Musician Spotlight: Pink Floyd

Think ‘psychedelia’ and it could well be British rock band Pink Floyd that comes to mind. They were at the forefront of this particular movement in the 1960s and created a name for themselves by making astonishingly complex concept albums during the 1970s. Pink Floyd was lead guitarist Syd Barrett (6th January 1948 – 7th July 2006), bass player Roger Water (born 6th September 1943), drummer Nick Mason (born 27th January 1945), keyboard player Rick Wright (28th July 1945 – 15th September 2008), and electric guitar player David Gilmour (born 6th March 1944).

Pink Floyd was formed in 1965, and the name came from a combination of Pink Anderson and Floyd Council, but blues artists that the band members admired. And this is the style that the group first began writing in, although it was their own take on the blues, throwing in plenty of psychedelic references to make it a unique sound. EMI certainly thought it was interesting enough to sign the group in 1967, and their first hit, ‘Arnold Layne’ (controversially at the time about a transvestite) came not long after. Their first album, The Piper At The Gates of Dawn, was next, and although experimental with additional non-musical sound effects, there was still enough of a style within this adventurous album to capture the hearts and minds of many new fans.

1968 was a turning point for Pink Floyd, however. Syd Barrett’s drug problem was becoming too much to handle, and he was replaced by David Gilmour. Since Barrett had been the lyricist, Pink Floyd started touring rather than making new music, and their concerts became the stuff of legend, using lighting and sound design to great effect. Eventually, they returned to music-making, and in 1970 were back releasing albums again, the first being Atom Heart Mother. Due to the new dynamic within the group, these records were much more thematic, including plenty of instrumental recordings, and thus the concept album was born.

1973 really sealed Pink Floyd’s success, however. This was when their most popular album, Dark Side Of The Moon, was released. The dark songwriting and the psychedelic shades of light meant that this album rocketed Pink Floyd into superstardom, and even today the album is picked apart by theorists trying to discover exactly what it all means. What it means for Pink Floyd, of course, was that they became a household name, and for more than a decade remained in the charts in one way or another. Check out this album performed live:

By 1977, however, internal conflicts, most noticeably the fact that Waters had taken a much more prominent role, meant that the ties were breaking. Yet despite this, their best-selling album The Wall came out in 1979, and their final album, The Final Cut, was released in 1983. By then, though, legal issues and general unhappiness with one another meant that the group simply couldn’t go on. Pink Floyd never broke up, but they did become inactive at that time.

In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, however, Gilmour, Mason, and Wright came together and released two albums (1987’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason and 1994’s The Division Bell). The very last Pink Floyd album was released in 2014. Entitled The Endless River, it was a collaboration between Gilmour and Mason along with work by Wright who had died in 2008.

In 1996, Pink Floyd was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Read more on the band’s official website.