Syd Barrett is one of the great unknowns of twentieth century music. The early creative force behind Pink Floyd, he spent most of the second half of his life outside of public view, away from fans, press and ex-band members.

In Syd Barrett: A Very Irregular Head, author Rob Chapman attempts to dispel the myths surrounding Syd, and in this video interview, shares his experiences researching the life of a notoriously private artist.

Syd Barrett: A Very Irregular Head by Rob Chapman is out now.

Prolific cultural commentator and award-winning novelist Norman Lebrecht’s new book, Why Mahler, is to be published by Faber in July, 150 years after Mahler’s birth. Lebrecht also curating a whole season of Mahler’s work on the South Bank.

Valery Gergiev’s idea of playing two Mahler symphonies in the same BBC Prom concert – the fourth before the interval and the fifth after – is a product of our special-offer times. If neon-strip retailers can accustom us to buying more than we want by pretending to give it away free, what’s to stop conductors cramming our heads with musical excess?

I can think of no obvious precedent or justification for doing two Mahler symphonies in the same concert. Mahler once performed the fourth symphony twice in the same Amsterdam concert after Willem Mengelberg advised him that the Dutch audience was reflective by nature and would appreciate the opportunity to review the work again, after an intermission drink.

On other occasions, he performed sections of two or three different works, usually some songs and a symphonic movement, but he did not (so far as I recall) ever conduct two symphonies in the same night. So what’s the point?

Well, Gergiev is a high-energy conductor who likes to perform Soviet-style Stakhanovite feats, beating all Kremlin targets and collecting his medal on the first of May. There is also an iconoclastic streak to the man, a desire to shatter western moulds and do things in his own inimitable way. He has a genuine fascination with Mahler’s personality and he is perfectly entitled to try something that never crossed the composer’s mind.

It is not, by any measure, a crass idea. There is much that appeals to me about pairing two symphonies that musicologists split into different periods of Mahler’s life – the fourth in his so-called Wunderhorn period, and the fifth in the middle span of non-vocal symphonies. Putting them together makes a nonsense of these academic categories, and I’m all in favour of that.

There is also great merit in hearing Mahler’s music sequentially. I once staged a performance in Stockholm of all ten symphonies in a day – played in the four-hand piano versions, and immensely revealing of the connective tissue in Mahler’s creative constitution. None of us who heard the set, start to finish, would ever hear Mahler again in the same way.

So, though I’m suspicious of the supermarket ethics and unconvinced by Gergiev’s hit-and-run tactics, I am really keen to hear two Mahler symphonies back to back on August 5th. Camilla Tilling is the soloist in Mahler 4 – I like that, too. See you there.

Gustav Mahler

I was in Manchester last Thursday (28th) night for what turned out to be an overwhelming performance by the Halle Orchestra under Markus Stenz of Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ Symphony, as part of their magnificent ‘Mahler in Manchester’ Series. Mahler fever is mounting as we head towards the two anniversaries – the 150th anniversary of his birth in 2010 and the centenary of his death in 2011 – and Manchester is well ahead of the pack!

Quite apart from being a long-time Mahler addict, I had two other special reasons for being there. Each Symphony in this series is being preceded by a new commission, and on Thursday it was the turn of my husband Colin (a setting for the Halle chorus of Wordsworth’s ‘Crossing the Alps’); and secondly I have just finished working with Norman Lebrecht on his new book Why Mahler?, which Faber will be publishing in July to coincide with Norman’s BBC Radio 3 documentary on Mahler. 

Why Mahler? takes the angle of Mahler’s special relevance to the present day, and I knew I had to publish it the minute I started to read it: I couldn’t put it down and it sent me rushing back to the music. Just what is it about Mahler that, as happened on Thursday in Manchester, holds a capacity audience of around 2,000 scarcely breathing for close on 90 minutes, breaking out into a frenzy of applause and a standing ovation when it’s over?

Colin, who worked with Deryck Cooke on his completion of the Tenth Symphony, was asked in the pre-concert talk what it is that makes Mahler so special for him, and he replied:

‘I’ve lived with Mahler for all of my composing life and he’s become almost part of me; for composers there are so many aspects of his music that reach out to you, for audiences there is both an emotional appeal and an extraordinary sense of drama.’

