Pink Floyd

History

1963–1965: Formation

Roger Waters and Nick Mason met in September 1962 while studying architecture at the London Polytechnic at Regent Street, London. 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 the 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, Metcalfe and Noble left to form their own band. The guitarist Syd Barrett, a childhood friend of Waters, joined Klose and Waters at Stanhope Gardens. 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."

Klose introduced the band to the singer Chris Dennis, a technician with the Royal Air Force (RAF). 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 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

The group, comprising Mason, Wright, Waters and Barrett, 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 was 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. 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 (equivalent to £16,300 in 2025) 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, Pink Floyd 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 ... [inspired] to get past his limitations and into areas that were ... very interesting. Which none of the others could do", wrote biographer Nicholas Schaffner.

1968–1972: Musical transition

In 1968, Pink Floyd returned to Abbey Road Studios to complete their second album, A Saucerful of Secrets, which they had begun in 1967 under Barrett's leadership. The album included Barrett's final contribution to their discography, "Jugband Blues". Waters developed his own songwriting, contributing "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun", "Let There Be More Light", and "Corporal Clegg". Wright composed "See-Saw" and "Remember a Day". Norman Smith encouraged them to self-produce their music, and they recorded demos of new material at their houses. With Smith's instruction at Abbey Road, they learned how to use the recording studio to realise their artistic vision. However, Smith remained unconvinced by their music, and when Mason struggled to perform his drum part on "Remember a Day", Smith stepped in as his replacement. Wright recalled Smith's attitude about the sessions, "Norman gave up on the second album ... he was forever saying things like, 'You can't do twenty minutes of this ridiculous noise'". As neither Waters nor Mason could read music, to illustrate the structure of "A Saucerful of Secrets", they invented their own system of notation. Gilmour later described their method as looking "like an architectural diagram".

Released in June 1968, A Saucerful of Secrets featured a psychedelic cover designed by Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell of Hipgnosis. The first of several Pink Floyd album covers designed by Hipgnosis, it was the second time that EMI permitted one of their groups to contract designers for an album jacket. The release reached number nine, spending 11 weeks on the UK chart. Record Mirror gave the album an overall favourable review, but urged listeners to "forget it as background music to a party". John Peel described a live performance of the title track as "like a religious experience", while NME described the song as "long and boring ... [with] little to warrant its monotonous direction". On the day after the album's UK release, Pink Floyd performed at the first ever free concert in Hyde Park. In July 1968, they made a second visit to the US. Accompanied by the Soft Machine and the Who, it marked Pink Floyd's first major tour. That December, they released "Point Me at the Sky"; no more successful than the two singles they had released since "See Emily Play", it was their last single until "Money" in 1973.

Ummagumma represented a departure from Pink Floyd's previous work. Released as their first double-LP on EMI's Harvest label, the first disc contained live performances of the band's concert staples recorded at the Manchester College of Commerce and Mothers, a club in Birmingham. The second LP contained experimental contributions from each band member, a concept spearheaded by Wright, who, inspired by the vast studio technology and varied instruments at the group's disposal, expressed his desire to create "real music". Ummagumma was released in November 1969 and received positive reviews, with contemporaneous critics commending the band's unyielding and unorthodox efforts, songs of which ventured into genres such as musique concrète, drone, and modern classical, among others. It peaked at number five and spent 21 weeks on the UK chart.

1973–1982: International success

Pink Floyd recorded The Dark Side of the Moon between May 1972 and January 1973 with EMI staff engineer Alan Parsons at Abbey Road. The title is an allusion to lunacy rather than astronomy. The band had composed and refined the material while touring the UK, Japan, North America, and Europe. Producer Chris Thomas assisted Parsons. Hipgnosis designed the packaging, which included George Hardie's iconic refracting prism design on the cover. Thorgerson's cover features a beam of white light, representing unity, passing through a prism, which represents society. The refracted beam of coloured light symbolises unity diffracted, leaving an absence of unity. Waters is the sole author of the lyrics.

Released in March 1973, the LP became an instant chart success in the UK and throughout Western Europe, earning an enthusiastic response from critics. Every member of Pink Floyd except Wright boycotted the press release of The Dark Side of the Moon because a quadraphonic mix had not yet been completed, and they felt presenting the album through a poor-quality stereo PA system was insufficient. Melody Maker's Roy Hollingworth described side one as "utterly confused ... [and] difficult to follow", but praised side two, writing: "The songs, the sounds ... [and] the rhythms were solid ... [the] saxophone hit the air, the band rocked and rolled." Rolling Stone's Loyd Grossman described it as "a fine album with a textural and conceptual richness that not only invites, but demands involvement".

