Newsgroup: it.arti.musica.rock.progressive
Titolo: [Barrett] Bellissimo articolo di una donna

http://www.memes.com/~tristandcw/syd_loved.html
                                       The Madcap Loved:
                            The Love Songs of Syd Barrett
                                                      by Elisa Roney
Syd Barrett is probably one of the ultimate writers of love songs for
this and previous generations of music fans. I say
this without hesitation, as I have believed this statement to be true
the moment I heard his first solo album, The
Madcap Laughs. The album is a lilting movement of ballads, upbeat pop
songs and "bubblegum" songs—all dealing
with love and its effect on others. I remember finding a British vinyl
pressing of it at a record show a year or so ago and
ever since then, it has been a mainstay to the "playlist" of albums on
my record player. From the first note of "Terrapin,"
I was hooked.
The most obvious and direct way of affirming my statement above, is to
examine the songs, to find the similar threads
that hold this album together. It is not, as most tend to be, a type of
album that one needs to "skip" through, to find the
certain songs they recognize or are worth listening to. This whole album
hangs together so beautifully, that to skip a
song would be to miss the "point" or "cohesion" of the songs. As one
will see, I use Barrett as the "subject" or
"speaker" in all of the song lyrics. This may be off base in some cases,
but with Barrett (as with many other
songwriters) it seems that he writes very personally, and the characters
in his songs are somehow connected to him or
represent real people in his life.
The first song or lead-off song is "Terrapin." This is a slow, sweet
song primarily about the worship of a lover. Barrett
imagines that he and his love can become turtles (or terrapins) to
escape the hectic day to day life "below the boulders"
of a turtle tank. The first verse of this (and of the whole album) is:
     "I really love you, and I mean you/The star above you, crystal
blue/Well oh baby, my hair's on end about you"
Setting the tone of the album, with an affirmation of total love for
another. This, as in 3/4 of the other songs, has the
word "love" somewhere in the lyrics. In other songs on "Madcap" the love
is not as "direct" and "outward" as in this
example.
Following this opening song, the mood changes from "exulted love," to
Barrett's calm perserverance when trying to
soothe a girlfriend into seeing how important she is to him, no matter
how plain she is. "No Good Trying," repeats its
title frequently, with different reasons why she has no way of arguing
her way out of how attractive and loveable she is
to him, no matter how flawed she is:
     "I can see that you can't be, what you pretend"
The woman is *real* and not merely an archetype, although she tries to
feign "archetypal attitudes" by "holding a
sequined fan" (pretending to be wealthy) or as she's "trying to hold her
love where [I] can't see...," when he sees how she
truly feels about him.
As she tries to hide herself and her feelings from him, he relates:
     "The caterpillar hood won't cover the head/that you know you should
be home in bed"
She should hide nothing from him, but be (in all probability) "naked" or
"exposed" with Barrett in the most intimate
surroundings—the bedroom. This could also be a nod to Barrett himself,
as he is known as a bit of a recluse, and he
realizes this is improper, but "comfortable" behaviour and thus he hides
like his terrapin image or under the
aforementioned "caterpillar hood".
"Love You," the most outward and "poppy" song on the album, is a gushy
outpouring of love to a girl Barrett may not
have ever met. The first verse is a cacaphony of honey-dripped words,
that ooze together into endless streams of
affection:
     "Honey love, ya honey little honey funny sunny morning love you
more funny love in the skyline baby..."
This stream of amourous jargon may be what Barrett is feeling within
himself about this girl, but cannot put it down
coherantly into actual sentences to speak directly to her. This can also
been seen as the "baby talk" lovers engage in
when in the earlier stages of "courting".
One is reminded of The Doors' classic "Hello, I Love You," rumoured to
be written by Ray Davies (a type of early
model Syd Barrett) in which a man sees a woman and instantaneously falls
in love with her when in actual fact, it is her
beauty and physicality he is attracted to. Granted, this is one of the
first steps in mutual attraction, but there is no
"depth" to the lyrics. Barrett may have been mocking or parodying these
types of "fluffy" love songs that Davies and
Donovan (his rivals) were famous for with his song.
The next line links the songs directly:
     "Ice cream, scuse me, I seen you looking good the other evening"
Barrett's "pick-up line," in relation to the Davies' model reads in the
same abstract as how the song began, yet the end of
the line is just as cliché as saying "hello, I love you." The lyrics
also mention: "If we in love like I think we'd be." The
ever-hopeful Barrett character in this song believes that she may grow
to love him, but finishes the verse with "It ain't a
long rhyme it took ages to think, I think I'll hurl it in the water
baby," as if perhaps giving up such a farfetched notion.
