The result of this is that Pink Floyd, like Coca-Cola, became an incredibly popular brand in which much of the public couldn’t name a single employee.
Their identity was no identity: Album covers not only omitted band photos, but even their band name. All of these inanimate signifiers represented Pink Floyd far more than the identities of the musicians. In this band, the musicians hit behind dry ice, light shows, inflatable pigs or - at the height of their popularity, when they somehow managed to score a No. At the very least, fans knew what their favorite bands looked like, and that visual component mattered, whether the musicians were seen pouting insouciantly from album covers or reigning supreme on stage.īut Pink Floyd was never about pushing individual “stars” at the expense of contemplating the cosmos. Traditionally, rock bands have always been centered on recognizable stars - the strutting lead singer, the enigmatic guitarist, the wild drummer, the charismatically stoic bass player. First, in terms of Waters’ objections in 1987, Pink Floyd redefined the word group for rock bands. Waters couldn’t have fully grasped it at the time, but “what is or isn’t a rock group” would come to define Pink Floyd’s legacy in two essential ways. What is The Beatles? Are Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr The Beatles? My view now is they’re not, any more than The Firm should have been called Led Zeppelin, even if John Paul Jones had been there.” “The whole issue about what is or isn’t a rock group. “The other issue is completely separate,” he continued.
And that is, who owns the piece of property that is the name Pink Floyd? That is a legal issue you go to court and fight over it. “There is the legal issue, which is the only thing that can be resolved in court. “It’s taken me two years to make some fundamental connections,” he reflected to Rolling Stone‘s David Fricke at the time. Don’t people care about an “ authentic” Pink Floyd? But also by the fact that their stunt had worked: A Momentary Lapse Of Reason sold three million copies, and launched an absurdly lucrative world tour. Waters was stunned - by their insolence, which exceeded even his own impertinence. They opted instead to record a new Pink Floyd album, 1987’s snarkily titled A Momentary Lapse Of Reason, without him. But his bandmates, David Gilmour and Nick Mason, did not agree. He was, after all, Pink Floyd’s main songwriter, “big idea” man, conceptualist, resident philosopher, spokesman, bass player, and de-facto leader. His assumption was that the decision to leave the band would end the band. In the mid-’80s, he had exited Pink Floyd after the torturous sessions for 1983’s The Final Cut, the most difficult and misanthropic LP ever released by a frontline classic rock band, topping even Floyd’s own double album, 1979’s The Wall, and that record’s bleak predecessor, 1977’s Animals. I’ll see you on the dark side of this list.īy 1987, Roger Waters finally came to a crucial realization a few years too late. Follow me on this journey into Pink Floyd.
You don’t need no education? I beg to differ. And surely a head shop just sold a blacklight poster featuring the two guys shaking hands on the cover of Wish You Were Here.īut what if by some chance you know nothing about this band? Where do you begin? How do you make sense of their catalogue? It’s enough to send one over the brink like Syd Barrett. There is also at least one group of teenagers somewhere in the world right now packing a bowl while cueing up The Dark Side Of The Moon. At this very second, the FM radio station in your town known as “The Bear” or “The Eagle” is playing one of their songs. It is a band that never seems to go away. The story of Pink Floyd is one of the foundational myths of classic rock history. And then the band went on to sell hundreds of millions of albums and stage mammoth concerts in stadiums all over the world. Eventually, he was replaced by another chum from Cambridge named David Gilmour. Then Syd discovered LSD and he had a major mental breakdown. As a young man, he formed a band with a boyhood school chum named Roger Waters. Seventy-six years ago this month, Roger Keith “Syd” Barrett was born in Cambridge, England.
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