Throughout March 1973, The Dark Side of the Moon featured as part of Pink Floyd's US tour. The album is one of the most commercially successful rock albums of all time. A US number-one, it remained on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart for more than fourteen years during the 1970s and 1980s, selling more than 45 million copies worldwide. In Britain, it reached number two, spending 364 weeks on the UK chart. The Dark Side of the Moon is the world's third best-selling album, and the twenty-first best-selling album of all time in the US. The success of the album brought enormous wealth to the members of Pink Floyd. Waters and Wright bought large country houses while Mason became a collector of expensive cars. Disenchanted with their US record company, Capitol Records, Pink Floyd and O'Rourke negotiated a new contract with Columbia Records, who gave them a reported advance of US$1,000,000 ($6,528,340 in 2025 dollars). In Europe, they continued to be represented by Harvest Records.

After a tour of the UK performing Dark Side, Pink Floyd returned to the studio in January 1975 and began work on their ninth studio album, Wish You Were Here. Parsons declined an offer to continue working with them, becoming successful in his own right with the Alan Parsons Project, and so the band turned to Brian Humphries. Initially, they found it difficult to compose new material; the success of The Dark Side of the Moon had left Pink Floyd physically and emotionally drained. Wright later described these early sessions as "falling within a difficult period" and Waters found them "tortuous". Gilmour was more interested in improving the band's existing material. Mason's failing marriage affected his mood, which interfered with his drumming.

1983–1985: Departure of Waters

In 1982, Waters suggested a project with the working title Spare Bricks, originally conceived as the soundtrack album for Pink Floyd – The Wall. With the onset of the Falklands War, Waters changed direction and began writing new material. He saw Margaret Thatcher's response to the invasion of the Falklands as jingoistic and unnecessary, and dedicated the album to his late father. Immediately arguments arose between Waters and Gilmour, who felt that the album should include all new material, rather than recycle songs passed over for The Wall. Waters felt that Gilmour had contributed little to the band's lyrical repertoire. Michael Kamen, a contributor to the orchestral arrangements of The Wall, mediated between the two, performing the role traditionally occupied by the then-absent Wright. The tension within the band grew. Waters and Gilmour worked independently; however, Gilmour began to feel the strain, sometimes barely maintaining his composure. After a final confrontation, Gilmour's name disappeared from the credit list, reflecting what Waters felt was his lack of songwriting contributions.

Though Mason's musical contributions were minimal, he stayed busy recording sound effects for an experimental Holophonic system to be used on the album. With marital problems of his own, he remained distant. Pink Floyd did not use Thorgerson for the cover design, and Waters designed the cover himself. Gilmour did not have any material ready and asked Waters to delay the recording until he could write some songs, but Waters refused. Gilmour later said "I'm certainly guilty at times of being lazy ... but he wasn't right about wanting to put some duff tracks on The Final Cut."

Released in March 1983, The Final Cut went straight to number one in the UK and number six in the US. Waters wrote all the lyrics, as well as all the music. Rolling Stone gave the album five stars, with Kurt Loder calling it "a superlative achievement ... art rock's crowning masterpiece". He viewed The Final Cut as "essentially a Roger Waters solo album".

Gilmour recorded his second solo album, About Face, in 1984, and used it to express his feelings about a variety of topics, from the murder of John Lennon to his relationship with Waters. He later stated that he used the album to distance himself from Pink Floyd. Soon afterwards, Waters began touring his first solo album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking (1984). Wright formed Zee with Dave Harris and recorded Identity, which went almost unnoticed upon its release. Mason released his second solo album, Profiles, in August 1985.

1985–1994: Gilmour-led era

In 1986, Gilmour began recruiting musicians for a new project. Initially, there was no commitment to a Pink Floyd release, and Gilmour maintained that the material might become his third solo album. However, by the end of 1986, Gilmour had decided to make the material into a Pink Floyd project, the first without Waters. There were legal obstacles to Wright's re-admittance to the band, but after a meeting in Hampstead, Pink Floyd invited Wright to participate in the coming sessions. Gilmour later stated that Wright's presence "would make us stronger legally and musically", and Pink Floyd employed him with weekly earnings of $11,000.

Recording sessions began on Gilmour's houseboat, the Astoria, moored on the River Thames. Gilmour felt that lyrics had become more important than the music under Waters, and sought to restore the balance. The group found it difficult to work without Waters's creative direction; to write lyrics, Gilmour worked with several songwriters, including Eric Stewart and Roger McGough, eventually choosing Anthony Moore. Wright and Mason were out of practice; Gilmour said they had been "destroyed" by Waters, and their contributions were minimal.

A Momentary Lapse of Reason was released in September 1987. Thorgerson, whose creative input was absent from The Wall and The Final Cut, designed the album cover. To emphasise that Waters had left the band, they included a group photograph on the inside cover—the first since Meddle—featuring only Gilmour and Mason. The album reached number three in the UK and the US. Waters said: "I think it's facile, but a quite clever forgery ... The songs are poor in general ... [and] Gilmour's lyrics are third-rate." Although Gilmour initially viewed the album as a return to the band's top form, Wright disagreed, saying: "Roger's criticisms are fair. It's not a band album at all." Q described it as essentially a Gilmour solo album.

