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Pink Floyd formed in 1964 from an earlier band whose names included Sigma 6, T-Set , Megadeaths , The Screaming Abdabs, The Architectural Abdabs, and The Abdabs . The band was again renamed The Pink Floyd Sound and then, around the time of their first album release, simply The Pink Floyd (after two blues musicians, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council). The definite article was simply dropped a couple of albums later.
Pink Floyd originally consisted of Bob Klose ( lead guitar), Syd Barrett (vocals, rhythm guitarRhythm guitar is the role of the guitar in playing accompaniment in various musical styles. Typically the role of the rhythm guitars is to combine a rhythmic accent with simple or complex harmonies, as the song demands. There are a great many specific sty), Richard WrightRichard Wright also known as Rick Wright (born 1945), is the keyboard player of Pink Floyd. He was a full member from the beginnings in 1966. He was ousted by Roger Waters during recording of The Wall and was only a paid session musician during The Wall ( ( keyboardA keyboard instrument is a musical instrument played with a musical keyboard. Keyboard instruments can be wind instruments, string instruments, percussion instruments, or electronic instruments. The most popular keyboard instruments are probably the pianos, vocals), Roger WatersGeorge Roger Waters (born September 6, 1943 in Great Bookham, Surrey near Dorking) is a British rock and roll musician and songwriter, best known as the former singer-songwriter and bass player for the band Pink Floyd. After band founder Syd Barrett suffe ( bassThe electric bass guitar is a stringed instrument similar to the electric guitar, but larger in size and with a lower range. It is also closely related to—and inspired by—the double bass, and shares things in common with a range of bass instruments. It is, vocals) and Nick MasonNicholas Berkeley ('Nick') Mason (born January 27, 1944 in Birmingham, England) is the drummer and occasional composer for Pink Floyd. He is the only person to have remained with the band since its formation in 1965. Mason studied at the Regent Street Pol ( drumFor other kinds of drums, see drum (disambiguation). A drum is a musical percussion instrument, consisting of a membrane which is usually stretched taut over a cylindrical tube that is open at the other end. The membrane is struck, either with the hand ors). They coverIn pop music a cover version is a new rendition of a previously recorded song. Pop musicians may play covers as a tribute to the original performer or group, to win audiences who like to hear a familiar song, to increase their chance of success by using aed rhythm and blues staples such as " Louie, Louie". As Barrett started writing tunes more influenced by American surf music, psychedelic rock, and British whimsy, humour and literature, the heavily jazz-oriented Klose departed and left a rather stable foursome. The band formed Blackhill Enterprises, a six-way business partnership with their managers, Peter Jenner and Andrew King .
In 1968, guitarist David Gilmour joined the band to carry out the playing and singing duties of Barrett, whose mental health was deteriorating, but nevertheless was intended to remain as the band's figurehead and songwriter. With Barrett's behaviour becoming less and less predictable, the band's live shows became increasingly ramshackle until, eventually, the other band members simply stopped taking him to the concerts.
Once Barrett's departure was formalised, Jenner and King decided to remain with him, and the six-way Blackhill partnership was dissolved.
Whilst Barrett had written the bulk of the first record, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn ( 1967), he contributed little to the second A Saucerful of Secrets ( 1968).
After the film soundtrack More, the next record, the double album Ummagumma (part recorded at Mothers Rock Club, Birmingham, and in Manchester in 1969), was a mix of live recordings and unchecked studio experimentation by the band members, with each recording half a side of vinyl as a solo project (Mason's wife makes an uncredited contribution as a flautist).
1970's Atom Heart Mother, a UK number one album, is somewhat dated and has been described by Gilmour as the sound of a band "blundering about in the dark". The title piece owes much to orchestration by Ron Geesin.The band's sound was considerably more focused on Meddle ( 1971), with the 23-minute epic "Echoes" (in this track the band used the Zinovieff's VCS3 synth for the first time) . This album also included the atmospheric "One of These Days" (a concert classic, with a distorted, disembodied one-line vocal, "One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces"-courtesy of drummer Nick Mason) and the pop-jazz stylings of "San Tropez". Their taste for experimentation was expressed on "Seamus" (earlier, "Mademoiselle Nobs"), a pure-blues number featuring lead vocals by a Russian wolfhound.
A less-well-known album, Obscured By Clouds, was released in 1972, as the soundtrack for the film "La Vallee" and was the band's first US Top 50 album.
