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Syd Barrett (album)

1974 compilation album by Syd Barrett

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 12, 2026
Entity authorityQ948797 ↗
Source-derived summary

Syd Barrett is a 1974 double-album pairing of Syd Barrett's two solo albums, The Madcap Laughs and Barrett, both originally released in the UK in 1970.

Cover

During the summer of 1965, Barrett had his first acid trip in the garden of his friend Dave Gale, with Ian Moore and Storm Thorgerson. While under the influence of the substance, Barrett had placed an orange, plum and a matchbox into a corner, while staring at the fruit, which he claimed symbolized "Venus and Jupiter". Thorgerson used this imagery when he added these items to the cover of Syd Barrett.

Release

After the unexpectedly massive success of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, EMI re-issued the Barrett-era albums The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and A Saucerful of Secrets as A Nice Pair in the hope that fans would be interested in the band's earlier work with Barrett. Once that was a success, primarily in the US, Syd Barrett was compiled to meet demand.

As a result, The Madcap Laughs/Barrett (as it was titled in the US) made number 163, giving Barrett his only US chart album. Village Voice critic Robert Christgau wrote of the album: "Admittedly, a lot of what results is worthy of the wimp-turned-acid-casualty Barrett is. But a lot of it is funny, charming, catchy--whimsy at its best... I know damn well it gives me more pleasure than The Dark Side of the Moon."

Track listing

All songs by Syd Barrett, except where noted.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Syd Barrett (album)” as 1974 compilation album by Syd Barrett. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Barrett, album and compilation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1974, 1970, 1965—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1974-11-14. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Barrett, album and compilation providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Syd Barrett (album)”, the useful work is to connect “1974 compilation album by Syd Barrett” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q948797. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1974, 1970 and 1965.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Syd Barrett (album)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Syd Barrett (album) primary sources, Syd Barrett (album) archive and Barrett research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Syd Barrett (album)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.