Pink Floyd

Original Pink Floyd line-up had Syd Barrett on lead guitar instead of Dave Gilmour, otherwise personnel has remained constant. Roger Keith (Syd) Barrett was born January 1946 in university town Cambridge, England. Together with Waters and Gilmour he attended Cambridge High School for Boys. Moving to London, he attended Camberwell School of Art where, in addition to painting, he learned to play guitar. He played in various groups, Geoff Mott and the Mottos, The Hollering Blues, and, as a folk-duo, with Dave Gilmour who taught him Stones licks during their lunch-break.

George Roger Waters left Carnbridge to study architecture at the Regent Street Polytechnic in London. Doing the same architectural course were Nicholas Berkeley Mason and Richard William Wright both Londoners who arrived at the poly via Frensham Heights and Haberdashers'. Waters, Mason and Wright formed a group and called themselves Sigma 6. They were managed by Ken Chapman, an ex poly student but he had no luck in selling them to a record company. They tried for fame as The T-Set, also as The Abdabs, even as The Screaming Abdabs.

The Abdabs broke-up and Juliette Gale married Rick Wright. Mason, Wright and Waters tried again, this time bringing in jazz guitarist Bob Close. Waters also brought in Syd Barren whom he knew from Cambridge. Barrett named the group after a record he owned by the Georgia bluesmen Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. He called them The Pink Floyd Sound. Musical differences between Bob Close and Barrett caused the former to leave.

The line up established, they played at a few dances and the like, but their first regular venue was a regular Sunday afternoon gig at The Marquee, called "The Spontaneous Underground" which began in February 1966. Here they built up their first small following and became more or less the "official" band of the London underground. It was here that Peter Jenner, their first manager saw them, and where they developed their electronic feedback techniques in-between playing Chuck Berry numbers.

In October 1966 they got a regular weekly gig at the London Free School's Sound/Light Workshop in All Saint's Church Hall, Notting Hill. Here, an American couple, Joel and Toni Brown from Tim Leary's Millbrook Institute, first projected slides over them and began to develop the idea of a lightshow to accompany the music.

On Oct 31, 1966 the Floyd plus Pete Jenner and Andrew King set up Blackhill Enterprises as a six-way partnership to manage the group. In November they got in Joe Gannon to handle their lights as the Brown's returned to Millbrook.

Dec 23, 1966 saw first of the UFO Club evenings, held every Friday night in an Irish Ballroom on Tottenham Court Road. The Floyd got the music and lights contract and became the house band. UFO became the "in" club of the burgeoning London underground scene and together with The Soft Machine, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, and Tomorrow, they were the archetypes of the new wave of "psychedelic rock" groups.

In January 1967, Joe Boyd, musical director of UFO, produced their first single, a Syd Barrett composition Arnold Layne. It concerned a pervert-transvestite who stole ladies underwear from washing-lines, and was banned by the pirate station Radio London for being "too smutty". It scraped to No. 25 in the U.K. charts.

On Apr 28, 1967 they played at the famous Fourteen Hour Technicolour Dream Free Speech Festival for "International Times", held at Alexander Palace, North London. This was Britain's equivalent to the "be-in"s held in U.S. and Floyd had the top spot: they appeared at dawn.

On May 12, they presented "Games For May" at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall. In the days when a "name" group only played for 30 minutes, it was an ambitious undertaking to do a full-length solo show. They used a rudimentary quadraphonic sound system with EMI installing two speaker stacks in rear of the hall. There were light projections, millions of bubbles and free daffodils given away. Barrett wrote new material including Games For May. With a change of title, See Emily Play, the song was issued as a single. By July it was at No. 5 in U.K. charts. They appeared on "Top Of The Pops" and were well on their way to becoming a "name" group. Their first album, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (title taken by Barrett from one of the chapters of "Wind In The Willows") was released on Aug 5, 1967 and of the 11 songs on the album, 10 were by Barrett. He also did the drawing on the back sleeve.

He may have overdone it with the acid, or maybe it just assisted some more deep-seated problems in coming to the fore, but he had been behaving erratically prior to the tour and his condition worsened hy the day. He became even more unpredictable, and on some gigs would only stand and stare at the audience while strumming the same chord all evening. There are many stories about his breakdown but they all added up to the same thing: Syd was becoming an acid casualty.

November 18 and another single, Apples And Oranges was released, the product of much recording at De Lane Lea, Sound Techniques and EMI Abbey Road. It flopped. Meanwhile, things were getting totally out of hand with Barrett - and eventually it was decided to get in his old school chum Dave Gilmour to play guitar. He joined the Floyd on Feb 18, 1968 and for about seven weeks he and Barrett played together, but it was only a matter of time before Syd left.

On April 6 he did Syd Barrett. David Gilmour was born in Cambridge and went to same school as Barrett and Waters. Before joining Floyd he went to Paris and formed his own group, with whom he toured Europe. Fluent in French, among his many jobs over there was working as a male model. Gilmour is the one member of Floyd who keeps in touch with music "scene"; the only one ever seen in clubs.

