Floyd albums after The Wall, nor the solo work of Roger Waters. The misanthropy just lies too thick for my taste.