1965-Roger WatersBass, vocals1965-1985
Syd BarrettGuitar, vocals1965-1968
Rick WrightKeyboards1965-1981, 1987-2008
Nick MasonDrums1965-
David GilmourGuitar, vocals1968-
They were named after two American blues musicians: Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. Original frontman Syd Barrett had albums from both artists in his personal collection. Other names the band used early on include Tea Set, Sigma 6, The Megadeaths (sometimes spelled Meggadeaths), The Abdabs, Leonard's Lodgers and Spectrum Five.
Bassist Roger Waters, keyboardist Rick Wright and drummer Nick Mason formed the band when they met at a London architectural school. Vocalist/guitarist Syd Barrett joined them shortly after. Mason is the only Pink Floyd member to appear on every studio album the band recorded.
Syd Barrett was one of the first high-profile acid casualties. The original Pink Floyd frontman and driving creative force, Barrett became increasingly erratic early in the band's career and was out by 1968 because he would refuse to perform live or, when he agreed to do so, would prove unsteady and unmanageable. When Barrett couldn't contribute musically, the remaining members hoped he could stay on as a songwriter, similar to what Brian Wilson did for
The Beach Boys, but he was too far gone. On July 7, 2006 Barrett died in his home in Cambridge at the age of 60 from pancreatic cancer.
David Gilmour has an extensive collection of classic guitars, for a time including the first Fender Stratocaster to have a serial number on it (#0001 to be exact). He bought it off his guitar tech, Phil Taylor, in 1978. In 2019 he sold the guitar for $1,815,000 as part of a Christie's charity auction.
Roger Waters loves golf. On the band's later tours, he made an effort to book hotels near golf courses. He bought a house in Bridgehampton to be closer to the National Golf Links in Shinnecock Hills, New York.
Because they were rarely pictured on album covers (they appear on the cover of their 1969 album Ummagumma) and the light show was the focus of attention at concerts, many people have no idea what the band members look like. This has helped them remain anonymous and live more normal lives.
In the '60s, they pioneered the psychedelic music scene that gave fans a completely different concert experience. Audiences came to listen to the music and enjoy then-revolutionary visual effects, including the "liquid light shows" that Floyd definitively pioneered in London. There was little dancing beyond swaying, contrasting heavily with the energy and motion of most rock shows.
They were the first band to use a quadraphonic sound system at their concerts. Using four different channels of audio, it was an early version of surround sound.
Their famous light shows started off very low-tech. In the early days, they used slide projectors and colored condoms stretched over lights.
In 2002, Gilmour sold his London house for $6.48 million, and gave all the money to charity. He claimed he had grown tired of having too many expensive possessions.
In addition to being the first British rock group to use a liquid light show, they were the first act to use gold-colored lasers in their shows.
They put a big emphasis on the artwork for their albums. Their art director, Storm Thorgeson (head of Hipgnosis design studio), would listen to the albums, then bring ideas to the band, which they usually loved. Thorgeson worked on the vast majority of the band's covers, including the iconic prism image on The Dark Side of the Moon.
In 1974, in an attempt to keep ticket prices low, they appeared in a commercial for French soft drink company Gini. This went against their anti-commercialism philosophy and was a horrible experience. They haven't done anything like that since, though copyright issues around "
The Great Gig In The Sky" allowed Wright to unilaterally approve the song's use in a 1974
Dole Bananas commercial and a 1990 UK Nurofen painkillers commercial.
They have worked on the soundtracks to the movies Zabriske Point, The Valley, and Tonight Let's All Make Love In London.
The Muppet Show has a character called Sgt. Floyd Pepper, his name being an homage to Pink Floyd (as well as to the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band). He's a laid-back, somewhat cynical bass player for the show's resident rock band, Dr. Teeth And The Electric Mayhem.
The Dark Side of The Moon set an impressive chart record that is largely misunderstood. The album has logged over 880 weeks on the Billboard Albums chart, which is far more than its closest competitor, Johnny Mathis' Johnny's Greatest Hits, which stayed for 490 weeks and is unlikely to return. Most of Dark Side's weeks on the chart came during a run from 1977-1988 when it never dropped off. For a long time, its number of weeks was 741, but reissues, digital releases and promotions have since led to its occasional re-entry and have added to that total.
Barrett had been close friends with the other members and left a long emotional echo with his departure. "Shine On you Crazy Diamond" was a tribute to him, as indicated in its title S-hine on Y-ou crazy D-iamond. "Wish You Were Here" was also written in his memory. In the movie The Wall, several scenes were inspired from actual events involving Barrett. In the movie, the character Pink shaves his head and all his facial hair, including his eyebrows - something Barrett did just before making a surprise visit to the studio.
