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Background
Pink Floyd are an English rock band that initially
earned recognition for their psychedelic rock
music, and, as they evolved, for their avant-garde
progressive rock music. They are known for philosophical
lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative cover
art, and elaborate live shows. One of rock music's
most successful acts, the group has sold over
200 million albums worldwide and an estimated
73.5 million albums in the United States alone.
Pink Floyd had moderate success in the late 1960s
as a psychedelic band led by the late Syd Barrett;
however, Barrett's erratic behavior forced his
colleagues to eventually replace him with guitarist
and singer David Gilmour. After Barrett's departure,
singer and bass player Roger Waters gradually
became the band's leader and main songwriter until
his eventual departure from the group. The band
recorded several albums, achieving worldwide success
with The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Wish You
Were Here (1975), Animals (1977), and The Wall
(1979). In 1985, Waters declared Pink Floyd defunct,
but the remaining members, led by Gilmour, continued
recording and touring under the name, enjoying
commercial success with A Momentary Lapse of Reason
(1986) and The Division Bell (1994) and eventually
reaching a settlement with Waters over the use
of the name.
Waters performed with the band for the first time
in 24 years on July 2, 2005 at the London Live
8 concert, playing to Pink Floyd's biggest audience
ever.
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Syd
Barrett-led era: 1965–1968
Pink Floyd evolved from an earlier rock
band, formed in 1965, which was at various
times called Sigma 6, The Meggadeaths, The
Architectural Abdabs, The Screaming Abdabs,
and simply The Abdabs. When the band split
up, some members — guitarists Rado
"Bob" Klose and Roger Waters,
drummer Nick Mason, and wind instrument
player Rick Wright — formed a new band
called 'Tea Set'. After a brief stint with
a lead vocalist named Chris Dennis, guitarist
and vocalist Syd Barrett joined the band,
with Waters moving to bass. Also, this was
the period when the band was introduced
into a wide variety of drugs.
When 'Tea Set' found themselves on the same
bill as another band with the same name,
Barrett came up with the alternative name
The Pink Floyd Sound, after two blues musicians,
Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. For a time
after this they oscillated between 'Tea
Set' and 'The Pink Floyd Sound', with the
latter name eventually winning out.
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Pink
Floyd in 1968.
Left to right: Nick Mason, Syd Barrett,
David Gilmour, Roger Waters, and
Richard Wright
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The Sound was dropped fairly quickly, but
the definite article was still used regularly
until 1968. The group's U.K. releases during
the Syd Barrett era credited them as "The
Pink Floyd" as did their first two
U.S. singles. David Gilmour is known to
have referred to the group as "The
Pink Floyd" as late as 1984.
The heavily jazz-oriented Klose left after
recording only a demo, leaving an otherwise
stable lineup with Barrett on guitar and
lead vocals, Waters on bass guitar and backing
vocals, Mason on drums and percussion, and
Wright switching to keyboards and backing
vocals. Barrett soon started writing his
own songs, influenced by American and British
psychedelic rock with his own brand of whimsical
humor. Pink Floyd became a favorite in the
underground movement, playing at such prominent
venues as the UFO club, the Marquee Club
and the Roundhouse.
At the end of 1966 the band were invited
to contribute music for Peter Whitehead's
film Tonite Let's All Make Love in London;
they were filmed recording two tracks ("Interstellar
Overdrive" and "Nick's Boogie")
in January 1967. Although hardly any of
this music made it onto the film, the session
was eventually released as London 1966/1967
in 2005.
As their popularity increased, the band
members formed Blackhill Enterprises in
October 1966, a six-way business partnership
with their managers, Peter Jenner and Andrew
King, issuing the singles "Arnold Layne"
in March 1967 and "See Emily Play"
in June 1967. "Arnold Layne" reached
number 20 in the UK Singles Chart, and "See
Emily Play" reached number 6, granting
the band its first national TV appearance
on Top of the Pops in July 1967. (They had
earlier appeared, performing "Interstellar
Overdrive" at the UFO Club, in a short
documentary, "It's So Far Out It's
Straight Down". This was broadcast
in March 1967 but seen only in the UK's
Granada TV region.)
