Syd Barrett – Golden Hair

Photo by: Mick Rock

Psychedelic music, be it of the rock or slightly more flowery pop variety, is thoroughly adept when it comes to throwing out a haunting tune. For example, just take Pink Floyd’s ‘Julia Dream’, John Wonderling’s ‘Man of Straw’, H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘White Ship’ or Peter Thorogood’s aptly named ‘Haunted’ -- mere examples of a musical genre that often excelled in sending a shiver up the old spine. Syd Barrett’s ‘Golden Hair’, based on a poem by James Joyce, is two minutes worth of ethereal eeriness that for me evokes images of a twilight cottage at the edge of a dark, dark wood, sometime in 1969. Don’t ask.

The overall haunting quality of this short-but-sweet spectral sestina is fortified by the ambiguity of Barrett’s mental state during the recording of ‘Golden Hair’ and the album it comes from, 1970′s The Madcap Laughs. Having been unceremoniously ejected from The Pink Floyd, the band he co-founded,  due to erratic behaviour resulting from overt LSD and substance abuse (similar in many ways to Brian Jones with the Stones), the toll it had taken is evident throughout the album and his follow-up, Barrett, particularly in the outtakes included on the CD reissues.

‘Golden Hair’, however, manages to get it just right. Produced by Dave Gilmour, the man drafted into Pink Floyd to eventually replace Barrett, it ticks all the boxes in doing what it sets out to. Barrett’s lilting vocal, the sparsely strummed guitar and haunting single note that sounds ominously in the background, coupled with the intermittent shiver of a cymbal gives this unconventional song -- is it more a recital? -- a truly unearthly feel.

Golden Hair appears on Syd Barrett’s The Madcap Laughs, available from Amazon.co.uk

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psych-folk, song reviews