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In my room
A portrait in alienation, never has an album sleeve contributed so much to the myth of a musician. But the photo session that begat the images for
The Madcap Laughs is itself enshrined in intrigue.
Paul Drummond reports
Just like the music it contained, the album sleeve for Syd Barrett's The Madcap Laughs was multifaceted and broke with convention. It was The Beatles, swiftly followed by Pink Floyd, who had initially resisted EMI's policy of not commissioning outside designers for LP covers and, as a result, Floyd's design team Hipgnosis - consisting of Storm Thorgerson (a childhood friend of Syd's) and Aubrey Po Powell - were hired to work on Barrett's first solo album. However, instead of the proud proclamation of a potentially glittering solo career the image itself was a dark and intriguing piece of poetic reportage.
On January 30, 1968, 10 days after his final show with Pink Floyd, Syd first entered a studio as a solo artist when he turned up at Sound Techniques for what would be an unfruitful session. Barrett, like Roky Erickson (his supposed US 'acid casualty' counterpart), was unable to control his predisposition to mental disorder, resulting in a pharmacopoeia of self-medication. By late '68, he was directionless and hanging out on the west London hippy scene until sharing a flat with an old artist friend form the infamous 101' (Cromwell Road) acid house in '67, helped instigate his creative comeback. The Madcap photos, taken in his new apartment, are important not least of all because they document Syd's tipping point and form the pictorial foundation of his legend. In reality, his bohemian lifestyle masked his growing alienation prior to a subsequent complete withdrawal; these photographs mark Barrett's last theatrical stand, a stage-managed snapshot, crouching in the shadows of the human condition.
Yet despite the increasing number of Barrett books even the most basic facts behind the startling cover image aren't confirmed. Who actually took the photograph? Mick Rock or Storm Thorgerson? And when? Spring or autumn 1969? The shoot is often cited as taking place in October '69, thereby delaying the album's release until Christmas, so why - as we are about to find out - does the presence of a naked woman and a huge Canadian car prove otherwise? In the hope of resolving some of the seemingly irreconcilable inconsistencies that have dogged the story of the sleeve and so intrigued Syd-devotees down the years, Mojo visited the celebrated pop artist Duggie Fields, who still resides at Wetherby Mansions, the Earls Court address he shared with Syd from January 1969 to October 1970, who began by telling us about how he ended up living with Syd...
>> Duggie Fields: I'd gone to America in '68 with Gilly Staples, who'd been connected with Quorum [Alice Pollock and Ossie Clark's shop]. She'd done a bit of modelling, a bit of a shop assisting, and when we got back she started seeing Syd. Dave Gilmour was the hunky van driver at Quorum that the girls fancied - I slept on Dave's floor. I needed somewhere to stay, so did Syd. He'd left the Floyd by that stage. He didn't talk about them particularly but I don't remember him being miserable either.
> How did you find the flat?
>> DF: I'd gone to South Ken to buy the Evening Standard because it came out there first. There was a flat in Egerton Court, where Syd had already lived. I rang up the agent and said I'd take it. She said, "You're second in line but I've got another in Earls Court," so I said I'd take that, there wasn't a choice... Syd signed the lease because he had the income, which I didn't.
> What was the flat like when you arrived?
>> DF: It was pretty primitive, two-bar electric fire, concreted-up fireplaces... It was an area in decline. I don't think there was anything, no cooker, bare floorboards. We had nothing. A mattress on the floor was the way we lived because that was the cheapest option. So, one started furnishing with whatever. I started going to Portobello, we found a chair in the street.
> Where was Syd's head at?
>> DF: Well, I thought he was very positive when he first moved in. He started painting; he was playing his guitar and writing. I don't know how long it took before he didn't get out of bed. But I had other people falling to bits around me too, he wasn't the only one. I'd left college, I was living hand-to-mouth, but I had started selling [paintings].
> Was he taking Mandrax at this point?
>> DF: Yes, Mandrax and smoking [marijuana]. I don't think anything else heavier, certainly not acid. I never saw acid in this flat at all.
In some of the photos you see canvases piled against the wall...
DF: Most of the canvases were blank. Some would be started with a watery idea. I don't think he ever found a direction in painting. I only ever saw what he moved in with... He had a couple of hanging mobiles; there was one that was like a castle. I wasn't impressed by what I saw. I wouldn't have picked it out, unless it was associated with him, as anything interesting. I don't think I was a help because I was on the other side of this wall, painting away continuously.
Were there other people who shared the flat?
