OFF TOPIC with Steve Mixup. A place for me to tell the odd story or two about the post war rock generation. If they couldn’t change the world at least they brought us some wonderful music.

An outrageous claim you might say. So what, you might also say. Who is Syd Barrett others might mutter. OK, I know it isn’t big and clever, and I’m not going to win any awards and getting a tattoo isn’t anything unusual these days but there is a small story I can tell, if only to fill this page. I’ll start by saying it is a claim I don’t think I can prove beyond doubt, but I have reasonable conviction to throw it out there.

So, a quick guide to Syd Barrett is in order. He was the original guitarist, singer and song writer of the Pink Floyd in their formative days when they were part of the 1967 psychedelic sound and the emerging underground movement. The album ‘Piper at the Gates of Dawn’ and singles like ‘Arnold Layne’ & ‘See Emily Play’ were a testament to his lyrical qualities, Lewis Carroll like wordplay, quaint and singing in a British accent. It laid the foundation for the band who would go on to international fame. Syd had his problems, exacerbated by drugs maybe, and was replaced by Dave Gilmour in early 1968. Syd would then release two solo albums in 1970, still with his lyrical style, helped by former band members and friends and that was the end of his recorded output. Apart from a few attempts at playing, he was never able to find a way back into the music business and he probably didn’t want to. His cult status, if that overused term is warranted, grew in the seventies and as with many other half-forgotten rock stars of old, he died in 2006, has survived and grown in the digital information saturated world we now live in.

Although my Syd Barrett fandom has long past, albeit with a recognising nod to a past spirit, that is the name I decided to get tattooed on my shoulder. It was a slightly unusual thing to do at the time in Britain. Let me explain. It might not seem so today as tattoos are fairly ubiquitous, no longer a preserve of just the working class, football fans, military services, the travelling circus or the odd eccentric but they are now donned by Media stars, Sports stars, the young and old and all classes. I turned 18 in 1975 and was ready to get a tattoo. My attraction to them came from the football matches I was going to. I was a Forest fan, following them home and away and in the early seventies tattoos were often seen in that environment. I got a butterfly on my right shoulder and not long later a Forest badge on my left shoulder. Both cost £2.50 each. Although my dad had been in the Merchant Navy in the early fifties and must have seen them, he wasn’t impressed. My mum said, “is that one of those things that doesn’t come off”. That said, my parents didn’t complain, it was my decision after all. The tattoos of this era weren’t the artistic endeavours we see today but a fairly basic design traced from a pattern displayed on the wall. Someone might point and say, “I’ll have that one, the dragon”.

The next time I visited ‘Jim Coombes Tattoo Parlour’ on Arkwright Street near Trent Bridge after the hot summer of 1976 I had decided to get Syd Barrett’s name written under the butterfly on my right shoulder. It was just 50p, although that is probably 2 pints in today’s money. Hero to some and failure to others he epitomised that ‘acid casualty’ culture I was sometimes taken with. Another thing that made this a little bit unusual was getting a musician’s name as a tattoo. If you look at the great sixties’ groups, The Beatles, The Stones, The Who and a multitude of others they didn’t have tattoos. It just wasn’t a thing to do. From the sixties I can only think of Roger Chapman of the band ‘Family’ who had a scrawl on his arm. There may have been the odd other, but it was rare. As the seventies dawned there may have been a few more especially from the new heavy rock groups, Ozzy had his name on his knuckles, a home job at age of 16 but most people in the music fraternity had nothing to do with them. That went for fans too. I am going to guess that there may have been the odd one or two who had their favourite star inked on them, Elvis maybe, but before punk and particularly the eighties it was still fairly rare.

So, although I wouldn’t have been the first person to get a pop stars name tattooed on my arm, I doubt any of those others would have chosen Syd Barrett. The tattoo is old and faded (so am I) and is difficult to read but if there is ever a trophy made for those who have a Syd Barrett tattoo and I’m sure there will be some with fantastical designs dedicated to him I would hope to see my name listed as the first winner.