The appearance of Syd Barrett in the studio while Pink Floyd recorded Wish You Were Here was apparently a shock to his former bandmates.
Barrett, who left the group before the completion of their second album, A Saucerful of Secrets, appeared in the studio while Pink Floyd recorded their classic, Wish You Were Here. While the album pays tribute to Barrett with Shine On You Crazy Diamond, the group were initially unaware he was in the studio with them as they recorded their follow-up to The Dark Side of the Moon. Guitarist David Gilmour has since shared his realisation that Barrett was in the studio with them, a “strange person walking around” who the Pink Floyd troupe initially did not recognise.
Speaking of the appearance of his former bandmate, Gilmour says he and the rest of Pink Floyd were totally unaware who it was, and he eventually “guessed” who it was. A stark difference in Barrett’s appearance made it hard for the lead guitarist and vocalist to recognise his close friend, who was “very fat” and had shaved his head before turning up to the studio.
Gilmour said: “He showed up at the studio. He was very fat and he had a shaved head and shaved eyebrows and no one recognized him at all first off.
“There was just this strange person walking around the studio, sitting in the control room with us for hours. If anyone else told me this story, I’d find it hard to believe, that you could sit there with someone in a small room for hours, with a close friend of yours for years and years, and not recognise him.
“And I guarantee, no one in the band recognised him. Eventually, I had guessed it. And even knowing, you couldn’t recognise him. He came two or three days and then he didn’t come anymore.”
In the same interview, Gilmour hit out at those who had idolised Barrett as a “living legend” and said he was, in fact, a “sad story romanticised by people who don’t know anything about it.”
He said: “It’s sad that these people think he’s such a wonderful subject, that he’s a living legend when, in fact, there is this poor sad man who can’t deal with life or himself. He’s got uncontrollable things in him that he can’t deal with and people think it’s a marvelous, wonderful, romantic thing.
“It’s just a sad, sad thing, a very nice and talented person who’s just disintegrated. It is sad. Syd’s story is a sad story romanticised by people who don’t know anything about it. They’ve made it fashionable but it’s just not that way.”