Released in August 1967, the band's debut
album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, is
today considered to be a prime example of
British psychedelic music, and was generally
well-received by critics at the time. It
is now viewed as one of the best debut albums
by many critics. The album's tracks, predominantly
written by Barrett, showcase poetic lyrics
and an eclectic mixture of music, from the
avant-garde free-form piece "Interstellar
Overdrive" (sample (info)) to whimsical
songs such as "The Scarecrow",
inspired by the Fenlands, a rural region
north of Cambridge (Barrett, Gilmour and
Waters's home town). Lyrics were entirely
surreal and often referred to folklore,
such as "The Gnome". The music
reflected newer technologies in electronics
through its prominent use of stereo panning,
tape editing, echo effects and electric
keyboards. The album was a hit in the UK
where it peaked at #6, but did not do well
in North America, reaching #131 in the U.S.,
and that only after it was reissued in the
wake of the band's stateside commercial
breakthrough in the 1970s. During this period,
the band toured with Jimi Hendrix, which
helped to increase its popularity.
Barrett's decline
As the band became more popular, the stresses
of life on the road and a significant intake
of psychedelic drugs took their toll on
Barrett, whose mental health had been deteriorating
for several months. Barrett's strange behavior
has often been attributed to his drug use.
In January 1968, guitarist David Gilmour
joined the band to carry out Barrett's playing
and singing duties, though evidently Jeff
Beck was considered.
With Barrett's behavior becoming less and
less predictable, and his almost constant
use of LSD, he became very unstable, occasionally
staring into space while the rest of the
band performed. During some performances,
he would just strum one chord for the duration
of a concert, or randomly begin detuning
his guitar. The band's live shows became
increasingly ramshackle until, eventually,
the other band members simply stopped taking
him to the concerts. The last concert featuring
Barrett was on January 20, 1968 on Hastings
Pier. It was originally hoped that Barrett
would write for the band with Gilmour performing
live, but Barrett's increasingly difficult
compositions, such as "Have You Got
It Yet?", which changed melodies and
chord progression with every take, eventually
made the rest of the band give up on this
arrangement. Once Barrett's departure was
formalized in April 1968, producers Jenner
and King decided to remain with him, and
the six-way Blackhill partnership was dissolved.
The band adopted Steve O'Rourke as manager,
and he remained with Pink Floyd until his
death in 2003.
After recording two solo albums (The Madcap
Laughs and Barrett) in 1970 (co-produced
by and sometimes featuring Gilmour, Waters
and Wright) to moderate success, Barrett
went into seclusion. Again going by his
given name, Roger, he lived a quiet life
in his native Cambridge for more than 35
years. Barrett died at his home on July
7, 2006.
Finding their feet: 1968–1970
This period was one of musical experimentation
for the band. Gilmour, Waters and Wright
each contributed material that had its own
voice and sound, giving this material less
consistency than the Barrett-dominated early
years or the more polished, collaborative
sound of later years. As Barrett had been
the lead singer during his era, Gilmour,
Waters and Wright now split both songwriting
and lead vocal duties. Waters mostly wrote
low-key, jazzy melodies with dominant bass
lines and complex, symbolic lyrics, Gilmour
focused on guitar-driven blues jams, and
Wright preferred melodic psychedelic keyboard-heavy
numbers. Unlike Waters, Gilmour and Wright
preferred tracks that had simple lyrics
or that were purely instrumental. Some of
the band's most experimental music is from
this period, such as "A Saucerful of
Secrets", consisting largely of noises,
feedback, percussions, oscillators and tape
loops, and "Careful with That Axe,
Eugene" (which went by a number of
other names as well), a very Waters-driven
song with a bass and keyboard-heavy jam
culminating in crashing drums and Waters'
primal screams.
Whilst Barrett had written the bulk of the
first album, only one composition by him,
the Piper outtake "Jugband Blues",
appeared on the second Floyd album. A Saucerful
of Secrets was released in June 1968, reaching
#9 in the UK and becoming the only Pink
Floyd album not to chart in the U.S. Somewhat
uneven due to Barrett's departure, the album
still contained much of his psychedelic
sound combined with the more experimental
music that would be fully showcased on Ummagumma.
Its centerpiece, the 12-minute title track,
hinted at the epic, lengthy songs to come,
but the album was poorly received by critics
at the time, although critics today tend
to be kinder to the album in the context
of their body of work. Future Pink Floyd
albums would expand upon the idea of long,
sprawling compositions, offering more focused
songwriting with each subsequent release.
