Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd Read Online Free PDF Page B

jazz, it became required reading material for smart teenagers growing up in a university town.
    The Beats’ frantic creativity, anti-conformist stance and spirit of adventure appealed to both Barrett and Waters. In letters to his girlfriend Libby Gausden, Barrett enthused about On the Road . Experimenting with his appearance, he adopted the uniform of black trousers and fisherman’s sweaters, which was popular among art students and jazz fans. Sometime after the death of his father, he began to refer to himself occasionally as ‘Syd the Beat’, the ‘Syd’ taken from one Sid Barrett, the unrelated drummer in a jazz band he’d encountered playing the local Riverside Jazz Café.
    ‘There was at the time,’ Waters explained years later, ‘this idea of going east in search of adventure.’
    Andrew ‘Willa’ Rawlinson accompanied Waters and others on various trips around Europe. ‘We took Roger’s mum’s car and drove to Istanbul via France, Italy and Greece,’ he recalls. ‘It took us about three months.’ Aged nineteen, Waters joined Rawlinson and others on a jaunt to the Middle East. ‘We went in an ambulance called Brutus,’ says Rawlinson. ‘We knew nothing about engines, put no water in it and it blew up in Beirut. So the five of us went our separate ways. Roger hitched back to England on his own.’ It was a trip that would provide an inspiration for his 2003 solo song ‘Leaving Beirut’, which opened with the line: ‘So we left Beirut, Willa and I . . .’
     
    By 1962 Syd Barrett’s scepticism about rock ’n’ roll had diminished. His musical interests now included Americans such as Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, but also the homegrown instrumental guitar band The Shadows, a key influence on every aspiring guitarist in the early sixties. The release of the first Beatles single, ‘Love Me Do’, in 1962 and debut album, Please Please Me , a year later, gave another inspirational boost to the Cambridge music scene. The Beatles were English, nearer to home, ‘more like us’, and even the usually sceptical Waters said that ‘the songs on their first album were just so good.’ Barrett became an evangelical Beatles fan, and, having acquired his first electric guitar and the Holy Grail of learning manuals - the Pete Seeger record and book - started to think about a group of his own.
    While Syd and John Gordon would spend time thrashing around on guitars, Syd’s first serious attempt came with the formation of Geoff Mott and The Mottoes, centred around their gregarious lead singer Geoff Mottlow, another ex-Cambridge County boy and Roger Waters’ rugby team-mate. The group had an ideal rehearsal space in Syd’s front room/bedroom and commandeered it for regular Sunday afternoon sessions. Barrett and Nobby Clarke played guitar, Mottlow sang lead vocals, while Clive Welham played drums.
    ‘It was quite possible that when me and Syd first started I didn’t even have any proper drums and was playing on a biscuit tin with knives,’ says Clive Welham. ‘But I bought a kit, started taking lessons and actually got quite good. I can’t even remember who our bass player was.’ Welham is certain that, contrary to most existing reference books, it wasn’t Tony Sainty, a local bassist who would end up playing in bands with David Gilmour. ‘I played in bands with Tony later,’ insists Clive, ‘but not with Syd. There were a lot of people who used to drop by and have a blow. Roger Waters was always round Syd’s house, but it was before he was doing music.’
    The Mottoes’ repertoire revolved around covers of songs by Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, The Shadows and Eddie Cochran. Years later Barrett would tell the music press that ‘the band did a lot of work at private parties’, but The Mottoes only played one ticketed event, a fund-raising gig in March 1963 for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament at the local Friends Meeting House, advertised with a poster designed by Roger Waters. The connection was