Pink Floyd fired their co-founder, songwriter, guitarist and singer Syd Barrett in 1968 after the musician’s mental decline, which later would be analyzed to be either schizophrenia or a psychosis resulting from his misuse of substances such as LSD and marijuana. Wanting to do something to help him, members of the band like David Gilmour helped to write and record his two only solo albums: “The Madcap Laughs” (1970) and “Barrett” (1970).
The Smashing Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan recalled, during a conversation with John 5 on his interview show, what Gilmour told him about the making of those records.
Billy Corgan recalls what Gilmour told him about Barrett solo records
“When Syd Barrett, sadly, was going insane and had left Pink Floyd, Gilmour, who had been his friend, and the other guys in Floyd were still supportive, and he was technically signed to Harvest, which was their label. They made those Syd Barrett records. I don’t know if you ever heard them.”
“Well, the only way they could record was, Syd would go in and record live with all those weird stops and starts and timings, and then they’d have to figure out how to go back in and build a band around the tracks. And David Gilmour told me it was a nightmare, because it’s like, how do you follow that weird timing?”
“It was this labor of love where they so badly wanted to support him. It was one of those things, like, how do you overdub drums on an acoustic? I mean, play live with singing? I bet they did anything they could think of. If you go back and listen to those records, they’re really beautiful. Those were all posthumously added music.”
He continued:
“I think in some cases they played live with him, but I think – I can’t remember if it’s stuff that David Gilmour told me privately, or stuff I’ve seen in interviews – but basically, it got to the point where he couldn’t play the same thing twice.”
“So even if they rehearsed a take, like, ‘Okay, you play the drums. I got the bass,’ he would play it differently the next time. So the only way they could track it was to let him do whatever number of takes, edit those together, and then try to add instrumentation to it, as he kind of slid into total madness,” Billy Corgan said (Transcribed by Ultimate Guitar).