DF: We had [another friend] Jules first and he ended up not paying rent, which is why we kicked him out.
Then came the mysterious Iggy The Eskimo who appeared naked on the back cover?
DF: When Jules left Iggy came soon after and she wasn't here for long. Jenny Spires [Syd's ex] brought her round. Iggy was just around, she didn't officially live here. I remember being at a 31 bus stop and seeing her coming down the stairs very elegantly in this gold lame 1940s dress that had bell sleeves that buttoned to a train but with no underwear and completely exposed... Not a care in the world. There were these incredible creatures around, no other word for them.
Iggy's current whereabouts and full identity remain another of Madcap's unsolved mysteries (see panel p76). Jenny Spires first met Iggy in January 1969 and introduced her to Syd and he let her stay. "I was on my way to the States and was confident she would look out for him," recalls Spires. "When I left at the end of February, she was there. There wasn't anything between them then. She wasn't his girlfriend, but she was good company." Iggy's involvement appeal's to date the shoot as spring '69 as she was long gone by autumn. The dying daffodils on the cover suggest the spring and Duggie seriously doubts Syd would pay for imported autumnal varieties! It's more likely Syd picked them while in the park with Iggy, as captured on Super-8 film. In March Syd contacted EMI about work recommencing on his album. It was then that he painted his floorboards, possibly in anticipation of the cover shoot. He then piled his few possessions and mattress into the bay window and appeared to literally paint himself into the proverbial corner. As long as he occupied his island, reality and a world of possibilities remained outside his door.
Proud of his work, Syd invited old friend and ally Mick Rock to take some photographs. Keen to experiment with a Pentax he'd recently bought from Po at Hipgnosis, Mick called round a couple of times but to no avail. Instead Rock was roped into the Hipgnosis shoot, which by today's standards was extremely ad hoc. Mick arrived first, to find Syd still in bed. Rock snapped a few documentary shots of Barrett in his underpants on his island-mattress, before Syd donned a pair of paint-stained trousers and Iggy added kohl to his eyes to give him that elegantly wasted look. Syd hadn't painted the entire floor and there was only one clean angle if you didn't want to expose his 'set' for what it was: a drab, domestic room with an ugly electric fire. Mick then composed more considered shots, using the perspective of the floorboards, clean backgrounds, and natural light behind the camera.
Mick Rock: "Iggy answered the door and was completely naked - as a student/hippy thing that didn't seem unusual. I didn't know what I wanted to be when I did the Madcap session - a lyricist or writer. I'd only started taking pictures a few months earlier. But something that day clicked in my aesthetic brain. I don't think we even talked about the record. I didn't take many photos that day, maybe two and half rolls in all. The painted floorboards, the outside shots with the car and Iggy were just elements that happened to be around. None of it was planned, I just got lucky. He didn't even finish painting around the bed; he just painted round all the furniture. It was a magical day. He looked like a poete maudit, something out of Rimbaud. Doomed rocker or dark star, as a paper called him. We both wanted the 'feet' picture for the cover, that looked more like The Madcap Laughs than the Storm cover, but history is what it is. I was in no position to argue, I was just a kid. Hipgnosis put all the artwork together, I was barely out of college and Storm was commander-in-chief of artwork
When Thorgerson arrived his sole focus was the strongest element in the room: the floor. He worked fast in fading light, placing a wide-angled lens millimetres off the ground to create an Alice In Wonderland effect, giving the floorboards an elastic quality. Drama was also implied by the steep perspective and ethereal sidelight, directing the eye to the crouching Barrett. He isn't athletically poised but suggests defiant exhaustion and a dark edge of 'knowing'. The only other element were the wilting daffodils: possibly a Barrett in-joke, a symbol of his rebirth and inevitable downfall?
>> Storm Thorgerson: I think the only person with me [that day] was Mick Rock. Hipgnosis was approached and Po was busy so I went along... I don't normally take the photos.
> There seems to be a lot of confusion about who took the cover photo...
>> ST: There's no confusion, I'd be very surprised if Mick thought he took the photo. I've never heard him say that. No, it was my photo. Mick came as my assistant and friend, to help me out. In those days we were very unformalised'. It was a Hipgnosis job. I told Syd on the phone that I was coming round to take his photo for his album cover, which is why he painted the floor blue and orange. I don't think he absorbed it deeply.
> So the floor was painted specifically for the shoot?
