“The lunatic is in my head,” sang Roger Waters, with harmonies by David Gilmour, on a Pink Floyd song called “Brain Damage.” The song appears on The Dark Side of the Moon—a note-for-note perfect album that has sold more than 45 million copies. Who was that lunatic? Everyone knows Pink Floyd, but does everyone know why they existed?
Syd Barrett, the original Pied Piper, was the face and lysergic brain of Pink Floyd when they released their 1967 studio debut, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, recorded at Abbey Road in the studio next to the Beatles, who were making Sgt. Pepper. So much of his work is an acid flashback of childhood. “Bike” could have and should have been covered by Pee-wee Herman. Impish, dapper, not quite of this earth, Barrett shone like the sun, but not for long. In Roddy Bogawa and Storm Thorgerson’s new documentary, Have You Got It Yet?—named for an impossible-to-perform Barrett song—we take a deep dive into Barrett’s work and tortured life, the off-kilter whimsy of his songs, his on-and-off engagement to Miss Gala Pinion and the two rings that went with it, and the long years of silence that followed.
