Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd
	at Earls Court, 18 May 1973
Background information
Origin	London, England
Genres	Progressive rock, space rock, psychedelic rock, art rock
Years active	1965–1994, 2014; (One-off reunion 2005)
Labels	EMI, Harvest, Capitol, Tower, Columbia
Associated acts	Joker's Wild, Zee, Deep End
Website	www.pinkfloyd.co.uk
Past members	Syd Barrett; Roger Waters; David Gilmour; Richard Wright; Nick Mason

Pink Floyd is an English rock band that became famous in the 1960s and 1970s. They performed for more than 30 years, and have sold more than 200 million (200,000,000) albums. They are famous for their live shows and deep music. Most of their albums are concept albums, which means every song is linked through a theme. Their first album was The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which was released in 1967. Their latest album is The Endless River, which was released in November 2014. The band was named after the blues artists Pink Anderson and Floyd Council by Syd Barrett, one of the band's founder members. In 2005, they played at a concert called Live Aid after 24 years of not playing together. The line up was David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Richard Wright. They have made some very popular albums, including The Dark Side of the Moon, which was released in 1973 and The Wall, which was released in 1979. After Richard Wright died in 2008, David Gilmour said that he did not want to reunite, despite Roger saying he might want to.

Early history

Syd Barrett started the group, and played guitar and sang in the band. He left soon after, at the start of 1968, because of a mental illness that was made worse by heavy drug use. The other people in the band were Roger Waters (bass guitar and vocals), David Gilmour (lead guitar and vocals), Richard Wright (keyboard and vocals), and Nick Mason (drums). David Gilmour joined the band in 1968. Roger Waters quit the band in 1985.

During most of their career, they played a kind of rock music that some people call progressive rock.

Later history

The original members of Pink Floyd met in an architectural college. The band started as a blues band. Later, under Syd Barrett's leadership, they played music that was psychedelic in style. After Barrett left the band, they started to play longer and more complicated songs, and to play at a lot of colleges and universities. Soon, they were famous as studio musicians who loved to experiment with music. On the album Atom Heart Mother, from 1970, they used a brass band and a choir.

They used a lot of things to make their concerts interesting to watch. They had a round movie screen on the stage. They would show videos on the screen when they played. They also used lighting and lasers in a much fancier way than many bands do. They also had big balloon puppets. The most famous is in the shape of a pig, which first appeared on the cover for their album, Animals. The pig has since become a symbol of Pink Floyd. Another symbol that reminds people of Pink Floyd is a prism with light shining through it. This was on the cover of Dark Side of the Moon, one of their most popular albums. The album was released in 1973, and stayed on music charts for a very long time. Millions of people bought it.

The album The Wall, recorded in 1979, was also famous. It was made into a movie, directed by Alan Parker, in 1982. That album is important to the history of the group. It talks about the distance they put between them and their fans. It was the last album they all worked on together before starting to split up.

Roger Waters forced Richard Wright to leave the band in 1979, but Wright came back in 1987, after Waters quit. Waters tried to sue the other members so that they could not call themselves Pink Floyd without him, but he did not succeed. Because of this and other reasons, there was a lot of anger and bitterness between Waters and the other members of the band, especially Gilmour.

Pink Floyd without Roger Waters

The last album of new songs that Pink Floyd released is called The Division Bell. It was made in 1994, when Pink Floyd also played their last concert tour. The last time that Pink Floyd played was in 2005, as part of the Live 8 concerts for charity. Waters sang with the band for the first time since leaving the band. It was a big surprise to many people who thought Pink Floyd would never play together again, especially not with Roger Waters.

Syd Barrett died of pancreatic cancer in 2006. Richard Wright died of cancer in 2008.

In 2014, Pink Floyd released their first album in over 20 years: The Endless River.

In 2022, the band released "Hey, Hey, Rise Up!". It was a single released to support Ukraine when Russia invaded them.

Discography

Pink Floyd, 1973

Main page: Pink Floyd discography

Studio albums

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967)
A Saucerful of Secrets (1968)
More (1969)
Ummagumma (studio & live album) (1969)
Atom Heart Mother (1970)
Meddle (1971)
Obscured by Clouds (1972)
Dark Side Of The Moon (1973)
Wish You Were Here (1975)
Animals (1977)
The Wall (1979)
The Final Cut (1983)
A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987)
The Division Bell (1994)
The Endless River (2014)

Pink Floyd Media

Waters performing with Pink Floyd at Leeds University in 1970
Pink Floyd in 1971, following Barrett's departure. From left to right: Waters, Mason, Gilmour, Wright.
Pink Floyd performing on their early 1973 US tour, shortly before the release of The Dark Side of the Moon
The Black Strat, a black Fender Stratocaster bought by Gilmour in 1970 and used on songs including "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", "Money" and "Comfortably Numb"
Battersea Power Station is featured in the cover image for Animals.
The Astoria recording studio
Pink Floyd in 1989 on the Momentary Lapse of Reason tour
Waters (right) rejoined his former bandmates at Live 8 in Hyde Park, London on 2 July 2005.

Other websites

Pink Floyd's UK site Archived 2009-03-18 at the Wayback Machine
Pink Floyd's U.S. site
Another Link on the Wall Archived 2024-03-21 at the Wayback Machine - A large collection of fan sites, news resources and other websites, updated regularly.