Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd are an English rock band formed in London in 1965 by Syd Barrett, Nick Mason, Roger Waters and Richard Wright, with David Gilmour joining at the end of 1967. Gaining an early following as one of the first British psychedelic groups, they were distinguished by their extended compositions, sonic experiments, philosophical lyrics, and elaborate live performances, and became a leading progressive rock band.
With Barrett as their main songwriter, they released two hit singles, "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play", and the successful debut studio album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Barrett left in 1968 due to deteriorating mental health. All four remaining members contributed compositions, though Waters became the primary lyricist and thematic leader, devising the concepts behind Pink Floyd's most successful studio albums, The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall. The musical film based on The Wall, Pink Floyd – The Wall, won two BAFTAs. Pink Floyd also composed several film scores.
Personal tensions led to Wright leaving the band in 1981, followed by Waters in 1985. Gilmour and Mason continued as Pink Floyd, rejoined later by Wright. They produced the studio albums A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell, both backed by major tours. In 2005, Gilmour, Mason and Wright reunited with Waters for a performance at the global awareness event Live 8. Barrett died in 2006, and Wright in 2008. The last Pink Floyd studio album, The Endless River, was based on unreleased material from the Division Bell recording sessions. In 2022, Pink Floyd released the song "Hey, Hey, Rise Up!" in protest of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Pink Floyd are one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with sales exceeding 250 million records worldwide. The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and are among the best-selling albums of all time. Four Pink Floyd albums topped the US Billboard 200 and five topped the UK Albums Chart. Although an album-orientated band, they did achieve several hit singles, including "Arnold Layne", "See Emily Play", "Money", "Another Brick in the Wall ", "Not Now John", "On the Turning Away" and "High Hopes". Pink Floyd were inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. In 2008, they were awarded the Polar Music Prize for "their monumental contribution over the decades to the fusion of art and music in the development of popular culture".
History
The founding members of Pink Floyd were Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright, who enrolled at the London Polytechnic at Regent Street in September 1962 to study architecture, and Syd Barrett, two years younger than the rest of the band, who had moved to London in 1964 to study at the Camberwell College of Arts. Waters and Barrett were childhood friends; Waters had often visited Barrett and watched him play guitar at Barrett's mother's house. Mason said about Barrett: "In a period when everyone was being cool in a very adolescent, self-conscious way, Syd was unfashionably outgoing; my enduring memory of our first encounter is the fact that he bothered to come up and introduce himself to me."1963–1965: Formation
Waters and Mason met 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. Richard Wright, a fellow architecture student, joined later that year, and the group became a sextet, Sigma 6. Waters played lead guitar, Mason drums, and Wright rhythm guitar, later moving to keyboards. The band performed at private functions and rehearsed in a tearoom in the basement of the Regent Street Polytechnic. They performed songs by the Searchers and material written by their manager and songwriter, fellow student Ken Chapman.In September 1963, Waters and Mason moved into a flat at 39 Stanhope Gardens, Highgate in London, owned by Mike Leonard, a part-time tutor at the nearby Hornsey College of Art and the Regent Street Polytechnic. Mason moved out after the 1964 academic year, and guitarist Bob Klose moved in during September 1964, prompting Waters's switch to bass. Sigma 6 went through several names, including the Meggadeaths, the Abdabs and the Screaming Abdabs, Leonard's Lodgers, and the Spectrum Five, before settling on the Tea Set. In September 1963, as Metcalfe and Noble left to form their own band, the guitarist Syd Barrett joined Klose and Waters at Stanhope Gardens.
Klose introduced the band to the singer Chris Dennis, a technician with the Royal Air Force. In December 1964, they secured their first recording time, at a studio in West Hampstead, through one of Wright's friends, who let them use some downtime free. Wright, who was taking a break from his studies, did not participate. When the RAF assigned Dennis a post in Bahrain in early 1965, Barrett became the band's frontman. Later that year, they became the resident band at the Countdown Club near Kensington High Street in London, where from late night until early morning they played three sets of 90 minutes each. During this period, spurred by the need to extend their sets to minimise song repetition, the band realised that "songs could be extended with lengthy solos", wrote Mason. After pressure from his parents and advice from his college tutors, Klose quit in mid-1965 and Barrett took over lead guitar.
