Many of the world’s most famous bands have stories involving members who were there at the start but not when the group achieved fame—The Beatles and Nirvana being prime examples. A similar pattern, with various line-up changes before they became the pioneering space rock band known today. Even before Syd Barrett’s departure, the band went through several names and included early members like lead guitarist Bob Klose.
Klose’s time with the group was indeed brief, lasting about a year. A native of Cambridge, he was a school friend of Syd Barrett and Roger Waters, and like them, moved to London to study architecture at the Regent Street Polytechnic. While pursuing his studies, he became the lead guitarist in a band that included Waters, Richard Wright, Nick Mason, Clive Metcalfe, Keith Noble, and Juliette Gale. During this period, they performed under several names, including Sigma 6 and The Screaming Abdabs. Eventually, the latter three departed the band, and the line-up was comprised of Barrett – who was now in London after enrolling at Camberwell College of Arts – Klose, Waters, Wright and Mason. They also used several names, including ‘Tea Set’ and ‘The Pink Floyd Sound’. Klose played with them between 1964 and July 1965 and even recorded a few songs, but ultimately left to focus on his studies with Barrett’s emergent psychedelia, also not his favourite music in the world.
However, Klose played a key role in his old friend’s watched it evolve first-hand. You could also argue that his decision to leave was maybe the final thing Barrett needed to become the influential musician he was, as after Klose left, he assumed lead guitar and started to do the majority of the songwriting. As for Klose, he became a photographer and printmaker, with the pair leading very different creative lives. People thought I was kinda good, but I probably wasn’t really. I mean, I played classical guitar a bit, so I could move my fingers in a moderately coordinated way, and I’d listen to a lot of blues, so I had a kind of inkling of what that was about. And Syd was listening to Bo Diddley and getting his rhythm thing going, so that’s what we would do,” Klose said. He then played the Bo Diddley rhythm and presented, “That, and whatever on top, so you can imagine it really.”
Klose also provided more insight by contending that the best music always starts with things that people half learn or don’t get right, twisting the original idea into something new. It’s not academic but autodidactic, and this intellectual freedom drives creation, which we’ve seen repeatedly over the years. The 1960s was a decade brimming with this spontaneous experimentation as people sought to create their own sounds.
“Syd was beginning to write songs, and that was the interesting thing that was happening. We started off doing R&B covers, but gradually, it became Syd’s sort of cosmic Bo Diddley,” Klose added. “Bo Diddley was always Syd’s thing.
