Roger Waters was ‘just about to call’ Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett when he heard musician had died

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Roger Waters was “just about to call” Syd Barrett when he heard the Pink Floyd founding member had died, the bass player claims.

Waters and the rest of Pink Floyd had little to no contact with Barrett after the group parted ways with the founding member. Though Barrett would show up to the studio while the band were recording Wish You Were Here, no members of the group would keep in touch with Barrett. Both Waters and guitarist David Gilmour have speculated somewhat on why they did not keep in touch, with both in agreement that it was better to not remind Barrett of his time in the band. Keyboard player Richard Wright says Barrett’s mother had told members of the band not to contact Barrett, as it would leave him depressed for weeks. It seems the band respected these wishes, though Waters was set to break the no contact rule just moments before Barrett died.

Speaking to TVNZ in 2007, Waters was asked about how he felt about Barrett’s death. Barrett died on July 6, 2006. Waters said: “Sort of not very hard you know because Syd kind of died forty years ago for me. When we spent months and months and months going ‘what’s happened where are you?’ and he’d kind of gone and he’d stayed gone.

“So obviously I was very sad to hear that he was sick. I heard he was sick about three days before he died. I finally got Rosemary’s phone number and was just about to call when I heard he’d died. I’ve thought about it since on a number of occasions and I think about it still and I find myself going back to the Saturday morning painting classes we did together when he was eleven and I was ten back in 1954.

“I find myself going back to those times but the kind of distance I experience with Syd is an extraordinary thing. It is real and I had tonnes of emails from people saying ‘I’m sorry for your loss and this and that and the other’ but I’m not really half as moved as I thought I would be.”

Waters believes he wasn’t as moved as he thought he would be because it had been some time since he had spoken to Barrett, and that he and Pink Floyd had already mourned him with Shine On You Crazy Diamond. Waters continued: “Having said that, his illness in a way was the greater tragedy because he was the most extraordinarily loveable companion and friend and fellow band member and everything so when he developed schizophrenia at that very young age that was deeply depressing.

“And that’s kind of what I wrote about in Shine On You Crazy Diamond and I still feel that sense of loss. I guess part of me thought when he died in some sense it was a release I think he was deeply unhappy I really do however much people said well he was pottering about in his garden building odd bits of furniture in his house.

“I can’t help feeling there’s a part of the extraordinarily creative bit of the psyche that remembers what it was like to be able to function on that level and is distressed by it. Not being able to do it anymore.”