Thus, this is the first of the many "unrequited" love songs on the
album.
"No Man's Land" is one of the only songs that does not mention the word
"love" somewhere in the song. This is done
purposefully in this case. The song relates to the loss of love, another
main theme on the album. Lyrics such as: "You
would hold another hand, oh understand" or "If it's there would you go
there too/when I live I die," show the hurt and
pain that the ex-lover is going through and he doesn't want his lost
love to "see [me] cry." The song ends in a rant that is
almost unintelligible to the casual listener which may relate to the
ex-lover's state of unwellness and may also comment
upon Barrett's own sanity. This, as in other songs on this album, may be
relating to not only lost love, but the loss of
"stability of self" or sanity, which is an aspect of Barrett's own
personal life.
"Dark Globe" is probably one of the most "known" songs on this album.
This is a beautiful lament over lost or
unreciprocated love, following the same thread as the above song. It
starts out: "Oh where are you now/pussy willow
that smiled on this leaf/when I was alone/you promised the stone from
your heart." Barrett almost "grieves" over what
"used to be" and wonders about the girl: "Won't you miss me? Wouldn't
you miss me at all?" as she has merely cast
him aside, forgotten.
The last song on the first side, "Here I Go" plays much like an early
Beatles song—it has a sort of "skiffle" aspect to it
and has a definite, though simplistic storyline about a girl Barrett
knows who "didn't like [his] songs and that made
[him] feel blue" and has not much in common with him. The song itself is
a way of winning his girlfriend back from
"the big band" that's "far better than [him]":
     Well everything's wrong and my patience was gone
     When I woke one morning and remembered this song,
     Mmm-hmm hmm, kinda catchy, I hope!
     That she will talk to me now and even allow me to hold her hand and
forget that old band.
The second part relates to his journeys to her apartment building to win
her back, but the song relates:
     Her sister said, that my girl was gone
     But come inside boy and play play play me a song
     I said yeah, here I go
     She's kinda cute don't ya know that
     After a while of seeing her smile I knew we could make it,
     Make it in style.
Thus, his serendipitous journey ends and the last verse relates:
     So now I've got, all I need,
     She and I are in love, we've agreed
     She likes this song and my others too
     So now you see my world is...
     Because it's you, what a boon this tune,
     I tell you soon, we'll be lying in bed, happily wed
     And I won't think of that girl or what she said.
Ironically, the song itself has become the vehicle for winning the heart
of a woman as opposed to losing one. Barrett
acknowledges this himself by saying, "What a boon this tune"—even though
his old girlfriend did not like it, he has
found a "match" that does.
This is written much like British pop songs that are still being popular
today. One is reminded of "Up the Junction" by
Squeeze or even "Eleanor Rigby" by the Beatles. Barrett's song may be
again, slightly parodical of these, but at the same
time stands out as a fine example of this type of more "upbeat" pop
song. Thus, this also ends the album side, and there
have been definite changes in emotion from high ethereal love, to
unreciprocated love or "love gone bad" to the
ever-hopeful "Here I Go".
The second side continues this upbeat, positive outlook on things and
especially love, but in "Octopus," it does not
hinge upon the love of another, but the love of life itself. The
nonsense lyrics in this song are reminiscent of Lewis
Carroll in their childish playfulness. The chorus:
     "Please leave us here/Close our eyes to the Octopus ride!"
tells of how life has ups and downs and is bumpy, fast and
unpredictable, much like the mainstay ride at any fair, The
Octopus. Barrett relates:
     "Isn't it good to be lost in the wood/isn't it bad so quiet there,
in the wood?"
which relates to the changes life offers us—they're scary, but exciting
at the same time. It's a sort of double-edged
sword, with change comes excitement, but also with fear. There is
another reference to Barrett in this song as well. The
line:
     "Well, the madcap laughed at the man on the border"
may directly relate to the sanity of Barrett himself, or anyone else.
The "madcap" who embraces life wholly and
completely with joy and reckless abandon is coupled with the more
stable, yet stagnated "man on the border" (border of
sanity) who is "within the norm," but may be repressing his inner
"madcap." This is also true of the "madcap"
possessing a "man on the border" who keeps him from going totally "over
the edge." Thus, Barrett may be relating the
age-old theory that to create anything, one needs both stability and
recklessness—the Apollo-Dionysus theory. One of
the last lines of the song is: "they'll never put me in their bag" which
is Barrett's way of saying that "they," the judging
general public, will never "pin him down" into a category, and truly,
they never have successfully done that.