>> ST: Yes. What I remember of that session is that Syd had bothered to paint the floor; I looked at it and thought, That's great, I'll shoot that. I was more interested in the floor than I was in Syd. Well, photographs of burgeoning rock'n'roll stars don't interest me very much. I mean Syd was just Syd. I don't think I've ever felt very special about the way somebody looks. I'd feel special about their music. Part of Syd's character was in the floor, so it s should take precedence, which is why I favoured the floor. Obviously we made a feature of it because it's not often someone paints their floor for you, so in effect l felt honoured and it seemed appropriate. There have been pictures of Syd before and after, but not necessarily of his floor. That's why the picture is how it is.
> Did you try lots of different set-ups?
>> ST: No, I just asked him to crouch by the fireplace, it looked like a good place to put him. Syd is very spontaneous, he just adopted an automatic pose. I probably made him change it a bit but not a lot and I took a quick shot. I only took a few. I did it quite quickly, I just thought Syd looked very 'Syd-like', and that was good enough.
> Do you remember what he was like that day?
>> ST: Not particularly, it was all you were gonna get because Syd was rather mercurial and changeable of mood. I don't think one wanted to make it any more difficult for him.
> The lens works brilliantly on the boards, did you try many?
>> ST: Either a 28mm or 35mm, an ordinary wide angle, it wasn't anything special. I don't think it's very pronounced. I mean it was very early days in our careers, we didn't know much then.
> Was it a deliberate decision to underexpose the cover?
>> ST: The film was undergraded on purpose. It was available light but there wasn't much and I didn't have any lights with me. So we had to push the film in order to get it processed and be able to see something, to give us the grain.
> The back cover is very different in feel...
>> ST: I think it's exposed differently rather than lit differently. We opened up the shot in order to get Iggy in the picture, so it wasn't as moody as the front.
> The photos used in the gatefold - the baby's head - was there a meaning behind that?
>> ST: I'm sure there was, sounds too purposeful not to mean something, doesn't it?
> Do any negatives survive?
>> ST: All gone. If only. Mick might have some...
When the cover shoot was over, Rock continued outside using Syd's blue Pontiac Parisienne as a prop (one shot was used for the 1970 Barrett LP). The life of this inanimate object (registration: VYP74) helps confirm that the shoot wasn't in the autumn. Mickey Finn, later of T.Rex, had won it in Quorum's Christmas party raffle at the Royal Albert Hall (December 19, 1968) but became so paranoid by the attention it drew that shortly afterwards he swapped it for Syd's mini. Syd never drove it and when it was about to be towed, he gave it away. It was next seen, painted pink, in the film adaptation of Joe Orton's Entertaining Mr Sloane (filmed between August 18 and October 6, 1969).
In the 40 years that have elapsed since the release of The Madcap Laughs, the mythology that surrounds Syd Barrett has continued to grow, aided by the album sleeve's imagery. For those who identify with this bygone rocknroll era but are too young to have experienced it, this grainy image is a brilliant template for false nostalgia. Gone is the multicoloured glamour of psychedelia, instead we're presented with the close-of-the-'60s decadence exposed, the same dishevelled, 'the party's over' feel depicted in Withnail And I. Donald Cammell and Nic Roeg confronted the same confused reality with Jagger's portrayal of a reclusive rock star in Performance. Interestingly, rumour has it Roeg is considering a Barrett biopic.
Since the shoot itself, Storm Thorgerson has continued to redefine album artwork as fine art. Meanwhile, Mick Rock's association with Syd led on to further era-defining and iconic images of David Bowie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. While Hipgnosis's archive of that day has disappeared, Rock's remains intact and published in a number of different forms, augmented by the last shoot that Mick undertook in Barrett's Cambridge garden in 1971. The latter provides fans with a further tantalising glimpse into the world of the Madcap before he shut them out for good. So how does Rock view his friend's retreat from it all?
Mick Rock: It's not for me to say. I know Dave Gilmour was the one who made sure [Syd] had his money, and made sure Syd had five tracks on Echoes [The Best Of Pink Floyd, released in 2001]. That made him a lot of money. His publisher told me Syd had made a couple of million that year. He made a couple of hundred thousand a year in regular royalties, anyway. So the irony of Syd was that he didn't have to do anything after 1970 anyway.
He approached things as a painter, and he did that for the rest of his life. He destroyed all his paintings, but that's not the odd part: the odd part is he appears to have photographed all of them first. So there is a record of them. He didn't want to be The Rolling Stones 40 years on, playing the same old songs. He was more like a Charlie Parker: an improviser. He didn't want a formula that was repeated.
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