Syd Barrett vs. John Lennon

Syd Barret or John Lennon?

  • Syd Barret

    Votes: 16 59.3%
  • John Lennon

    Votes: 7 25.9%
  • Both

    Votes: 4 14.8%

  • Total voters
    27

Buick6

too punk to drunk
I heard so much about Syd's legend, I never actually heard his muzak until about 6 weeks ago! ...and what a MINDBLAST his stuff is. Awesome, awesome, eccentric-pop as a poite word, but serious, undisputed English songwriting genius full-stop, yadda-yadda.

It immediately hit me, how 'Beatleseque' Syd's songwriting was, though they were of the same vintage, that tag may fit. So in the sceme of things who gets the UK heavyweight songwriting nob for sheer great songs, great sounds, great lyrics, work improves over time AND influential on the course of modern pop (and of course, 'genius')..

Syd..or John?
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Buick6, I would appreciate it if you would answer my questions in the "100 years" thread in politics.
 

michael

Bring out the vacuum
Was out doing karaoke last night and was struck again by the fact that 'Imagine' is basically the Communist Manifesto turned into a sappy slow number, and people loooooove it.

OK, maybe overstating the first bit...
 

Woebot

Well-known member
syd was a very minor figure wasn't he?

just because he lost the plot there's this absurd cult around him. i mean i love barrett and the madcap and opel an emily and piper but i still dont think it adds up to very much........
 

martin

----
This is a really tough one. Lennon, as we all know, destroyed capitalism, racism and sexism in the Western world and brought the military complex to its knees with his love-ins, thus averting nuclear war -as well as making wry parodic commentaries on consumerism and homophobia by keeping his fur coats in a separate apartment and calling his manager a faggot. Syd on the other hand freed an entire generation of young Britons from the grimness of post war austerity by encouraging a psychedelic revolution in which everyone could liberate their inner beings by focusing on little girls running around playing, gnomes rolling around in the grass and homeless mice riding bicycles. Seriously, it's a headfuck. What a couple of complete and utter cunts!
 
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gek-opel

entered apprentice
Whether Syd is "minor" or not is irrelevant, I think. That's pure canonical rockism at work! Lennon is, as you imply a massive figure, but he's almost too massive to really get inside, and a lot of the time his work just leaves me uninterested, outside of a few of his most brutal early solo bits (you know the ones) and the prime psychedelia stuff. The early Beatles vision of pop just fails to resonate in any way with me...

The winning thing about Barrett is that I think the music holds up pretty well in spite of all that tiresome rock-n-roll martyr bollocks, it just seems like especially on Piper At The Gates Of Dawn he nailed a certain something (the crossing point between twee folk and avant-garde space rock) almost perfectly. His solo stuff is slightly more complicated, (as a proposition, rather than musically complicated) and on the whole less successful outside of shoring up the myth.
 
syd was a very minor figure wasn't he?

just because he lost the plot there's this absurd cult around him. i mean i love barrett and the madcap and opel an emily and piper but i still dont think it adds up to very much........

wot he said. but still, i get more 'feel good factor' from Sid's work, so reckon i gotta give him the vote.

As for John...he did some crackin' tunes. fair play to 'im. although i recently did a 'headphuck comparison test' between 'Tomorrow Never Knows' and George's 'Its All Too mUch' and I reckon Harrison might have the edge. hrrmmm....
 

mms

sometimes
wot he said. but still, i get more 'feel good factor' from Sid's work, so reckon i gotta give him the vote.

As for John...he did some crackin' tunes. fair play to 'im. although i recently did a 'headphuck comparison test' between 'Tomorrow Never Knows' and George's 'Its All Too mUch' and I reckon Harrison might have the edge. hrrmmm....

harrison went on and did some strange things - electronic sounds - his moog album for instance was crazy without having a wife in fluxus;)

http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/thebookofseth/719
 
harrison went on and did some strange things - electronic sounds - his moog album for instance was crazy without having a wife in fluxus;)

http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/thebookofseth/719

yeah, i've got that. its not very good though, imho. fiddling about making random farty noises on a moog modular does not a great electronic elpee make!!

plus, Bernie Kraus (of Beaver & Kraus fame) claimed that side 2 was just a demonstration tape that he'd made, that Harrison used without permission or proper credit.

So in fact George was a bit of a shit.

Fuck it, they were all gits - apart from Ringo of course, who was my fave beatle when I were little.
 
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henry s

Street Fighting Man
apples and oranges, really...if Syd had make music for as long as Lennon did, he'd have recorded a couple of Double Fantasys and then some...
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
one of my college friend's dad was hired at one point to babysit john lennon and keep him in the dakota so he couldn't cop heroin.

also, my good friend is jimmy webb's son. bad reports there, too.

he beat on his girlfriends and was a pretty bad drunk. otherwise he was allegedly a peace-loving hippie.

syd barrett was prettier, anyway.
 

francesco

Minerva Estassi
julian cope wrote that Syd was the second great psychic writer of pop. Lennon the first. Syd would have agreed. In 1966.
 
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