Most people who know some of the details of the situation are certain that Syd destroyed himself with his profligate use of drugs, mainly LSD. That may have been, but it also may not have been. We really don’t know if Syd would have turned out exactly the same if he led the life of a choirboy, because we simply don’t know enough about the brain to make that determination.

What we do know is that the man was a musical genius who wasn’t always able to translate his thoughts into actions, or the correct actions. His music was psychedelic before most people had ever heard of the word. His music was punk before there was punk. Jimi Hendrix most likely learned a lot about the use of feedback, overdubbing and overdriven amplifiers from Syd. He was a role model and source of inspiration for many rockers who made bigger names for themselves, some who are still around today. We know that even in his insanity, if he was truly insane, he had enough sense to know when he could no longer control a situation, that he should walk away from it. We know that something as simple as somebody typing up lyrics using a red ribbon would set Syd off. Today we call those people lawyers, which is simply a synonym for anal. We know today that people who can’t control the chemical reactions inside their bodies are treated by a doctor for cancer, or diabetes, or whatever, while at the same time people whose chemical reactions in their brains cause them to fly off because they got lyrics typed in red are, to use the clinical term, f**kin’ goofy. Sometimes there’s no progress at all.

My gripes about the book are few. The top of my list of three is the lack of an index. I don’t know if I’m a typical or atypical book-reader, but when I’m reading a nonfiction book I want to be able to go back and refresh my memory on some things. I don’t just read through the book once and then set it aside. The book does a superb job of describing completely first-time references, but later, when the person or event is brought up again, I don’t always recall exactly who or what the authors are discussing. Realistically, the authors are not going to bring up mundane, everyday things, people or events, otherwise it would make for an extremely boring and tedious book. For most readers, the events, places and people encountered are unknown to them. And for somebody whose circle of friends or daily grind is virtually a complete unknown to most of us, then I think we can be excused for not remembering one or two, or even a few, of the people introduced in early parts of the book, and then not referred to much for the next ten or twenty or thirty pages - for instance, when a nickname is used for an otherwise well-known person, a nickname very, very few of us have ever heard. We may know very well that the main character in this book is named Syd; however, that really isn’t his name. His given name is Roger, so when a later reference to Roger is brought up, it becomes easy to confuse Roger Barrett with Roger Waters, who is referred to throughout the book as Roger. Syd, on the other hand, is not referred to as ‘Roger’ more than a handful of times. That example may be oversimplification, but you get the picture.