Book details

Syd Barrett and British Psychedelia is an intimate snapshot of the years 1966-7, when the underground's house band, Pink Floyd, were cast blinking into the light of mainstream success. Nurtured in the progressive Cambridge scene and the bohemian hangouts of the Notting Hill Free School and UFO club, Pink Floyd pioneered a distinctly British mix of Victoriana, LSD-inflected mysticism, the avant-garde and pop. And at their heart was the gifted and complex songwriter, singer and guitarist Syd Barrett, who personified the psychedelic revolution in both its exoticism and its tragic impermanence.

Rob Chapman is a regular contributor to Mojo magazine, and has written for The Times, Guardian, Independent on Sunday, Uncut, Word and the dance music fanzine Jockey Slut. He is the author of Selling the Sixties: The Pirates and Pop Music Radio (1992) and The Vinyl Junkyard (1996). His novel Dusk Music was published in 2008. He has compiled and written sleevenotes for CD reissues by artists as varied as The Last Poets and John Fahey, as well as numerous psychedelia and loungecore compilations. He lives in Manchester.