Pink Floyd is alive and well in the performances of the many touring "tribute" bands, which recreate the original group's music along with their elaborate visual presentations.

Recently, I took my family to see one such band, Several Species. (The name comes from the early Pink Floyd song, "Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict," from the album "Ummagumma.") When we got home, we were surprised to see that PBS was broadcasting a concert of another Pink Floyd tribute band, the Australian Pink Floyd.

These two concerts seem to indicate that such alternate Pink Floyd bands are filling a need: A great many people are still interested in the music and style of the original group, which disbanded back in the 1980s. (I had the pleasure of experiencing the real Pink Floyd live, 35 years ago, when they performed in South Florida.)

A founding member of Pink Floyd, and its initial creative spirit, was Roger Keith ("Syd") Barrett. He was responsible for the band's early style, and he wrote, sang, and played guitar on most of their early songs. I still have a vinyl LP of Pink Floyd's first album, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" (1967), which was almost entirely his creation.

Pink Floyd came together as a band in 1965 but by 1968 Syd Barrett had become rather obviously disorganized and was no longer capable of functioning with the group. Often, he wouldn't show up for performances or, if he did, he might just stand on stage for hours and stare without playing. Eventually, he had to be replaced in the group he had founded. Ultimately, he withdrew completely from public life, spending the last few decades of his life at his mother's house in the English countryside.

What happened to Syd Barrett? He developed psychotic symptoms. Whether his illness was due to his extensive use of LSD or to a mental disorder that would have occurred anyway will never be known.

I heard about Syd Barrett's death when he died last year at the age of 60. I was especially interested to see the obituary and an early photo of him published recently in the American Journal of Psychiatry. The obituary's author, Paolo Fusar-Poli, M.D., suggested that Barrett was "probably the most famous rock star to develop psychosis." He also pointed out that Pink Floyd's later songs often would include themes of madness.

Barrett's life once again raises the question, "Which came first, the mental illness or the substance abuse?" No matter what the cause, the result was the loss of yet another creative genius.