Pink Floyd

• 1. Introduction

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  Pink Floyd are an English rock band formed in London in 1965, and by the time their final studio album arrived in 2014, they had sold more than 250 million records worldwide. That number alone invites questions. How did a group of architecture students rehearsing in a polytechnic tearoom come to make some of the most commercially successful rock albums ever pressed? What kind of band releases a single that radio stations ban for its cross-dressing references, then watches that same single climb the charts anyway? And how do four people spend decades pulling each other apart while simultaneously producing music that millions of listeners cannot stop playing?

  The answers run through a founding genius whose mind gave out before the band's career had properly begun, through a lyricist who seized control and then burned every bridge on his way out, and through a pair of surviving members who kept the name alive long enough to sell their entire catalogue for approximately $400 million. Pink Floyd's story is not a smooth arc from obscurity to legend. It is a series of ruptures, each one somehow producing another album.

• 2. Architecture Students and Absurdist Names

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  Roger Waters and Nick Mason met in September 1962 while studying architecture at the London Polytechnic at Regent Street. They first played music together in a group formed by fellow students Keith Noble and Clive Metcalfe, with Noble's sister Sheilagh also involved. Richard Wright, another architecture student, joined later that year. The group kept changing its name: Sigma 6, the Meggadeaths, the Abdabs, the Screaming Abdabs, Leonard's Lodgers, the Spectrum Five, before settling on the Tea Set.

  In September 1963, Waters and Mason moved into a flat at 39 Stanhope Gardens, Highgate, owned by Mike Leonard, a part-time tutor at the Hornsey College of Art. The guitarist Bob Klose moved in during September 1964, which prompted Waters to switch from lead guitar to bass. That same month, Syd Barrett, a childhood friend of Waters, also moved into Stanhope Gardens. Mason described Barrett at their first meeting as someone who "bothered to come up and introduce himself," which Mason remembered as unusually outgoing for the self-consciously cool atmosphere of the time.

  At the Countdown Club near Kensington High Street, the band played three sets of 90 minutes each from late night to early morning. The sheer length of the sets forced a practical discovery: Mason wrote that the band realised "songs could be extended with lengthy solos" as a way to minimise repetition. Klose quit in mid-1965, at which point Barrett took over lead guitar and the band rebranded as the Pink Floyd Sound. Barrett reportedly invented the name on the spot when he discovered another band also called the Tea Set was booked for the same gig. He built it from the given names of two blues musicians in his record collection: Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.

• 3. Syd Barrett and the UFO Club

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  Peter Jenner, a lecturer at the London School of Economics, first noticed Pink Floyd at the Marquee Club in March 1966. He was struck by the sonic effects Barrett and Wright created. Jenner and his business partner Andrew King had little experience in the music business and used King's inheritance to fund their management venture, Blackhill Enterprises, purchasing around £1,000 worth of new instruments and equipment for the band.

  At the UFO Club in London, Barrett's performances drew particular attention. Biographer Nicholas Schaffner wrote that Barrett was "leaping around... madness... improvisation... inspired to get past his limitations and into areas that were... very interesting." The band was building a real following, though a performance at a Catholic youth club ended with the owner refusing to pay, arguing their set was not music. A local magistrate upheld that decision.

  On the 15th of February 1967, Pink Floyd signed with EMI and received a £5,000 advance. Their first single, "Arnold Layne", was released on the 10th of March 1967, with both tracks recorded on the 29th of January 1967. Radio stations banned it for its cross-dressing references, but retail manipulation of sales figures helped push it to number 20 in the UK. Their second single, "See Emily Play", followed on the 16th of June 1967 and peaked at number 6. By August 1967, their debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn reached number six on the UK charts and spent 14 weeks there.

  Barrett, however, was deteriorating. By early 1967 he was regularly using LSD, and Mason described him as "completely distanced from everything going on." June Child, Jenner's assistant, recalled finding Barrett in a dressing room "so... gone" that she and Waters had to get him on his feet and walk him to the stage, where he stood with his arms hanging and his guitar untouched. Waters arranged a meeting with psychiatrist R. D. Laing; though Waters drove Barrett to the appointment himself, Barrett refused to leave the car.

