Syd Barrett

Shine On You Crazy Diamond

Syd Barrett (6 January 1946 – 7 July 2006), born Roger Keith Barrett, was an English singer/songwriter, guitarist and painter. He is most remembered as a founding member of psychedelic/progressive rock band Pink Floyd, providing major musical and stylistic direction in their early work, although he left the group in 1968 amidst speculations of mental illness exacerbated by heavy drug use.

Barrett was active as a rock musician for about seven years, recording two albums with Pink Floyd and two solo albums before going into self-imposed seclusion lasting more than thirty years. His post rock-band life was as an artist and a keen gardener, ending with his death in 2006. A number of biographies have been written about him since the 1980s and Pink Floyd wrote and recorded a song about him after he left, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" on the 1975 album Wish You Were Here.