Mahler Letters

If you have never listened to Mahler then now is your chance,  don’t miss it. And then turn to Why Mahler? (available in July), and for further invaluable insights to Faber’s Gustav Mahler’s Letters to His Wife edited by Henry Louis de la Grange.

Willy Vlautin

February 4th sees the publication of Lean on Pete, the third novel by Richmond Fontaine frontman Willy Vlautin.

Set in his adopted hometown of Portland, Oregon and already acclaimed by writers as diverse as Mark Billingham, Sarah Hall, George Pelecanos and John Connolly, it’s the hugely affecting story of a kid named Charley Thompson and the horse, Lean on Pete, who offers him some kind of hope – definitely one for fans of Cormac McCarthy, Annie Proulx, and John Steinbeck.

To celebrate publication Willy will be here in the UK for a short tour. If you’ve read either of his previous novels, The Motel Life or Northline, or seen Willy live before, you’ll want to be there, and if you haven’t then you’ve got a rare treat to discover …

Tour Dates:

Feb 9:  Willy solo music and reading at the Roundhouse, London

Feb 10: Willy solo music and reading at the Cardiff Arts Institute

Feb 11: Willy solo music and reading at The Victoria, Birmingham

Feb 12: Willy solo music and reading at the Captain’s Rest, Glasgow

Watch the preview …

Here’s a preview of this stunning book, read by the author:

And if that’s not enough, all of this prefigures the return of Richmond Fontaine, for a full UK and European tour, which will include some special book promotional duties in Ireland. Full details at the Richmond Fontaine website.

The Critics on Lean on Pete:

‘Vlautin’s characters … become a sketchbook of America … There’s music in the stark writing, the urban clamour of Portland giving way to the keening twang of the open spaces. The band has to be a hobby now. Vlautin is a writer.’ Sunday Herald

‘Lean On Pete is an archetypal American novel, Huck Finn for the crystal-meth generation. If there’s the occasional touch of sentimentality, it’s hard-earned and welcome. This is a sad, often brutal, but oddly beautiful portrait of an America that’s forgotten only because we choose not to remember its continuing existence.’ Independent

‘The story of Charley’s long journey to Wyoming and the America he meets on the way, which is often unforgiving and hostile, although home also to a surprising kindness. The language in which it’s told is spare and unadorned, but nevertheless poetic in its way, and full of boundless compassion for the dispossessed and rootless.’ ***** Uncut ~ Book of the Month

Dear Morrissey,

In the hope that you might consider bringing your much-rumoured memoir to The House of Eliot, I am posting this letter on the Faber website. Forlorn as this hope may be, I can only fantasise that at least you might read my letter through and consider the pleasures and prestige of being an author at Faber, the last great family-owned independent publishing house in the western hemisphere.

I have been trying to persuade you of the virtues and wisdom of this for some years now. You probably won’t remember. We even corresponded at one point via a friend of yours, an author of mine, most famous for his biography of Roxy Music which ends just as the band are getting together. You see, we love the perverse and the contrary at Faber. And we also like to think we are the custodians of twentieth-century Modernist poetry. In fact we are. Our shelves groan and bulge and spill over under the weight of Ezra, Larkin, Hughes and Heaney. And that’s just the surface; deep as it may seem. We feel very strongly that you belong in this company. To me (and to many of my colleagues) you are already in this company. It would be the fulfilment of my most pressing and persistent publishing dream to see that ‘ff’ sewn into the spine of your Life. Just any other publisher won’t do. You deserve Faber and the love we can give you. History demands it; destiny commands it.

I did receive a fax from you once to my invitation. And you responded with interest. I don’t know if at that stage you had embarked on your project but I have recently heard again that ‘it is on’.

Morrissey, the doors of our Georgian Bloomsbury-based publishing house are open to you wherever you may be: Rome, LA, Manchester. We recently published a book of Kevin Cummins’ photographs of Manchester pop which you may have seen. If you read this and would like a copy I will gladly send one to you. Perhaps it could mark the start of a beautiful friendship.

With warm wishes,

Lee Brackstone

Jonathen Lethem’s fiction is infused with popular culture references – films, music, comics and superheroes. For Chronic City, at the request of the Washington City Paper, he’s compiled a Perkus Tooth-inspired playlist for your listening pleasure.