The second song on the second side is the most beautiful, lyrical song
on the whole album. Barrett in his teens, put
James Joyce's poem, "Golden Hair" to music and this is the final
product. This is a gorgeous poem, relating a man and
his Petrarchan love object, his woman upon a pedestal.
     "My book is closed, I read no more...I've left my book, I've left
my room/for I heard you singing through the
     gloom"
The poet only wants to think of her, the woman, as the sole part of his
life, his other half.
"Long Gone" is another song about lost love, which is quite melancholy.
The lines:
     "And I stood very still, by the windowsill, and I wondered for
those I loved still/I cried in my mind, would I
     stand behind/the beauty of those in her eyes"
seem as if she has just left him for her others, and he is left
wondering after others who still find favour with him. It
seems he can't believe she has left and may still be in some sort of
"shock," although she is long gone, never probably to
return.
"She Took a Long Cold Look" is the second of the four songs ("Long Gone"
being the first) that are held together by a
type of "bauhaus scaffolding." These four seem very "ragged," as there
are various stops and false starts that seem more
"realistic" than the polished studio versions making up the bulk of the
others. This is again, a song of breakup. It seems
as if Barrett may have been going through something personally during
these songs as the others seem more "detached"
from his psyche, yet these are more heartfelt and "real." Hence the use
of the "unrehearsed takes" these songs show.
The song itself displays the last remnants of a dying relationship. His
girlfriend likes to "see him get down to
ground/she doesn't have the time just to be with me," thus she puts him
down and gives him "long cold looks" or stares.
Barrett also describes himself as a "broken pier on a wavy sea," like a
broken man, unable to find refuge anywhere in his
life.
"Feel," the next song in this song pattern, seems as if Barrett is not
only detached from his proverbial girlfriend, but
from everyone else. The song begins:
     "You feel me/Away far too empty, you're so alone/I want to come
home..."
He is felt by others, but he does not say that HE feels. Barrett wants
to "come home," but doesn't seem to be able to. He
is again, like a "broken pier on a wavy sea," which could describe his
unstable mental state at the time.
     "How I love you to be by my side, they wail"
is a fascinating line, as it sets up the idea of "hero worship" by Syd
fans, but could also relate to Barrett's parents wishes
for him to be safe at home, away from the ravages of rock and roll
stardom. The different types of love in this song are
heard on many levels.
"If It's in You" falls into the same pattern as songs like "Love You" or
"Octopus." It is held together with the same sort
of nonsense Carrollian lyrics that again relate to the happiness of
being in love, but also with Syd's possible unease
about falling in love or having a close relationship with anyone:
     "Oh you tight, you're so close, yes you are/please hold on to the
steel rail"
As if getting any closer to him would be dangerous or not that easy. The
use of "steel" here can relate to the underlying
bitterness the second side of this album presents as most of it is about
lost love or "love gone wrong".
Finally, we reach the last song and coincidentally, the prettiest, most
underrated song on the album. "Late Night" relates
to how Barrett sees his love in relation to others and how she differs,
which makes her special and makes him love her
all the more:
     "When we grew very tall/and I saw you so small/then I wanted to
stay with you."
This is a reference to "getting high" and perhaps in one of Barrett's
LSD "visions," he saw his love as "smaller," as all
perception is altered on this drug. There is also the aspect of Barrett
wanting to take care of the girl. He sees her as
small and helpless when everyone else is tall and strong. But alas,
again, this girl may have left him as well, since the
first line relates:
     "When I woke up today/and you weren't there to play/then I wanted
to be with you"
And he remembers: "the way you kiss, will always be a very special thing
to me".
The best line of this whole album occurs on this last song:
     "Inside me I feel, alone and unreal"
which can either relate to the emptiness again of losing love, or a nod
to Barrett's own "unstable" condition in which he
feels "detached" from the rest of the world.
Overall, this album speaks of love on various levels and touches on
several different kinds of love. Although others
may not want to delve so deeply into it, the album is still definitely
worth a listen, Syd fan or no, for its enchanting and
haunting lyrics, lovely melodies and simply as a way to, perhaps, be
able to crawl a little farther into Barrett's psyche, as
no musician is totally detached from the music he makes.
All content is
©1996-7 Dave Ward
All previously published articles and images appearing on this site are
reproduced here, in a non-profit forum and manner, for the purposes of
research, comment and criticism.

this and previous generations of music fans...
scusa, potresti farne un riassunto (possibilmente in italiano) per chi, come
me, ha un inglese arruginito e poca voglia (vista l'ora) di farsi venire un
mal di testa?
Grazie
Luca