Waters attempted to subvert the A Momentary Lapse of Reason Tour by contacting promoters in the US and threatening to sue if they used the Pink Floyd name. Gilmour and Mason funded the start-up costs with Mason using his Ferrari 250 GTO as collateral. Early rehearsals for the tour were chaotic, with Mason and Wright out of practice. Realising he had taken on too much work, Gilmour asked Ezrin to assist them. As Pink Floyd toured North America, Waters's K.A.O.S. On the Road tour was on occasion close by, in much smaller venues. Waters issued a writ for copyright fees for Pink Floyd's use of the flying pig. Pink Floyd responded by attaching a large set of male genitalia to its underside to distinguish it from Waters's design. The parties reached a legal agreement on 23 December; Mason and Gilmour retained the right to use the Pink Floyd name in perpetuity and Waters received exclusive rights to, among other things, The Wall. In 2013, Waters said he regretted the lawsuit and had failed to appreciate that the Pink Floyd name had commercial value independent of the band members.

2005–2019: Reunions

On 2 July 2005, Waters, Gilmour, Mason, and Wright performed together as Pink Floyd at Live 8, a benefit concert raising awareness about poverty, in Hyde Park, London. It was their first performance together in more than 24 years. The reunion was arranged by the Live 8 organiser, Bob Geldof, who also played the role of Pink in the film Pink Floyd – The Wall. After Gilmour declined, Geldof asked Mason, who contacted Waters. About two weeks later, Waters called Gilmour, their first conversation in two years, and the next day Gilmour agreed. In a statement to the press, the band stressed the unimportance of their problems in the context of the Live 8 event.

The group planned their setlist at the Connaught hotel in London, followed by three days of rehearsals at Black Island Studios. The sessions were problematic, with disagreements over the style and pace of the songs they were practising; the running order was decided on the eve of the event. At the beginning of their performance of "Wish You Were Here", Waters told the audience: "[It is] quite emotional, standing up here with these three guys after all these years, standing to be counted with the rest of you ... We're doing this for everyone who's not here, and particularly of course for Syd." At the end, Gilmour thanked the audience and started to walk off the stage. Waters called him back, and the band embraced. Images of the embrace were a favourite among Sunday newspapers after Live 8. Waters said: "I don't think any of us came out of the years from 1985 with any credit ... It was a bad, negative time, and I regret my part in that negativity."

Though Pink Floyd turned down a contract worth £136 million for a final tour, Waters did not rule out more performances, suggesting it ought to be for a charity event only. However, Gilmour told the Associated Press that a reunion would not happen: "The Live 8 rehearsals convinced me it wasn't something I wanted to be doing a lot of ... There have been all sorts of farewell moments in people's lives and careers which they have then rescinded, but I think I can fairly categorically say that there won't be a tour or an album again that I take part in. It isn't to do with animosity or anything like that. It's just ... I've been there, I've done it."

In February 2006, Gilmour was interviewed for the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, which announced that Pink Floyd had disbanded. Gilmour said that Pink Floyd were "over", citing his advancing age and his preference for working alone. He and Waters repeatedly said that they had no plans to reunite.

2022–present: "Hey, Hey, Rise Up!" and conflicts

Mason said in 2018 that, while he remained close to Gilmour and Waters, the two remained "at loggerheads". A remixed version of Animals was delayed until 2022 after Gilmour and Waters could not agree on the liner notes. In a public statement, Waters accused Gilmour of attempting to steal credit and complained that Gilmour would not allow him to use Pink Floyd's website and social media channels. Rolling Stone noted that the pair seemed "to have hit yet another low point in their relationship".

In March 2022, Gilmour and Mason reunited as Pink Floyd, alongside Pratt and the keyboardist Nitin Sawhney, to record the single "Hey, Hey, Rise Up!", protesting the Russian invasion of Ukraine that February. It features vocals by the BoomBox singer Andriy Khlyvnyuk, taken from an Instagram video of Khlyvnyuk singing the 1914 Ukrainian anthem "Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow" in Kyiv. Gilmour described Khlyvnyuk's performance as "a powerful moment that made me want to put it to music". "Hey, Hey, Rise Up!" was released on 8 April, with proceeds going to Ukrainian Humanitarian Relief. Gilmour said the war had inspired him to release new music as Pink Floyd as he felt it was important to raise awareness in support of Ukraine. Asked whether he was considering more Pink Floyd music, Gilmour said the single was a "one-off".

