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[Alice on Syd Barrett]

In Los Angeles, during an engagement at the Cheetah, the Floyd were befriended by the club's house band: the future Alice Cooper, then called the Nazz. "Pink Floyd basically ran out of money - they didn't have any place to stay," says singer Alice Cooper. "So they stayed with us, in our house in Venice. I remember coming down to breakfast one morning, and there's Syd at the table. He's got purple crushed-velvet pants on, and he is staring at this box of cornflakes - the same way you and I would watch television. He was watching something that we couldn't see."

But on their few great nights onstage that week, Pink Floyd were, Cooper insists, "absolutely the best psychedelic band ever. There was so much stuff coming out of those amps, and they were so organized behind it. And Syd had this appeal - the guy nobody could get to. You could figure out the other guys, talk to them. But Syd was too far away for everybody."