Pink Floyd were then recruited by director
Barbet Schroeder to produce a soundtrack
for his film, More, which premiered in May
1969. The music was released as a Floyd
album in its own right, Music From the Film
More, in July 1969; the album achieved another
#9 finish in the UK, and peaked at #153
in the U.S. Critics tend to find the collection
of the film's music patchy and uneven. The
band would use this and future soundtrack
recording sessions to produce work that
may not have fit into the idea of what would
appear on a proper Pink Floyd LP; many of
the tracks on More (as fans usually call
it) were acoustic folk songs. Two of these
songs, "Green Is the Colour" and
"Cymbaline", became fixtures in
the band's live sets for a time and were
a part of their live The Man/The Journey
suite, as can be heard in the many available
bootleg recordings from this period. "Cymbaline"
was also the first Pink Floyd song to deal
with Roger Waters' cynical attitude toward
the music industry explicitly. The rest
of the album consisted of avant-garde incidental
pieces from the score (some of which were
also part of "The Man/The Journey")
with a few heavier rock songs thrown in,
such as "The Nile Song".
The next record, the double album Ummagumma,
was a mix of live recordings and unchecked
studio experimentation by the band members,
with each member recording half a side of
a vinyl record as a solo project (Mason's
first wife makes an unaccredited contribution
as a flautist). Though the album was realized
as solo outings and a live set, it was originally
intended as a purely avant-garde mixture
of sounds from "found" instruments.
The subsequent difficulties in recording
and lack of group organization led to the
shelving of the project. The title is Cambridge
slang for sexual intercourse and reflects
the attitude of the band at the time, as
frustrations in the studio followed them
throughout these sessions. The band was
wildly experimental on the studio disc,
which featured Waters' pure folk "Grantchester
Meadows", an atonal & jarring piano
piece ("Sysyphus"), meandering
progressive rock textures ("The Narrow
Way") and large percussion solos ("The
Grand Vizier's Garden Party"). "Several
Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered
Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict"
is a five-minute song composed entirely
of Roger Water's voice played at varied
speeds, resulting in a noise resembling
rodents and birds. Large portions of the
studio disc were previously played in their
live "The Man/The Journey" concept
piece. The live disc featured acclaimed
performances of some of their most popular
psychedelic-era compositions and caused
critics to receive the album more positively
than the previous two albums. The album
was Pink Floyd's most popular release yet,
hitting UK #5 and making the U.S. charts
at #74.
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Album
art from Atom Heart Mother
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1970's
Atom Heart Mother, the band's first recording
with an orchestra, was collaboration with
avant-garde composer Ron Geesin. One side
of the album consisted of the title piece,
a 23-minute long "rock-orchestral"
suite. The second side featured one song
from each of the band's then-current vocalists
(Roger Waters' folk-rock "If",
David Gilmour's bluesy "Fat Old Sun"
and Rick Wright's nostalgic "Summer
'68"). "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast",
was a sound collage of a man cooking and
eating breakfast and his thoughts on the
matter, linked with instrumentals. The use
of noises, incidental sound effects and
voice samples would thereafter be an important
part of the band's sound. While Atom Heart
Mother was considered a huge step back for
the band at the time and is still considered
one of its most inaccessible albums, it
had the best chart performance for the band
up to that time, reaching #1 in the UK and
#55 in the U.S. It has since been described
by Gilmour as "a load of rubbish"
and Waters has said he wouldn't mind if
it were "thrown in the dustbin and
never listened to by anyone ever again."
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The album was another transitional piece for the
group, hinting at future musical territory such
as "Echoes" in its ambitious title track.
The popularity of the album allowed Pink Floyd
to embark on its first full U.S. tour.
Before releasing its next original album, the
band released a compilation album, Relics, which
contained several early singles and B-sides, along
with one original song (Waters' jazzy "Biding
My Time", part of "The Man/The Journey"
recorded during the Ummagumma sessions). They
also contributed to the soundtrack of Zabriskie
Point, though many of their contributions were
eventually discarded by director Michelangelo
Antonioni.
Breakthrough era: 1971–1975
This is the period in which Pink Floyd shed their
association with the "psychedelic" scene
(and its association with Barrett) and became
a distinctive band who are difficult to classify.
The divergent styles of their primary songwriters,
Gilmour, Waters and Wright, merged into a unique
sound. This era contains what many consider to
be two of the band's masterpiece albums, The Dark
Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here. The sound
became polished and collaborative, with the philosophic
lyrics and distinctive bass lines of Waters combining
with the unique blues guitar style of Gilmour
and Wright's haunting keyboard melodies and harmonic
textures. Gilmour was the dominant vocalist throughout
this period, and female choirs and Dick Parry's
saxophone contributions became a notable part
of the band's style. The sometimes atonal and
harsh sound exhibited in the band's earlier years
gave way to a very smooth, mellow and soothing
sound, and the band's epic, lengthy compositions
reached their zenith with "Echoes".