• 4. Barrett's Exit and What It Left Behind

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  David Gilmour joined as a fifth member in December 1967. He and Barrett had studied together in Cambridge in the early 1960s, performed at lunchtimes with guitars and harmonicas, and later busked through the south of France. Morrison's assistant, Steve O'Rourke, set Gilmour up with a salary of £30 per week.

  The plan to keep Barrett as a nonperforming songwriter collapsed quickly. Barrett introduced a song called "Have You Got It Yet?" to the band and intentionally changed its structure at each rehearsal so it was impossible to follow or learn. It was an act of deliberate frustration. By January 1968, a photoshoot showed Barrett staring into the distance, detached. When working with him proved impossible, the band simply stopped collecting him on the way to a show in Southampton. Blackhill announced his departure on the 6th of April 1968. Jenner and King, who believed Barrett was the band's creative genius, chose to represent him and end their relationship with Pink Floyd.

  Waters later said of Barrett: "He was our friend, but most of the time we now wanted to strangle him." Mason said Gilmour's arrival brought greater structure, and that "we became far less difficult to enjoy." The burden of lyrical composition and creative direction passed largely to Waters.

  Barrett's influence on the guitar, though, persisted independently. Jimmy Page and Glen Buxton both cited him as an influence. One of his trademarks was playing his guitar through an old echo box while sliding a Zippo lighter up and down the fret-board. He used Binson delay units for his echo sounds. His free-form sequences of what he called sonic carpets opened new ways to play rock guitar that outlasted his time in the band.

• 5. Waters Takes the Wheel

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  The Dark Side of the Moon was recorded between May 1972 and January 1973 with EMI staff engineer Alan Parsons at Abbey Road. Producer Chris Thomas assisted. The album's title was an allusion to lunacy rather than astronomy. Waters is the sole author of the lyrics. Hipgnosis designed the packaging, which included George Hardie's refracting prism design; Thorgerson's cover features a beam of white light representing unity passing through a prism representing society, with the refracted beam symbolising unity diffracted.

  Every member except Wright boycotted the press release because a quadraphonic mix was not yet complete, and they felt presenting the album through a poor-quality stereo PA system was insufficient. Released in March 1973, it became a US number one and remained on the Billboard Top LPs and Tape chart for more than fourteen years during the 1970s and 1980s, selling more than 45 million copies worldwide. In Britain it reached number two and spent 364 weeks on the UK chart. It is the world's third best-selling album.

  The Wall, which followed in 1979, was built around a forty-page script co-produced with Bob Ezrin. Waters presented the initial idea in July 1978 as a 90-minute demo titled Bricks in the Wall. Ezrin based the central character, Pink, on Waters's childhood experiences, the most notable of which was the death of his father in World War II. The Wall topped the Billboard chart in the US for 15 weeks and is tied for sixth most certified album by RIAA, with 23 million certified units sold in the US. Bob Geldof, who had initially dismissed the storyline as "bollocks," was eventually persuaded to play the role of Pink in the film adaptation, screened at Cannes in May 1982, which won two BAFTAs.

  During the In the Flesh tour for Animals, playing large stadiums for the first time, Waters began arriving at each venue alone and departing immediately after the performance. At the Montreal Olympic Stadium, he spat at a fan in the front row whom he found too noisy. Mason recalled that Waters "was really keeping Dave down, and frustrating him deliberately." The Animals album was the first with no writing credit for Wright, who said: "This was when Roger really started to believe that he was the sole writer for the band."

• 6. The Band Fractures

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  Wright was fired during the recording of The Wall. Gilmour said Wright "hadn't contributed anything of any value whatsoever to the album." Waters gave Wright an ultimatum: a long legal battle or a quiet exit after the album was finished. Wright accepted and left. He returned for the subsequent tour as a paid musician, which made him the only band member to profit from a tour that lost about $600,000.

  The Final Cut in 1983 began as a soundtrack project Waters called Spare Bricks, but the onset of the Falklands War changed its direction. Waters dedicated it to his late father and wrote all the lyrics and all the music. Rolling Stone gave it five stars and described it as "art rock's crowning masterpiece." When Gilmour asked Waters to delay recording until he could write some songs, Waters refused. Gilmour's name was removed from the credit list.

  By 1985, Waters wrote to EMI and Columbia announcing he had left the band and went to the High Court to dissolve Pink Floyd, declaring it "a spent force creatively." When his lawyers discovered the partnership had never been formally confirmed, he returned to the High Court seeking a veto over further use of the band's name. A dinner between Gilmour, Mason, Waters, and manager O'Rourke in 1984 illustrated how badly communication had broken down. Mason wrote in his memoir: "We left the restaurant with diametrically opposed views of what had been decided."