The Dark Side Of The Moon, released in 1973, was a highly collaborative album, but after that Roger Waters took over as the main songwriter and creative engine. When the band took time off after their 1977 Animals tour, Waters made the demo for The Wall while Gilmour and Wright both made solo albums. The band was fractured, but stayed together due to financial obligations and, according to Waters, "fear and avarice."
When Waters left the group in 1985 because he felt the band was a creative dead end, he was stunned when they continued on without him. The first Pink Floyd album without Waters was A Momentary Lapse Of Reason in 1987.
There are a striking number of coincidences between events in the movie
The Wizard Of Oz and musical cues (and lyrics) on the 1973 Pink Floyd album
Dark Side Of The Moon. It is highly improbable that the band had a print of the movie with them when they recorded that album at Abbey Road, and few attempt to claim it to have been deliberate (David Gilmour dismisses it as nonsense), but the coincidences are remarkable nonetheless. If you begin the album on the third roar of the MGM lion (using the NTSC version of the movie, not the 25 fps PAL version which runs a little over 4% faster) the coincidences include (but are not limited to):
The line "balanced on the biggest wave" comes as Dorothy balances on the fence.
-The song "On the Run" starts as Dorothy falls off the fence.
"The Great Gig in the Sky" begins when the tornado first appears.
The song "Us and Them" is played when Dorothy meets the Wicked Witch of the West.
The line "black and blue" is repeated when they are talking to one another (Dorothy in her blue outfit, the Wicked Witch in black).
The line "the lunatic is on the grass..." coincides with Dorothy meeting the Scarecrow.
When we first see Miss Gulch on her bicycle, the song "Time" starts with its bells and alarms.
Dorothy asks Professor Marvel what else he sees in his crystal ball as the line "thought I'd something more to say" comes along in the song "Time."
As the Scarecrow sings "If I Only Had a Brain", Pink Floyd sing "Brain Damage."
Side 1 of the original vinyl album (up to the end of "The Great Gig in the Sky") is exactly as long as the black and white portion of the film.
As Dorothy listens to the Tin Man's chest, the album ends with the famous heartbeat sound effect.
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Suggestion credit:
Dieter - Turnhout, Belgium
During the In the Flesh tour supporting the band's 10th studio album, Animals, Waters would shout out the chronological number of a particular show during the performance of "Pigs (Three Different Ones)." He wanted to stop bootleggers, and identifying each show theoretically allowed them to trace back the source of illegal recordings.
They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. Waters refused to attend, and Barrett was absent due to his health. The other band members accepted the award on behalf of both men. Gilmour and Wright played an acoustic version of "Wish You Were Here" with Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins at the ceremony.
The band reunited for a performance at Live 8 in 2005, and in 2007 the surviving members got together for a tribute to Syd Barrett - just not all at the same time. Gilmour, Mason and Wright played together, and Waters performed alone, skipping the final performance by all of the other artists who played the gig.
According to the book
Comfortably Numb: A History of The Wall by Vernon Fitch and Richard Mahon, there were five different versions of the album
The Wall: Water's original demo, the final album version, and three additional demos. The book was released in a limited edition run of just 5000 copies.
Founding member Rick Wright died of cancer on September 15, 2008 at age 65. Mason and Gilmour both said that Wright's keyboards had been pivotal to the band's sound and didn't know how Pink Floyd could continue without him. The two men reunited in the studio to create their 2014 album The Endless River from old 1993 recording in tribute to Wright. Afterwards, Gilmour stated that Pink Floyd officially finished after that (though they went on to do some more stuff sporadically over the years).
In Nick Mason's rock n' roll memoir Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd, he says that really the only reason Roger ever bothered to approach him in the first place was because he wanted to borrow Nick's car.
When their record label EMI allowed individual Pink Floyd songs to be downloaded in March, 2010, the band sued, as their contract states that tracks cannot be sold unbundled from albums. EMI argued that the contract applied only to physical albums, not downloads, but the judge didn't agree, ruling that the label is "not entitled to exploit recordings by online distribution or by any other means other than the complete original album without Pink Floyd's consent."
Syd Barrett was a distant cousin of folk musician Richard Thompson. Their shared ancestor was Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Britain's first female doctor. Thompson revealed the connection in his 2021 memoir Beeswing: Fairport, Folk Rock and Finding My Voice 1967–75, where he also said that he opened for Pink Floyd at the UFO club in London in 1967, unaware he and Barrett were related.
David Gilmour loves carpentry.
He told The Guardian, "I've made things out of wood pretty much my whole life, from boot removers to tables, to treehouses, to boathouses."
However, his passion has been stymied. "The insurance chaps are not overly keen on me doing it in case I chop off my fingers," Gilmour bewailed.