This period was not only the beginning but the
end of the truly collaborative era of the band;
after 1973 Waters' influence became more dominant
musically as well as lyrically. Wright's last
credited composition and last lead vocal on a
studio album until 1994's The Division Bell were
in this period ("Shine On You Crazy Diamond"
and "Time" respectively), and Gilmour's
writing credits sharply declined in frequency
until Waters left the band in 1985, though he
continued to perform lead vocals and write songs
throughout the whole time. The last ties with
Barrett were severed in musical, as well as literal,
fashion with Wish You Were Here, whose epic track
"Shine On You Crazy Diamond" was written
both as a tribute and eulogy to Barrett.
The band's sound was considerably more focused
on Meddle (1971), with the 23-minute epic "Echoes"
taking up the second side of the LP. "Echoes"
is a smooth progressive rock song with extended
guitar and keyboard solos and a long segue in
the middle consisting largely of synthesized music
produced on guitars, organs, and synths, along
with backward wah pedal guitar sounding like samples
of crows cawing, described by Waters as a "sonic
poem". Meddle was considered by Nick Mason
to be "the first real Pink Floyd album. It
introduced the idea of a theme that can be returned
to." The album had the sound and style of
the succeeding breakthrough-era Pink Floyd albums
but stripped away the orchestra that was prominent
in Atom Heart Mother. Meddle also included the
atmospheric "One of These Days", a concert
favorite featuring Nick Mason's menacing one-line
vocal ("One of these days, I'm going to cut
you into little pieces"), distorted and bluesy
lap steel guitar, and a melody that at one point
fades into a throbbing synthetic pulse quoting
the theme tune of the cult classic science fiction
television show Doctor Who. The mellow feeling
of the next three albums is very present on "Fearless",
and this track displays a folk influence, as does
the prominent lap steel guitar on "A Pillow
of Winds". The latter track is one of the
Floyd's very few acoustic love songs. Waters'
role as lead songwriter began to take form, with
his jazzy "San Tropez" brought to the
band practically completed. Meddle was greeted
both by critics and fans enthusiastically, and
Pink Floyd were rewarded with a #3 album chart
peak in the UK; it only reached #70 in U.S. charts.
According to Nick Mason, this was partly because
Capitol Records had not provided the album with
enough publicity support in the U.S. Today, Meddle
remains one of their most well-regarded efforts.
Obscured by Clouds was released in 1972 as the
soundtrack to the film La Vallee, another art
house film by Barbet Schroeder. This was the band's
first U.S. Top 50 album (where it hit #46), hitting
at #6 in the UK. While Mason described the album
years later as "sensational," it is
less well-regarded by critics. The lyrics of "Free
Four", the first Pink Floyd song to achieve
significant airplay in the U.S., introduced Waters'
ruminations on his father's death in World War
II which would figure in subsequent albums. Two
other songs on the album, "Wot's... Uh the
Deal" and "Childhood's End", also
hint at themes used in later albums, the former
focusing on loneliness and desperation which would
come to full fruit in the Roger Waters-led era,
and the latter hinting much at the next album,
fixated on life, death and the passage of time.
"Childhood's End", inspired by the Arthur
C. Clarke book of the same name, was also Gilmour's
last lyrical contribution for 15 years. The album
was, to an extent, stylistically different from
the preceding Meddle, with the songs generally
being shorter, often taking a somewhat pastoral
approach compared to the atmospheric use of sound
effects and keyboard on sections of Meddle, and
sometimes even running into folk-rock, blues-rock
and piano-driven soft rock ("Burning Bridges",
"The Gold It's in the..." and "Stay"
being the best examples for each).
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The
release of Pink Floyd's massively successful
1973 album, The Dark Side of the Moon, was
a watershed moment in the band's popularity.
Pink Floyd had stopped issuing singles after
1968's "Point Me at the Sky" and
was never a hit-single-driven group, but
The Dark Side of the Moon featured a U.S.
Top 20 single ("Money"). The album
became the band's first #1 on U.S. charts
and, as of December 2006, is one of the
biggest-selling albums in U.S. history,
with more than 15 million units sold, and
one of the best-selling albums worldwide,
with more than 40 million copies sold. The
critically-acclaimed album stayed on the
Billboard Top 200 for an unprecedented 741
weeks (including 591 consecutive weeks from
1976 to 1988), establishing a world record.
It also remained 301 weeks on UK charts,
despite never rising higher than #2 there,
and is highly praised by critics.
