Floyd lightens dark side of adolescence

Nick Keppler Columnist

“Wasn’t he schizophrenic?” one high-school-aged guy asked the other…. Nick Keppler Columnist

“Wasn’t he schizophrenic?” one high-school-aged guy asked the other.

“No, I think he went crazy on LSD,” the other answered, loud enough to imply that he thought it was cool to be talking about this in public.

They were in CD Warehouse looking at Pink Floyd CDs. My sorry, gradually aging ass was a few feet away flipping through the Van Morrison section.

As they continued to discuss Syd Barrett — Floyd’s 1960s front man, who may have been schizophrenic, an LSD burnout or both — I looked at these two maybe-15-year-olds. Their acned faces, uncombed, longish hair and all-black garb confirmed what their enthusiasm over, not just the music, but the also the Pink Floyd mythos implied: These kids were in the same place I was five years ago.

Poor saps. Take it from me, kids: The next few years will be ones of uncertainty and alienation. No one will consider your extensive knowledge of role-playing games, Philip K. Dick or “The Outer Limits” remotely cool or interesting, but just plain sad. Teachers and principals will acknowledge your existence only when they suspect you are building a pipe bomb. You’ll sit home on Friday night, knowing peers you hate are out getting action in the backseats of their families’ Lamborghinis, while you are Googling “hot, wet virgins.”

And Pink Floyd will be the soundtrack to it all.

I remember being a weird, geeky high-schooler and worshipping Floyd, the perennially popular art-rock band that obsessed over pain, alienation and insanity. There is something about that age and that mindset that allowed me to perfectly connect with that music.

At 15, the illusion that an angry, depressed rant can suddenly break out into a bitchin’ guitar solo was comforting.

At 15, I had not been exposed to much edgy, artistically ambitious music. The fact that each song on Pink Floyd’s The Wall comes together to create a story was amazing; the fact that that album was turned into a movie was incredible; and the fact that that movie features an animated segment with a huge, talking anus was unbelievable.

At 15, the fact that someone turned their conviction that the world is a soul-numbing dystopia into a multimillion-dollar rock career was infinitely inspiring.

My encounter with the two young Floyd-heads inspired me to take out my scratched and battered copy of Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. It just didn’t sound as good as it used to.

Indeed, my appreciation of Pink Floyd has waned ever since I was 18 and saw the Led Zeppelin film “The Song Remains the Same,” which inspired me to grow my hair long, read “Lord of the Rings” and enter the world “hedgerow” into my vocabulary.

The loud and raucous sound of Led Zeppelin was the new ideal music now that I had been emancipated from high school, and had a car and a girlfriend.

I would write love letters to her, trying to find a Zeppelin line to quote: “And so today, my world it smiles/your hand in mine, we walk the miles?” No. “You are the sunlight in my growing/so little warmth I’ve felt before?” No. “Oh, oh, child, way you shake that thing/gonna make you burn, gonna make you sting?” Yes!

In the coming years, I came to college, became a semi-devoted spiritual seeker and concluded the Bible, Upanishads and Tao Te Jing were all right, but that Beatles song “Within You, Without You” contained some real truth.

I went through a peacenik phase and searched through booklets of Bob Dylan lyrics to find a phrase that I could scrawl onto a sign to symbolize my opinion of George W. Bush: “How many deaths will it take till he knows/That too many people have died?” No. “One push of the button and a shot the world wide/And you never ask questions/When God’s on your side?” No. “Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth?” Yes!

But none of that music lifted me like Pink Floyd did back when I was a mangy blackhead-popper.

So, to all you young Floyd-heads, I’ll say this: The next few years will suck and suck hard. Clamp those headphones over your ears, blast up the volume and let the Floyd carry you through.

E-Mail Nick at pnk6@pitt.edu.