"Wish You Were Here," Pink Floyd's tribute to its "crazy diamond" Syd Barrett

From left to right: Nick Mason, Syd Barrett, Richard Wright and Roger Waters, then members of the band Pink Floyd, photographed during their appearance on the BBC's — From left to right: Nick Mason, Syd Barrett, Richard Wright and Roger Waters, then members of the band Pink Floyd, pictured during their appearance on the BBC's Top of the Pops in 1967. HARRY GOODWIN/BBC PHOTO ARCHIVE

In the mid-1970s, the deaths of these Black American bluesmen in the two Carolina states went unnoticed. The first, Pinkney "Pink" Anderson, dropped his guitar on October 12, 1974. He was followed, on May 9, 1976, by Floyd Council, who also suffered a heart attack. These representatives of Piedmont blues—named after a microregion of the Appalachian Mountains—had probably never met, but their first names are nevertheless inextricably linked.

Pink Floyd. That's what a group of four young British blues and rhythm 'n' blues enthusiasts had called themselves about ten years earlier. At the time, in 1965, they were studying architecture or fine arts in London. Two of them, singer and guitarist Roger (nicknamed "Syd") Barrett and bassist Roger Waters, had become friends while they were at Cambridge.

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