Saxophone forms an important part of the
album's sound, exposing the band's jazz
influences (especially that of Rick Wright),
and female backing vocals play a key role
in helping to diversify the album's texture. |
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Album art from
Dark Side
of
the Moon's
"Money" single
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For example, songs such as "Money" and
"Time" are placed on either side of
mellow lap steel guitar sounds (reminiscent of
Meddle) in "Breathe (Reprise)" and female
vocal-laden song "The Great Gig in the Sky"
(with Clare Torry on lead vocal), while minimalist
instrumental "On the Run" is performed
almost entirely on a single synthesizer. Incidental
sound effects and snippets of interviews feature
alongside the music, many of them taped in the
studio. Waters' interviews started out with questions
like "What is your favorite colour?"
in an attempt to get the person comfortable. He
would then ask, "When was the last time you
were violent? Were you in the right?" The
latter answer was played on the album. Other interviews
would ask, "Are you afraid of dying?"
The album's lyrics and sound attempt to describe
the different pressures that everyday life places
upon human beings. This concept (conceived by
Waters in a band meeting around Mason's kitchen
table) proved a powerful catalyst for the band
and together they drew up a list of themes, several
of which would be revisited by Waters on later
albums, such as "Us and Them's" musings
on violence and the futility of war, and the themes
of insanity and neurosis discussed in "Brain
Damage". The album's complicated and precise
sound engineering by Alan Parsons set new standards
for sound fidelity; this trait became a recognizable
aspect of the band's sound and played a part in
the lasting chart success of the album, as audiophiles
constantly replaced their worn-out copies.
Seeking to capitalize on its newfound fame, the
band also released a compilation album, A Nice
Pair, which was a gatefold repackaging of The
Piper at the Gates of Dawn and A Saucerful of
Secrets. It was also during this period that director
Adrian Maben released the first Pink Floyd concert
film, Live at Pompeii. The original theatrical
cut featured footage of the band performing in
1971 at an amphitheatre in Pompeii with no audience
present except the film crew and stage staff.
Maben also recorded interviews and behind-the-scenes
glimpses of the band during recording sessions
for The Dark Side of the Moon at Abbey Road Studios;
although the timeline of events indicate the recording
sessions may have been staged after the recording,
they provide a glimpse into the processes involved
in producing the album. This footage was incorporated
in later video releases of Live at Pompeii.
Wish You Were Here, released in 1975, carries
an abstract theme of absence: absence of any humanity
within the music industry and, most poignantly,
the absence of Syd Barrett. Well-known for its
popular title track, the album includes the largely
instrumental, nine-part song suite "Shine
On You Crazy Diamond", a tribute to Barrett
in which the lyrics deal explicitly with the aftermath
of his breakdown. Many of the musical influences
in the band's past were brought together —
atmospheric keyboards, blues guitar pieces, extended
saxophone solos (by Dick Parry), jazz-fusion workouts
and aggressive slide guitar — in the suite's
different linked parts, culminating in a funeral
dirge played with synthesized horn and ending
with a musical quote from their early single "See
Emily Play" as a final nod to Barrett's early
leadership of the band. The remaining tracks on
the album, "Welcome to the Machine"
and "Have a Cigar", harshly criticize
the music industry; the latter is sung by British
folk singer Roy Harper. It was the first Pink
Floyd album to reach #1 on both the UK and the
U.S. charts, and critics praise it just as enthusiastically
as The Dark Side of the Moon.
In a famous anecdote, a heavyset man, his head
and eyebrows completely shaved, wandered into
the studio while the band was mixing "Shine
On You Crazy Diamond". The band could not
recognize him for some time, when suddenly one
of them realized it was Syd Barrett. On being
asked how he had put on so much weight, he retorted
"I have a fridge full of pork chops".
In an interview for the 2001 BBC Omnibus documentary
'Syd Barrett: Crazy Diamond" (later released
on DVD as The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story),
the story is told in full. Rick Wright spoke about
the session, saying: "One thing that really
stands out in my mind, that I'll never forget;
I was going in to the "Shine On" sessions.
I went in the studio and I saw this guy sitting
at the back of the studio, he was only as far
away as you are from me. And I didn't recognize
him. I said, 'Who's that guy behind you?' 'That's
Syd.' And I just cracked up, I couldn't believe
it... he had shaven all his hair off... I mean,
his eyebrows, everything... he was jumping up
and down brushing his teeth, it was awful. And,
uh, I was in, I mean Roger was in tears, I think
I was; we were both in tears. It was very shocking...
seven years of no contact and then to walk in
while we're actually doing that particular track.
I don't know – coincidence, karma, fate,
who knows? But it was very, very, very powerful".