Shortly before Barrett left, they released It Would Be So Nice, which flopped. They didn't seem able to make singles any more.

Blackhill organised the first of their famed free concerts in London's Hyde Park and on June 29 the Floyd, together with Roy Harper and Jethro Tull, played to an enthusiastic audience. This, together with the critical acclaim which greeted their second album, Saucerful Of Secrets, released on the same day, gave them the confidence they needed to withstand loss of group's principal player and composer. Roger Waters emerged as new central figure, composing numbers such as Let There Be Light and Set The Control For The Heart Of The Sun. The title track, in particular, pointed the way towards electronic embellishments .

They did American and European tours from July to September of 1968, perfecting their act until it became a full-scale concert production with special effects and light-show. At London Festival Hall on April 14, the Floyd presented "More Furious Madness From The Massed Gadgets of Auximenes" where they premiered their fabled Azimuth Coordinator. They toured with an act called "The Journey" featuring 360 degree sound and their Azimuth, a sort of joy-stick device for projecting sound around a hall.

December 1969 saw them in Rome, writing and recording their score for Michaelangelo Antonioni's "Zabriskie Point". In the end not much wag used though Come In Number 51, Your Time Is Up was a very effective backing to the scene of the desert mansion exploding, even though it was just Eugene with a new title. In March 1970, MGM released a soundtrack album of film including Floyd's three contribuhons. "It was hell, sheer hell", said Roger Waters of working with Antonioni.

In May 1970 David Gilmour joined Syd Barrett on stage at a show in Olympia. But the Floyd did nothing new until Bath Festival, where on 3 a.m. billing, they premlered their new Atom Heart Mother album complete with male and female chorus, a horn section and fireworks. The album was released in October and attracted vast public attention, reaching No. I in U.K. charts and projecting Floyd to superstardom. Looking back, however, it is certainly not one of their best albums. A week before Atom Heart Mother was released, Syd Barrett's second solo album came out. It had been produced by Dave Gilmour and Rick Wright. That summer Floyd did a European tour and on July 18, another free concert in Hyde Park, this time attracting 100,000 people. Subsequently, toured U.S., having 40,000 dollars-worth of gear stolen in the process.

On May I5 they did a two-and-a-half-hour star-billing set at a Crystal Palace Garden Party complete with fireworks and a 5O-foot inflatable octopus which rose from the lake while they pbyed Return To The Sun of Nothing (later called Echoes). In teeming rain, they encored with Astronome Domine. Unfortunately the volume of the speakers killed the fish in the lake. They toured the far East, Japan, Australia and in October and November did another U.S. tour.

Meddle was released on November 13 to a lukewarm reception from critics. Like many other bands in both Britain and the U.S., the Floyd underwent a very bland period in early '70s.

Also in 1972 came the film of the Floyd at Pompeii, made by Adrian Maben for European TV, and first shown at the Edinburgh Festival in September. But most of the year was taken up with recording Dark Slde Of The Moon, which altogether took nine months of meticulous work. It was premiered with a special presentation at the London Planetarium, March 1973. This was their magnum opus-indeed, the album which to many latter-day aficionados "is" the Floyd. The group dealt with stress, lunacy and death in contemporary society; the whole conveyed via one of the classiest production jobs (by the Floyd themselves) on record. Cynics have suggested that the album's success was in large part due to the briliance of its production - a stereo wet dream for hi-fi snobs everywhere - but it would be unfair to take credit away from the band for what was a considerable achievement.

Dark Side Of The Moon was a gigantic seller. It provided the Floyd with their first U.S. No. I and took-up permanent residency on the British charts for more than two years. Roger Waters: "Not a bad album, though I do say so myself". They toured the U.S. employing a girl backing-group, The Black berries, who were more used to soul shows. On their return they played London's Earls Court before 18,000 people, hauling out a whole artillery of spectacular visuals: crashing aircraft, dry ice, lights, an inflatable man with blazing green eyes and a gong which burst into flames. They then retired for half a year, only emerging in December to play a benefit for Robert Wyatt, the ex Soft Machine drummer who had broken his back. They raised 10,000 pounds.

It was around this time that stories started filtering through the rock press (the Floyd have never readily made themselves available for interviews) that the band were experiencing real problems producing material to match calibre of omnipresent Dark Side Of The Moon.

In November, they toured the U.K., experiencing an unprecedented demand for tickets but turning in somewhat desultory performances. A bootleg recorded at their concert at Trentham Gardens, Stoke, on November 19 was mistaken by many people as their next official album; and there were reports of its selling l50,000 copies in a matter of weeks.

The track Shine On You Crazy Diamond (dedicated to Barrett) possibly even the title itself - suggests that after all these years the Floyd still mourn the loss of Syd Barrett. It could just be that they need some of Syd's crazed energy to stop them lapsing into artistic slumber. And if that isn't enough, the shadow of Dark Side Of The Moon looks like hovering over them for some time to come. First two albums below subsequently re-issued as double-set A Nice Pair on Harrest.