Despite their never having been a hit-single-driven group, their massively successful 1973 album, Dark Side of the Moon, featured a US number Top 20 track (" Money"), and more importantly remained in the top 100 for over a decade, breaking many records on the way, and making it one of the top selling albums of all time. Dark Side of the Moon was a concept album dealing with themes of insanity, neurosis and fame which, due to the use of new 16-track recording equipment at Abbey Road Studios and the investment of an enormous amount of time by engineer Alan Parsons, set new standards for sound fidelity.
Dark Side of the Moon and the three following albums (Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall) are held up by some fans as the peak of Pink Floyd's career. The first of those, Wish You Were Here, released in 1975, is a theme album about absence. "Wish You Were Here" included the critically-acclaimed, mainly instrumental nine part "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", which was a tribute to Barrett in which the lyrics deal explicitly with the aftermath of his breakdown and the classic title track. It also includes the epics "Welcome to the Machine" and "Have a Cigar"
By 1977, and the release of Animals, the band's music came under increasing criticism from some quarters in the new punk rock sphere as being too flabby and pretentious, having lost its way from the simplicity of early rock and roll. Animals contained more lengthy songs tied to a theme, taken in part from George Orwell's Animal Farm, which used pigs, dogs and sheep as metaphors for contemporary society. Animals was a lot more guitar-driven than the previous albums and was the start of the tensions between Waters and Wright.
1979's epic rock opera, The Wall, conceived mainly by Waters, gave Pink Floyd renewed acclaim and another hit single with their foray into critical pedagogy - " Another Brick in the Wall, Part II." It also included "Comfortably Numb" which, though never released as a single became a cornerstone of AOR and classic-rock radio playlists and is today one of the group's best-known songs. It is also one of a very small number of songs on Pink Floyd's first four concept albums not to segue at either the beginning or end. The album also became a vastly expensive and money-losing tour/stage show although the album's sales got the band out of the financial hole they were in. During this time, Waters increased his artistic influence and leadership of the band, prompting frequent conflicts with the other members and even firing Wright from the band, although Wright returned, on a fixed wage, for the album's few live concerts. Ironically, he was the only one of Pink Floyd to make any money from the "Wall" shows, the rest having to cover the excessive costs. The album was co-produced by Bob Ezrin, a friend of Waters who shared songwriting credits on "The Trial" whom then was kicked out of the Floyd camp by Waters after Ezrin inadvertently talked about the album to a journalist relative.The Wall remained on best-selling-album lists for 14 years. A film starring Boomtown Rats founder Bob Geldof was adapted from it in 1982, written by Waters and directed by Alan Parker, and featuring striking animation by noted British cartoonist and long- time Floyd collaborator, Gerald Scarfe. The creation of the film saw the deterioration of the Waters/Gilmour relationship as Waters came to completely dominate the band.
1983 saw the release of The Final Cut. Even darker in tone than The Wall, this album re-examined many of the themes of that album while also addressing then-current events, including Waters' anger at Britain's participation in the Falklands War ("The Fletcher Memorial Home") and cynicism and fear of nuclear war ("Two Suns in the Sunset"). Wright's absence meant this album lacked the keyboard effects seen in previous Floyd works. Though released as a Pink Floyd album, the project was clearly dominated by Waters, and became a prototype in sound and form for later Waters solo projects. Only moderately successful by Floyd standards, the album yielded only one rock radio hit, "Not Now John". The arguing between Waters and Gilmour by this stage was rumoured to be so bad that they were never seen in the recording studio simultaneously and there was no tour and the band unofficially disbanded in 1983.After The Final Cut, the band members went their separate ways, each releasing solo albums, until 1987, when Gilmour and Mason began to revive the band. A bitter legal dispute with Roger Waters (who left the band in 1985) ensued, but Gilmour and Mason were upheld in their contention that they had the legal right to continue as Pink Floyd (Waters, however, gained the rights to some traditional Pink Floyd imagery, including almost all of The Wall props and characters and all of the rights to "The Final Cut"). The band under Gilmour returned to the studio with producer Bob Ezrin. Richard Wright re-joined during the recording sessions of A Momentary Lapse of Reason first as a session musician, paid a weekly salary, and later was reinstated as a full-fledged member of the band for the 1994 release of The Division Bell and its subsequent tour which was promoted by legendary Canadian concert impressario, Michael Cohl , and became the highest grossing tour in rock history to that date.
All of the members of Pink Floyd have released solo albums which have met with varying degrees of commercial and critical success. Waters' Amused To Death was the most praised of these albums, though it was met with mixed reviews.
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