What was the inspiration for the Pink Floyd song, “Shine on You Crazy Diamond”?

What a fantastic band the Floyd are. Mental illness is a very sad issue and an extremely difficult thing to live with.

Poor Syd...but his contributing genius will always be the spark that helped start such a great band!

Irks me. I was clicking the screen of my phone for former band member, Syd Barrett. An ad that had not loaded finished loading, and shifted my screen while answering correctly. Game made me push the wrong button. I know the song was about Syd. Have been a fan forever. Saddens me that certain people think the band forced Syd out. Not true. Syd checked himself into a psych ward. His over-consumption of LSD made him crazy. Syd and guitarist David Gilmour were friends and played music together. Ironically, Gilmour replaced Syd in Floyd. Syd had become increasingly erratic and difficult to work with. Floyd kept Syd as long as they could but it became too difficult. He was too erratic. From the Wikipedia entry about Syd: "Members of Barrett's family denied that he suffered from mental illness.[4] In a 2016 interview, asked if Barrett may have had Asperger's syndrome, his sister Rosemary Breen said that he and his siblings were "all on the spectrum".[4][192] In the 1960s, Barrett used psychedelic drugs, especially LSD, and there are theories he subsequently suffered from schizophrenia.[85][193][194] Richard Wright asserts that Barrett's problems stemmed from a massive overdose of acid, as the change in his personality and behaviour came on suddenly.[4] However, Roger Waters maintains that Barrett suffered "without a doubt" from schizophrenia.[4] In an article published in 2006, David Gilmour was quoted as saying: In my opinion, his nervous breakdown would have happened anyway. It was a deep-rooted thing. But I'll say the psychedelic experience might well have acted as a catalyst. Still, I just don't think he could deal with the vision of success and all the things that went with it."[195] In Saucerful of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey, author Nicholas Schaffner interviewed people who knew Barrett before and during his Pink Floyd days, including friends Peter and Susan Wynne-Wilson, artist Duggie Fields (with whom Barrett shared a flat during the late 1960s), June Bolan, and Storm Thorgerson. Bolan became concerned when Syd "kept his girlfriend under lock and key for three days, occasionally shoving a ration of biscuits under the door".[196] A claim of cruelty against Barrett committed by the groupies and hangers-on who frequented his apartment during this period was described by writer and critic Jonathan Meades. "I went [to Barrett's flat] to see Harry and there was this terrible noise. It sounded like heating pipes shaking. I said, 'What's up?' and he sort of giggled and said, 'That's Syd having a bad trip. We put him in the linen cupboard'".[197] Storm Thorgerson responded to this claim by stating "I do not remember locking Syd up in a cupboard. It sounds to me like pure fantasy, like Jonathan Meades was on dope himself."[197] Other friends assert that Barrett's infamous flatmates, "Mad Jock" and "Mad Sue," believed that acid held all the answers and thought of Barrett as a genius or "god," and were spiking his morning coffee with LSD every day without his knowledge, leaving him in a never-ending trip.[4] He was later rescued from that flat by friends and moved elsewhere, but his erratic behaviour continued.[4] Watkinson and Anderson included quotes from a story told to them by Thorgerson that underscored how volatile Barrett could be. "On one occasion, I had to pull him off Lindsay (Barrett's girlfriend at the time) because he was beating her over the head with a mandolin".[198] On one occasion, Barrett threw a woman called Gilly across the room, because she refused to go to Gilmour's house.[116] These strange behaviours contradicted Barrett's usually gentle nature.[improper synthesis?][4] According to Gilmour in an interview with Nick Kent, the other members of Pink Floyd approached psychiatrist R. D. Laing with the 'Barrett problem'. After hearing a tape of a Barrett conversation, Laing declared him "incurable".[199][200] After Barrett died, his sister Rosemary insisted that Barrett neither suffered from mental illness nor received treatment for it at any time since they resumed regular contact in the 1980s.[201] She allowed that he did spend some time in a private "home for lost souls"—Greenwoods in Essex—but claimed there was no formal therapy programme there. Some years later, Barrett apparently agreed to sessions with a psychiatrist at Fulbourn psychiatric hospital in Cambridge, but Breen claimed that neither medication nor therapy was considered appropriate.[201] His sister denied he was a recluse or that he was vague about his past: "Syd may have been a bit selfish—or rather self-absorbed—but when people called him a recluse they were really only projecting their own disappointment. He knew what they wanted, but he wasn't willing to give it to them."

A classic record

Fascinating, I think " shine you crazy diamond is one of the greatest songs ever!

Not a mental defect of any kind, illness or otherwise.

So much mental illness today.Glad I am normal. Homosexuality is not a mental illness.

Todd Van Dell, Thank you for all that info. I wondered what happened. One story I heard he died in a plane crash so Gilmore stepped in. Again thank you.

Shine on You Crazy Diamond - 1st initials spell out Syd -

An interesting and somewhat sad story. Best wishes and peace to all involved.

Just guessing

Cheryl McMeekin For me...an UNLUCKY guess.

My husbands favorite Floyd, song!

No clue. Never follow bands.

Lucky guess

Says Barrett was a creative artist .

I only know Pink Floyd with Gilmour. Wish You Were Here, with Shine on You Crazy Diamond, is my favorite of their albums. My soul aches over some of the notes that I hear.

Yup, Syd Barrett, original member of the band.