Meet The Real Syd Barrett In This Month’s MOJO
Pink Floyd genius heard and felt in colours, reveals sister Rosemary in a rare interview in new MOJO magazine, on sale from Tuesday (April 26).
TO SOME, THE mix of sound and colour stimuli that fed into what became known, in the mid-’60s, as psychedelia was a revolutionary novelty. To Syd Barrett it was simply how the world looked and felt, as his sister reveals in MOJO this month.
Speaking exclusively in our new issue (June 2016 / #271), on sale in the UK from Tuesday April 26, 2016, Rosemary Breen – née Barrett – gives a rare and candid interview about her brother.
Discussing the spectrum-spanning early Pink Floyd light show, she confirms the theory that her brother experienced the condition of synesthesia, which caused him to ‘see’ sounds and ‘hear’ colours. This ability, it seems, helped provide the fledgling psychedelic movement with its palette.
“When he talked about how he felt, he would call it a colour. Even as children, so I thought it was perfectly normal,” she tells MOJO’s Mark Blake.
“It didn’t have a label then. That psychedelic thing with the lights and the thump of the music was, I think, how he felt. Sound was colour, and colour was sound.”
Breen also discusses her personal impressions of Pink Floyd and its members, the impact of her brother’s experimentation with LSD and the secluded life that followed his career in music. It is the central interview of the Barrett special in our new issue that sees us shine a multi-coloured light on his whole career: his beginnings, his work with Pink Floyd, his key songs and much more.
This month, the magazine comes in a slick card wallet containing TWO FABULOUS PINK FLOYD ART PRINTS, a COLLECTOR’S COVER and our customary CURATED CD, continuing the Syd theme with 14 tracks from the leading psychedelic voyagers of 2016, including Goat, Cate Le Bon, Fuzz, Thee Oh Sees, Heron Oblivion and more.
Inside, Breen also previews the forthcoming “Hometown Happening” she is organising in honour of Syd Barrett – set to take place at the Cambridge Corn Exchange on October 27.
Also in the issue: Santana’s classic line-up kiss and make up; The Jam’s history in pictures (captioned by Paul Weller); sax legend Sonny Rollins; unseen Smiths; Merle Haggard; Father John Misty; Keith Emerson; Corinne Bailey Rae; Manic Street Preachers; Michael Kiwanuka; Lucinda Williams; Cheap Trick; Ray LaMontagne, Anohni, The Verve and more.
Go here for full details. MOJO is on sale in the UK from Tuesday, April 26, 2016.