9. Syd BarrettThe Madcap Laughs
At about the time I started playing in Hey Colossus, I was (through an unfortunate confluence of crappy wiring and misfortune) comprehensively electrocuted during a rehearsal. I had one hand on a microphone and one hand on my guitar and seemingly about a trillion volts between the two. Despite having spent a good proportion of my adult life screaming into a microphone, it still gives me a quiver to remember the grisly sound of my involuntary caterwauling as I writhed under the heap of equipment I’d pulled down on top of myself. Fortunately, my bandmate, having eventually noticed me flipping on the floor like a chicken in a dustbath, turned off the juice and I narrowly avoided a crispy, broiling death (cheers again bro).
The electricity had run pretty roughshod across my arms and chest effectively rupturing my muscles (and, inexplicably, my knee – which ballooned out to three times its normal size with blood). As a result of this I woke every morning for the next three months or so with a dizzying, bilious pain across my chest.
I also felt like I was going totally off my chops.
I can’t imagine how it was ever proposed that electro-shock therapy was an appropriate remedy for mental illness. In my particular case, a few thousand volts sent me completely batshit. I became terrified of electricity, barely able to even turn on a light. I had perpetual nightmares about getting electrocuted and spent my waking life in an aspic of semi-lobotomised bewilderment… continued on the next page
Tim Farthing