1965–1967: Syd Barrett years
Pink Floyd
The new group rebranded as the Pink Floyd Sound in late 1965. Barrett purportedly created the name on the spur of the moment when he discovered that another band, also called the Tea Set, were to perform at one of their gigs. The name Pink Floyd is derived from the given names of two blues musicians whose Piedmont blues records Barrett had in his collection, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. By 1966, the group's repertoire consisted mainly of rhythm and blues songs, and they had begun to receive paid bookings, including a performance at the Marquee Club in March 1966, where Peter Jenner, a lecturer at the London School of Economics, noticed them. Jenner was impressed by the sonic effects Barrett and Wright created and, with his business partner and friend Andrew King, became their manager. The pair had little experience in the music industry and used King's inheritance to set up Blackhill Enterprises, purchasing about £1,000 worth of new instruments and equipment for the band. Around this time, Jenner suggested the band drop the "Sound" from their name. On 15 October 1966, the band made their major debut at the Roundhouse under the name the Pink Floyd.Under Jenner and King's guidance, Pink Floyd became part of London's underground music scene, playing at venues including All Saints Hall and the Marquee. While performing at the Countdown Club, the band had experimented with long instrumental excursions, and they began to expand them with rudimentary but effective light shows, projected by coloured slides and domestic lights. Jenner and King's social connections helped gain the band prominent coverage in the Financial Times and an article in the Sunday Times which stated: "At the launching of the new magazine IT the other night a pop group called the Pink Floyd played throbbing music while a series of bizarre coloured shapes flashed on a huge screen behind them ... apparently very psychedelic."
In 1966, the band strengthened their business relationship with Blackhill Enterprises, becoming equal partners with Jenner and King and the band members each holding a one-sixth share. By late 1966, their set included fewer R&B standards and more Barrett originals, many of which would be included on their first album. While they had significantly increased the frequency of their performances, the band were still not widely accepted. Following a performance at a Catholic youth club, the owner refused to pay them, claiming that their performance was not music. When their management filed suit in a small claims court against the owner of the youth organisation, a local magistrate upheld the owner's decision. The band was much better received at the UFO Club in London, where they began to build a fan base. Barrett's performances were enthusiastic, "leaping around ... madness ... improvisation ... to get past his limitations and into areas that were ... very interesting. Which none of the others could do", wrote biographer Nicholas Schaffner.
Signing with EMI
In 1967, Pink Floyd began to attract the attention of the music industry. While in negotiations with record companies, IT co-founder and UFO club manager Joe Boyd and Pink Floyd's booking agent, Bryan Morrison, arranged and funded a recording session at Sound Techniques in Kensington. On 15 February 1967, Pink Floyd signed with EMI, receiving a £5,000 advance. EMI released the band's first single, "Arnold Layne", with the B-side "Candy and a Currant Bun", on 10 March 1967 on its Columbia label. Both tracks were recorded on 29 January 1967. "Arnold Layne"'s references to cross-dressing led to a ban by several radio stations; however, creative manipulation by the retailers who supplied sales figures to the music business meant that the single reached number 20 in the UK.EMI-Columbia released Pink Floyd's second single, "See Emily Play", on 16 June 1967. It fared slightly better than "Arnold Layne", peaking at number 6 in the UK. The band performed on the BBC's Look of the Week, where Waters and Barrett, erudite and engaging, faced tough questioning from Hans Keller. They appeared on the BBC's Top of the Pops, a popular programme that controversially required artists to mime their singing and playing. Though Pink Floyd returned for two more performances, by the third, Barrett had begun to unravel, and around this time the band first noticed significant changes in his behaviour. By early 1967, he was regularly using LSD, and Mason described him as "completely distanced from everything going on".