In April 1968 Pink Floyd announced that Syd Barrett was no longer a member of the band. His mental health had been deteriorating for a while - his problems exacerbated by heavy use of drugs.

In his White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s, Joe Boyd recalls encountering Barrett and the rest of Pink Floyd at the UFO Club in mid-1967:

I had exchanged pleasantries with the first three when Syd emerged from the crush. His sparkling eyes had always been his most attractive feature but that night they were vacant, as if someone had reached inside his head and turned off a switch. During their set he hardly sang, standing motionless for long passages, arms by his sides, staring into space.

Barrett recorded two solo albums after leaving the Floyd, both with considerable help with members of his former band. They were The Madcap Laughs and Barrett - Gigolo Aunt comes from the latter, which was released in 1970.

Richard Wright, then a member of Pink Floyd, said of the sessions for Barrett:

Doing Syd's record was interesting, but extremely difficult. Dave [Gilmour] and Roger [Waters] did the first one (The Madcap Laughs) and Dave and myself did the second one. But by then it was just trying to help Syd any way we could, rather than worrying about getting the best guitar sound. You could forget about that! It was just going into the studio and trying to get him to sing.

Though the drummer Jerry Shirley said:

I was quite happy with Gigolo Aunt, Syd had played his parts so 'correctly' that I can remember at the end of the take we were flabbergasted. It was like we were thinking: 'You're not that nuts after all, you almost got through this take perfectly!'

Barrett recorded a live session for Radio One early in 1971 that, apart from a dalliance with a band called Stars the next year and some abortive recording sessions in 1974, proved to be the end of his music-making.