In the same documentary, Nick Mason stated: "When
I think about it, I can still see his eyes, but...
it was everything else that was different".
In that same interview, Roger Waters has said:
"I had no idea who he was for a very long
time". David Gilmour stated: "None of
us recognized him. Shaved...shaved bald head and
very plump". In the 2006 'definitive edition'
DVD release of The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett
Story in the UK/Europe the director John Edginton's
interviews with Barrett's former Floyd colleagues
are included unedited, with far more detail of
their feelings and actions during Syd Barrett's
tragic breakdown and withdrawal from the band.
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Roger Waters-led era: 1976–1985
During this era, Waters asserted more and more
control over Pink Floyd's output. Wright's influence
became largely inconsequential, and he was fired
from the band during the recording of The Wall.
Much of the music from this period is considered
secondary to the lyrics, which explore Waters'
feelings about his father's death in World War
II and his increasingly cynical attitude towards
political figures such as Margaret Thatcher and
Mary Whitehouse. Although still finely nuanced,
the music grew more guitar-based at the expense
of keyboards and saxophone, both of which became
(at best) part of the music's background texture
along with the obligatory sound effects. A full
orchestra (even larger than the brass ensemble
from Atom Heart Mother) plays a significant role
on The Wall and especially The Final Cut.
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By January
1977, and the release of Animals (UK #2,
U.S. #3), 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
was, however, considerably more guitar-driven
than the previous albums, due to either
the influence of the burgeoning punk-rock
movement or the fact that the album was
recorded at Pink Floyd's new (and somewhat
incomplete) Britannia Row Studios. The album
was also the first to not have a single
songwriting credit for Rick Wright. Animals
again contained lengthy songs tied to a
theme, this time taken in part from George
Orwell's Animal Farm, which used "Pigs",
"Dogs" and "Sheep" as
metaphors for members of contemporary society.
Despite the prominence of guitar, keyboards
and synthesizers still play an important
role on Animals, but the saxophone and female
vocal work that defined much of the previous
two albums' sound is absent. |
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The result is a more hard-rock effort overall,
book ended by two parts of a quiet acoustic piece.
Many critics did not respond well to the album,
finding it "tedious" and "bleak,"
although some celebrated it for almost those very
reasons. For the cover artwork, a giant inflatable
pig was commissioned to float between the chimney
towers of London's Battersea Power Station. However,
the wind made the pig balloon difficult to control,
and in the end it was necessary to matte a photo
of the pig balloon onto the album cover. The pig
was created by Dutch industrial designer and artist
Theo Botschuijver. The pig nevertheless became
one of the enduring symbols of Pink Floyd, and
inflatable pigs were a staple of Pink Floyd live
performances from then on. |
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| 1979's
epic rock opera The Wall, conceived by Waters,
dealt with the themes of loneliness and
failed communication, which were expressed
by the metaphor of a wall built between
a rock artist and his audience. The deciding
moment in which to conceive The Wall was
during a concert in Montreal, Canada in
which Roger Waters spat on an audience member
as he attempted to climb up on stage - it
was this point where Waters felt the alienation
between audience and band. This album gave
Pink Floyd renewed acclaim and their only
chart-topping single with "Another
Brick in the Wall (Part 2)". The Wall
also included the future concert staples
"Comfortably Numb" and "Run
like Hell", with the former in particular
becoming a cornerstone of album-oriented
rock and classic-rock radio play lists as
well as one of the group's best-known songs.
The album was co-produced by Bob Ezrin,
a friend of Waters who shared songwriting
credits on "The Trial" and from
whom Waters later distanced himself after
Ezrin "shot his mouth off to the press."
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Even more than during the Animals sessions, Waters
was asserting his artistic influence and leadership
over the band, using the band's perilous financial
situation to his advantage, which prompted increased
conflicts with the other members. The music had
become distinctly more hard-rock, although the
large orchestrations on some tracks recalled an
earlier period, and there are a few quieter songs
interspersed throughout (such as "Goodbye
Blue Sky", "Nobody Home", and "Vera").
Wright's influence was completely minimalized,
and he was fired from the band during recording,
only returning on a fixed wage for the live shows
in support of the album. Ironically, Wright was
the only member of Pink Floyd to make any money
from the Wall concerts, which were only performed
in several cities — including Dortmund, London,
Los Angeles, New York — over multiple nights,
the rest covering the extensive cost overruns
of their most spectacular concerts yet.
However, in 1989, after the Berlin wall came down
in Germany, Roger Waters agreed to perform "The
Wall" live in concert, at the site of the
former Berlin Wall.
