[Lancey Howard]

Wow. Great find, and a BUMP.
By the way, I remember picking up Barrett's 'Madcap Laughs' back in college (circa 1975) and it was terrible. But although this writer mentions Barrett's inspirations on his old band he fails to mention the most important and obvious: 'Dark Side of the Moon'.

[Jaysin]

You know, it is amazingly sad when you consider how many phenomenal musicians died (or wasted away) well before their prime (because of their lifestyle or not).
Here is just a list of many musicians who either bit the bullet way before they ever matured or before they were able to give us the rest of what they had.

There are also hundreds of musicians and bands that were destroyed well before their prime because of drugs/lifestyle

Jimi Hendrix--unfathomable to think that he could still playing today.

Janis Joplin--she made maybe 3 albums worth of music

Jim Morrison

Keith Moon--would The Who have been different?

the guy from Lynard Skynard

Kurt Cobain

Randy Rhoads--the Hendrix of heavy metal. his talent was out of this world

Pigpen from the Grateful Dead

Syd Barrett--Floyd did fine without him, but who knows....

Layne Staley from Alice in Chains--a great singer too strung out on dope to do anything for the last 10 years of his life.

Cliff Burton from Metallica

John Lennon--I'm sure we heard his best work but it blew our chance of ever seeing the Beatles again (or him realizing that Yoko was a b**ch)

John Bonham--we also witnessed his greatness but was there still more

Buddy Holly
Ritchie Valens
The Big Bopper--need I even say more--perhaps one of rock'n'roll's most depressing moments.

for the real hardcore heavy metal fans--the 2001 passing of Chuck Schuldiner from Death was a big tragedy. He was a guitarist of unparalleled excellence in his genre, and was still maturing at the time of his unfortunate death.

please feel free to add more names to this list.

[divine_moment_of_facts]

[ReignOfError]

Ping for later

[Billthedrill]

I'm not sure Barrett belongs quite in the same category with the others - his mental problems evidenced themselves before his drug usage, although the latter certainly didn't help. It is ironic that LSD was considered a potential treatment for schizophrenia at one point. The last thing someone whose hold on reality is challenged needs is a steady diet of acid.

Before he was rather rudely but understandably ejected from Pink Floyd he had already spent at least one concert simply staring into space unmoving. Most people figured he was tripping his head off, and he may have been, but that is also descriptive of a fugue state brought on by advancing mental illness.

He was a sad casualty of my generation, a generation that took drugs copiously but nowhere near seriously enough. But even without the drugs Syd Barrett needed help badly and didn't get it until far too late.

This is Barrett in 1990. "Just another sad old man..."

[Doomonyou]

Needle/Spoon

Trip/Moon

[Political Junkie Too]

Wouldn't Ray Charles fall into this category? I didn't know, until I saw the movie Ray, that he was addicted to heroin, but I guess Charles still kept his edge and didn't let the drugs kill him prematurely? Is that the qualifier for this critic's point, that Charles didn't die from the drugs so he's okay, but Cobain and others did, so they aren't?

-PJ

[Mr. Blonde]

As far as I'm concerned Nirvana was the least of the Big 4 of Grunge and largely a product of MTV. Chris Cornell wrote much better songs and Kurt Cobain shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence in the singing dept.

[visualops]

Guys who were in some of his early bands have recounted how they would be in one room partying while he'd be in another writing songs.

Way back in the olden times a friend was dating Springsteen's lighting guy and we got tickets and backstage passes for a gig in Hartford on the Born To Run tour. I remember walking down a hallway and looking through a door to the garage and seeing Springsteen sitting in the van alone while everyone else was roaming around partying.