“When I arrived for ‘The Madcap Laughs’ photo session, Syd was still in his underpants… His lady friend of two weeks, ‘Iggy the Eskimo’ was naked in the kitchen…” * The nude woman appearing on the inside record sleeve was Syd Barrett’s girlfriend who was part Inuit and known as Iggy The Eskimo. It reached #40 in the UK at the time and was fairly well-reviewed. “Octopus” was released as a single in November 1969 and the album itself followed in January 1970. After several months of intermittent recording, the album was finally deemed complete. Syd would not allow the musicians to rehearse or re-record their overdubs, insisting that they sounded fine. This was all much to the frustration of the session musicians a close listen to several tracks will reveal the backing band hovering uncertainly here, or being caught off-guard by a chord change there (during an interview, Robert Wyatt recounted that musicians would ask “What key is that in, Syd?” and Barrett would reply “Yeah”, or “That’s funny”). However, Syd’s playing and singing were highly erratic and unpredictable–he skipped or added beats and bars seemingly at random, or otherwise he would strum on a single chord for a long time before unexpectedly reverting back to the main portion of the song. The album featured a rather unorthodox recording process, in which Syd would provide a backing track of his own singing accompanied by acoustic guitar, over which the session musicians would overdub the rest of the arrangement.
Roger Waters and David Gilmour were in the process of completing Pink Floyd’s ambitious Ummagumma album when they got involved with The Madcap Laughs that July and helped Barrett finish his album, “in a two-day sprint” according to Rick Sanders author of Pink Floyd (Futura Publications, 1976). Jones’ recollections of the sessions are that he and Barrett got on well together and had in fact completed half of the album before the new producers took over. It is still a mystery why Jones abandoned production responsibilities, at the end of May, so soon after having assumed them. Session musicians, namely, members of The Soft Machine, as well as Humble Pie drummer Jerry Shirley were also called in to augment Barrett’s songs.
In April 1969, Malcolm Jones took over the project and Barrett began working on newer material, while reworking the 1968 recordings. Although the sessions were brief, and they produced some fine material, the project was abandoned for almost a year while Barrett spent much of the year as a recluse. I believe this album is a First UK Pressing of 1970, as it has a printing date of 6911 (November 1969) on the back cover and has the Green & yellow Harvest Label on the disc itself with ‘1970’ printed. After leaving the group, Barrett began recording sessions with former Pink Floyd-turned-Syd Barrett manager Peter Jenner in May 1968. Syd Barrett - The Madcap Laughs, Gatefold vinyl LP, used, one owner, Catalogue No. The Madcap Laughs was Syd Barrett’s first solo album after being replaced in Pink Floyd by his old school friend David Gilmour.
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