Despite never hitting #1 in the UK (it reached
#3), The Wall spent 15 weeks atop the U.S. charts
in 1980. Critics praised it, and it has been certified
23x platinum by the RIAA, for sales of 11.5 million
copies of the double album in the U.S. alone.
The huge commercial success of The Wall made Pink
Floyd the only artists since the Beatles to have
the best-selling albums of two years (1973 and
1980) in less than a decade.
A film entitled Pink Floyd: The Wall was released
in 1982, incorporating almost all of the music
from the album. The film, written by Waters and
directed by Alan Parker, starred Boomtown Rats
founder Bob Geldof, who re-recorded many of the
vocals, and featured animation by noted British
artist and cartoonist Gerald Scarfe. Film critic
Leonard Maltin referred to the movie as "the
world's longest rock video, and certainly the
most depressing", but it grossed over US$14
million at the North American box office. A song
which first appeared in the movie, "When
the Tigers Broke Free", was released as a
single on a limited basis. This song was finally
made widely available on the compilation album
Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd and the re-release
of The Final Cut. Also in the film is the song
"What Shall We Do Now?" which was cut
out of the original album due to the time constraints
of vinyl records. The only songs from the album
not used were "Hey You" and "The
Show Must Go On."
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Album
art from The Final Cut
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Their
1983 studio album, The Final Cut, was dedicated
by Waters to his father, Eric Fletcher Waters.
Even darker in tone than The Wall, this
album re-examined many previous themes,
while also addressing then-current events,
including Waters' anger at Britain's participation
in the Falklands War, the blame for which
he laid squarely at the feet of political
leaders ("The Fletcher Memorial Home").
It concludes with a cynical and frightening
glimpse at the possibility of nuclear war
("Two Suns in the Sunset"). Michael
Kamen and Andy Bown contributed keyboard
work in lieu of Richard Wright, whose departure
had not been formally announced before the
album's release.
Though technically a Pink Floyd album, the
LP's front cover displayed no words, only
the back cover reading: "The Final
Cut - A requiem for the post-war dream by
Roger Waters, performed by Pink Floyd: Roger
Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason".
Roger Waters received the sole songwriting
credit for the entire record, which became
a prototype in sound and form for later
Waters solo projects. |
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Waters has since said that he offered to release
the record as a solo album, but the rest of the
band rejected this idea. However, in his book
'Inside Out,' drummer Nick Mason says that no
such discussions ever took place. Gilmour reportedly
asked Waters to hold back the release of the album
so that he could write enough material to contribute,
but this request was refused. The music's tone
is largely similar to The Wall's but somewhat
quieter and softer, resembling songs like "Nobody
Home" more than "Another Brick in the
Wall (Part 2)." It is also more repetitive,
with certain leitmotifs cropping up continually.
Only moderately successful with fans by Floyd's
standards (UK #1, U.S. #6), but reasonably well-received
by critics, the album yielded one minor radio
hit (albeit in bowdlerized form ), "Not Now
John", the only hard-rock song on the album
(and the only one partially sung by Gilmour).
The arguments between Waters and Gilmour at this
stage were rumored to be so bad that they were
supposedly never seen in the recording studio
simultaneously, and Gilmour's co-producer credit
was dropped from the album sleeve (though he received
attendant royalties). There was no tour for the
album, although parts of it have since been performed
live by Waters on his subsequent solo tours.
After The Final Cut Capitol Records released the
compilation Works, which made the 1970 Waters
track "Embryo" available for the first
time on a Pink Floyd album, although the track
had been released on the 1970 VA compilation Picnic
- A Breath of Fresh Air on the Harvest Records
label. The band members then went their separate
ways and spent time working on individual projects.
Gilmour was the first to release his solo album
About Face in March 1984. Wright joined forces
with Dave Harris of Fashion to form a new band,
Zee, which released the experimental album Identity
a month after Gilmour's project. In May 1984,
Waters released The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking,
a concept album once proposed as a Pink Floyd
project. Waters had written this at the same time
as The Wall and during proposal of both, the band
selected The Wall. A year after his band mates'
projects, Mason released the album Profiles, a
collaboration with Rick Fenn of 10cc which featured
guest appearances by Gilmour and UFO keyboardist
Danny Peyronel.
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David Gilmour-led era: 1987–1995
Waters announced in December 1985 that he was
departing Pink Floyd, describing the band as "a
spent force creatively", but in 1986 Gilmour
and Mason began recording a new Pink Floyd album.
