Chuck Klosterman compares and contrasts Syd Barrett and Brian Wilson in this brief article for the NYT magazine.
No one really disputes the correlation between rock music and insanity. At this point, people assume that most unconventional rock performers are either authentically crazy (Ozzy Osbourne, Daniel Johnston), preoccupied with seeming crazy (Prince, Iggy Pop) or trapped somewhere in between (Axl Rose, Courtney Love). Most of the time, there is no cultural penalty for mentally unstable behavior. Very often, a disconnect from reality is perceived as creativity; musical geniuses are expected to be mildly insane. The problem is that when this cliché reaches its inevitable conclusion — when a musician’s charming psychosis devolves into profound mental illness — the symbiotic relationship between vision and lunacy collapses like a black hole.
He then looked at the cases of Syd Barrett, founder of Pink Floyd, and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys (the Wilson saga is particularly compelling, falling as he did under his personal Rasputin, Eugene Landy).
As with Barrett, it is difficult to separate Wilson’s madness from his brilliance; the two qualities seem completely intertwined, and that can make the music both men created feel unworldly and romantic. But in the end, which quality took over: madness or genius? Which quality dictated their careers? Barrett became a man who couldn’t do anything. Wilson became a man who’d do anything Eugene Landy told him to do. Ultimately, it was not a detachment from reality that made them geniuses; detachment made them unproductive and vulnerable. Contrary to popular mythology, you don’t make good records when you’re crazy. You make them when you’re not.