Syd Barrett’s departure from Pink Floyd was unceremonious: The band simply failed to pick him up before a gig in Southampton in January 1968. Later that summer, manager Peter Jenner took Barrett to EMI Studios for a few sessions; nothing came of them, and it would be a year until Malcolm Jones, head of the newly formed Harvest label, took Barrett on again—Jones’s 1982 memoir The Making of The Madcap Laughs is essential reading. But by May, Barrett decamped with Pink Floyd to Ibiza, where David Gilmour agreed to finish the album.