At the same time, Roger Waters was working on
his second solo album, entitled Radio K.A.O.S.
(1987). A bitter legal dispute ensued with Waters
claiming that the name "Pink Floyd"
should have been put to rest, but Gilmour and
Mason upheld their conviction that they had the
legal right to continue as "Pink Floyd."
The suit was eventually settled out of court.
After considering and rejecting many other titles,
the new album was released as A Momentary Lapse
of Reason (UK #3, U.S. #3). Without Waters, who
had been the band's dominant songwriter for a
decade, the band sought the help of outside writers.
As Pink Floyd had never done this before (except
for the orchestral contributions of Geesin and
Ezrin), this move received much criticism. Ezrin,
who had renewed his friendship with Gilmour in
1983 (as Ezrin co-produced Gilmour's About Face
album), served as co-producer as well as being
one of these writers along with Jon Carin who
wrote the music for Learning To Fly and played
much of the Keyboards on the album . Richard Wright
also returned, at first as a salaried employee
during the final recording sessions, and then
officially rejoining the band after the subsequent
tour.
Gilmour later admitted that Mason and Wright had
hardly played on the album. Because of Mason and
Wright's limited contributions, some critics say
that A Momentary Lapse of Reason should really
be regarded as a Gilmour solo effort, in much
the same way that The Final Cut might be regarded
as a Waters album.
A year later, the band released a double live
album and a concert video taken from its 1988
Long Island shows, entitled Delicate Sound of
Thunder, and later recorded some instrumentals
for a classic-car racing film La Carrera Panamericana,
set in Mexico and featuring Gilmour and Mason
as participating drivers. During the race Gilmour
and manager Steve O'Rourke (acting as his map-reader)
crashed. O'Rourke suffered a broken leg, but Gilmour
walked away with just some bruises. The instrumentals
are notable for including the first Floyd material
co-written by Wright since 1975, as well as the
only Floyd material co-written by Mason since
Dark Side of the Moon.
1992 saw the box set release of Shine On. The
9-disc set included re-releases of the studio
albums A Saucerful of Secrets, Meddle, The Dark
Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals,
The Wall, and A Momentary Lapse of Reason. A bonus
disc entitled The Early Singles was also included.
The set's packaging featured a case allowing the
albums to stand vertically together, with the
side-by-side spines displaying an image of the
Dark Side of the Moon cover. The circular text
of each CD includes the almost illegible words
"The Big Bong Theory". The year also
saw the release of Roger Waters' solo album Amused
to Death.
The band's next recording was the 1994 release,
The Division Bell, which was much more of a group
effort than Momentary Lapse had been, with Wright
now reinstated as a full band member, but not
appearing much on the album. The album was received
more favorably by critics and fans alike than
Lapse had been, but was still heavily criticized
as tired and formulaic. It was the second Pink
Floyd album to reach #1 on both the UK and U.S.
charts.
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The
Division Bell was another concept album,
in some ways representing Gilmour's take
on the same themes Waters had tackled with
The Wall. The title was suggested to Gilmour
by his friend Douglas Adams. Many of the
lyrics were co-written by Polly Samson,
Gilmour's girlfriend at the time, whom he
married shortly after the album's release.
Besides Samson, the album featured most
of the musicians who had joined the A Momentary
Lapse of Reason tour, as well as saxophonist
Dick Parry, a contributor to the mid-70s
Floyd albums. Anthony Moore, who had co-written
the lyrics for several songs on the previous
album, penned the tune by Guy Pratt "Wearing
the Inside Out", Wright's first lead
vocal on a Pink Floyd record since Dark
Side of the Moon. Moore's writing continued
on nearly every song on Wright's 1996 solo
album, Broken China.
The band released a live album entitled
P*U*L*S*E in 1995. It hit #1 in U.S. and
featured songs recorded during the "Division
Bell" tour from concerts in London,
Rome, Hanover and Modena. |
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A
portion of the "High Hopes"
music
video featured on The Division
Bell.
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The Division Bell concerts featured entire performances
of The Dark Side of the Moon. The tour would mark
the first time the band performed the Dark Side
of the Moon in its entirety in over two decades.
VHS and Laserdisc versions of the concert at London's
Earl's Court 20 October 1994, was also released.
A DVD edition was released on 10 July 2006 and
quickly topped the charts. The 1994 CD case had
an LED, timer IC, and battery which caused a red
flash to blink once per second, like a heartbeat,
as it sat in the owner's CD collection.
Furthermore, in 1995, the band received their
first and only Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental
Performance for "Marooned". |
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Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
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