  Gilmour responded to Waters's legal moves with a press release affirming Pink Floyd would continue to exist. The subsequent legal agreement, reached on the 23rd of December, gave Mason and Gilmour the right to use the Pink Floyd name in perpetuity. Waters received exclusive rights to The Wall, among other things. In 2013, Waters said he regretted the lawsuit.

• 7. After Waters: The Gilmour Years

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  Gilmour began recording sessions for what would become A Momentary Lapse of Reason in 1986, starting on his houseboat, the Astoria, moored on the River Thames. He initially did not commit to a Pink Floyd release, considering the material might become his third solo album. After a meeting in Hampstead, Wright was invited to participate, with Gilmour stating Wright's presence "would make us stronger legally and musically." Wright was employed at weekly earnings of $11,000.

  Gilmour worked with several songwriters to write lyrics, eventually choosing Anthony Moore. He described Wright and Mason as having been "destroyed" by Waters, with their contributions minimal. Waters's response to the 1987 album was pointed: "I think it's facile, but a quite clever forgery... The songs are poor in general... Gilmour's lyrics are third-rate." Wright, despite defending Waters's criticisms as fair, participated in the album anyway.

  The Division Bell in 1994 was built differently. Gilmour, Mason, and Wright worked collaboratively at Britannia Row Studios, improvising material. Gilmour's future wife, the novelist Polly Samson, co-wrote songs including "High Hopes." The writer Douglas Adams provided the album title. Thorgerson drew inspiration from the Moai monoliths of Easter Island for the cover: two opposing faces forming an implied third face, which he described as "the absent face - the ghost of Pink Floyd's past, Syd and Roger." The album reached number one in both the UK and the US. The Division Bell tour, Pink Floyd's last, ended on the 29th of October 1994.

  The last Pink Floyd studio album, The Endless River in 2014, was assembled from unreleased material recorded with Wright during the Division Bell sessions. Mason described it as a tribute to Wright. It became the most pre-ordered album of all time on Amazon UK and debuted at number one in several countries. The vinyl edition was the fastest-selling UK vinyl release of 2014 and the fastest-selling since 1997.

• 8. Reunions, Deaths, and a Final Sale

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  On the 2nd of July 2005, Waters, Gilmour, Mason, and Wright performed together as Pink Floyd at Live 8 in Hyde Park, London. It was their first performance together in more than 24 years. The reunion was arranged by Bob Geldof, who had to approach Mason after Gilmour declined his first request. About two weeks later, Waters called Gilmour; it was their first conversation in two years. The next day, Gilmour agreed.

  At the beginning of their performance of "Wish You Were Here," Waters told the audience: "It is quite emotional, standing up here with these three guys after all these years, standing to be counted with the rest of you... We're doing this for everyone who's not here, and particularly of course for Syd." At the end, Gilmour started to walk off the stage; Waters called him back and the band embraced. Though Pink Floyd turned down a contract worth £136 million for a follow-up tour, Gilmour told the Associated Press that a reunion would not happen: "The Live 8 rehearsals convinced me it wasn't something I wanted to be doing a lot of."

  Barrett died on the 7th of July 2006, at his home in Cambridge, aged 60. No Pink Floyd members attended his funeral at Cambridge Crematorium on the 18th of July. Wright died of cancer on the 15th of September 2008, aged 65. Gilmour said Wright's contributions were often overlooked and that his "soulful voice and playing were vital, magical components of our most recognised Pink Floyd sound." Keyboardist Keith Emerson released a statement calling Wright the "backbone" of Pink Floyd.

  In March 2022, Gilmour and Mason recorded the single "Hey, Hey, Rise Up!" in protest of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, featuring vocals by the BoomBox singer Andriy Khlyvnyuk taken from an Instagram video of Khlyvnyuk singing the 1914 Ukrainian anthem "Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow" in Kyiv. In October 2024, Pink Floyd agreed to sell their catalogue to Sony Music for approximately $400 million, covering recordings, merchandise, and spin-offs but not songwriting rights. A 4K restoration of Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii, released on home media in 2025, produced a soundtrack album that became Pink Floyd's seventh UK number-one.