If Syd Barrett were still alive, I imagine he would be as bemused as he was in life as to why people were still so interested in his brief career 40-odd years ago as the founder of Pink Floyd and then as a solo artist. I don't know if he had the wherewithal to take such a degree of perspective on himself, but I suspect that was a period of his life he viewed with some regret, with it being the time he did himself the mental damage via LSD which rendered him unable to function as most people do.

Living in Cambridge, his legend felt even more present than it had ever done in the teenage hours I spent listening to "The Madcap Laughs", "Barrett" and "Relics". Details, both mundane and macabre, drifted around town like tumbleweed. He lived in his Mum's old house in Cherry Hinton. He was in and out of Fulbourne mental hospital on a regular basis. He hadn't been a recluse before, but for some reason, maybe the internet, he had more snoopers than ever in recent years, and had stopped answering his door. Then there were the sadder ones. His routine was often made up of visits to the chemist- not to buy anything for his mind, but tampons, or talcum powder, which he would sprinkle over his head, like the brylcreem and mandrax pills he once crowned himself with on stage at the height of his public decline. He once broke all his windows and chucked out his furniture. These stories may have grown in the telling, but they come from people I know who lived in the same area, the same street.

So why do all the magazine profiles dwell on the handsome but haunted 20something, and not the harassed-looking baldie on his bicycle ? Well, that kind of legend just sells, doesn't it ? Sad but true. I wish they had printed the loving tribute by his sister that appeared in the Cambridge evening news, which mentioned how he had retained his love of music, jazz in particular, his love of kids, and his passion, not for songwriting anymore, but DIY (most of which unfortunately fell apart).

I bid my own farewell to Syd a few days after his death when someone in my local, and utterly unpsychedelic, pub put "See Emily Play" on the jukebox. I stopped dead and listened, the layers of familiarity peeling away. It's a great psychedelic pop song. Catchy, with a quirky lyric and vocal, and freakout instrumentation which is instantly identifiable with its era but in no way dated. It reminded me of when I looked out of my bedroom window and caught my dad dancing to "Gigolo Aunt", which was on my stereo at the time, or when my mum came into my room and asked me to put on "Effervescing Elephant" again, because she thought it was so sweet and catchy. Of course doomed rockstars appeal to tortured adolescents, but if you are feeling lost or lonely then of course a song like "Won't you Miss Me" or "Dominoes" will appeal to you, at whatever age. I know a lot of people were a pain when you just wanted some peace, Syd, or Roger, as your loved ones still called you, but they must have started somewhere, and that was with your brilliant songs.