David Gilmour has spoken movingly about "Jugband Blues", the final song Syd Barrett wrote for Pink Floyd before his 1968 departure, calling it a "very, very personal" and "quite brilliant" piece written as Barrett's mental health deteriorated. The track, which closes the band's second album, A Saucerful of Secrets, is a rare glimpse of Barrett's fractured state of mind at the time, and it stands as a poignant marker of the transition between Barrett's original vision for Pink Floyd and the version of the band Gilmour would go on to shape.

Barrett, who co-founded Pink Floyd, became increasingly unreliable during the recording of the album as schizophrenia took hold, prompting the band to bring in Gilmour, a childhood friend of Barrett's from Cambridge, before ultimately removing Barrett altogether. In a 2001 documentary interview with John Edginton, Gilmour reflected on Barrett's unusual songwriting process, saying he had "no idea really how he wrote" and describing it as possibly a "stream of subconsciousness" that flowed out of him unplanned. The article notes the reflections come almost 60 years after Barrett left the band and 20 years after his death.