Pink Floyd removed music from streaming services in Russia and Belarus. Their work with Waters remained, leading to speculation that Waters had blocked its removal; Gilmour said only that "I was disappointed ... Read into that what you will." Waters refused to condemn Russia's invasion and criticised "Hey, Hey, Rise Up!". Shortly afterwards, Gilmour and his wife, Polly Samson, condemned Waters on Twitter as "a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy megalomaniac". In 2023, Waters released The Dark Side of the Moon Redux, a new version of the album, and Pink Floyd released a box set, The Dark Side of the Moon 50th Anniversary. In 2024, Gilmour released his fifth solo album, Luck and Strange, featuring keyboards recorded with Wright in 2007.

In 2023, Variety reported that Pink Floyd had been seeking to sell their catalogue for some time but that this had been hampered by infighting. Gilmour said he wanted to "be rid of the decision-making and the arguments that are involved with keeping [the catalogue] going ... It's three people saying yes, but one person saying no." In October 2024, Pink Floyd agreed to sell their catalogue to Sony Music for approximately $400 million. The sale included the rights to Pink Floyd's recordings, merchandise and spin-offs, but not songwriting. A 4K restoration of Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii was screened in cinemas from 24 April 2025 and released on home media shortly after. A soundtrack album was released on 2 May, which became Pink Floyd's seventh UK number-one album.

Artistry

Classification

Considered one of the UK's first psychedelic music groups, Pink Floyd began their career at the vanguard of London's underground music scene, appearing at UFO Club and its successor Middle Earth. According to Rolling Stone: "By 1967, they had developed an unmistakably psychedelic sound, performing long, loud suitelike compositions that touched on hard rock, blues, country, folk, and electronic music." Released in 1968, the song "Careful with That Axe, Eugene" helped galvanise their reputation as an art rock group. Other genres attributed to the band are space rock, experimental rock, acid rock, proto-prog, experimental pop (while under Barrett), psychedelic pop, and psychedelic rock. Author Mike Cormack argued that Pink Floyd likely have "the greatest range in all of rock music", encompassing styles including disco, ambient, meta rock, folk, country and western, blues, freeform, chamber pop, and freeform psychedelia.

During the late 1960s, the press labelled Pink Floyd's music psychedelic pop, progressive pop and progressive rock; they gained a following as a psychedelic pop group. In 1968, Wright said: "It's hard to see why we were cast as the first British psychedelic group. We never saw ourselves that way ... we realised that we were, after all, only playing for fun ... tied to no particular form of music, we could do whatever we wanted ... the emphasis ... [is] firmly on spontaneity and improvisation." Waters said later: "There wasn't anything 'grand' about it. We were laughable. We were useless. We couldn't play at all so we had to do something stupid and 'experimental' ... Syd was a genius, but I wouldn't want to go back to playing 'Interstellar Overdrive' for hours and hours." Unconstrained by conventional pop formats, Pink Floyd were innovators of progressive rock during the 1970s and ambient music during the 1980s.

Instrumentation

Syd Barrett and David Gilmour's guitar work in Pink Floyd has had a lasting influence. Barrett was an innovative guitarist, using extended techniques and exploring the musical and sonic possibilities of dissonance, distortion, feedback, the echo machine, tapes and other effects; his experimentation was partly inspired by free improvisation guitarist Keith Rowe of the group AMM. One of Barrett's trademarks was playing his guitar through an old echo box while sliding a Zippo lighter up and down the fret-board. He used Binson delay units to achieve his trademark echo sounds. Barrett's free-form sequences of "sonic carpets" pioneered a new way to play the rock guitar, and guitarists such as Jimmy Page and Glen Buxton have cited him as an influence.

Rolling Stone critic Alan di Perna praised Gilmour's guitar work as integral to Pink Floyd's sound, and described him as the most important guitarist of the 1970s, "the missing link between Hendrix and Van Halen". Rolling Stone named him the 14th greatest guitarist of all time. In 2006, Gilmour said of his technique: "[My] fingers make a distinctive sound ... [they] aren't very fast, but I think I am instantly recognisable ... The way I play melodies is connected to things like Hank Marvin and the Shadows." Gilmour's ability to use fewer notes than most to express himself without sacrificing strength or beauty drew a favourable comparison to jazz trumpeter Miles Davis.

In 2006, Guitar World writer Jimmy Brown described Gilmour's guitar style as "characterised by simple, huge-sounding riffs; gutsy, well-paced solos; and rich, ambient chordal textures." According to Brown, Gilmour's solos on "Money", "Time" and "Comfortably Numb" "cut through the mix like a laser beam through fog." Brown described the "Time" solo as "a masterpiece of phrasing and motivic development ... Gilmour paces himself throughout and builds upon his initial idea by leaping into the upper register with gut-wrenching one-and-one-half-step 'over bends', soulful triplet arpeggios and a typically impeccable bar vibrato." Brown described Gilmour's phrasing as intuitive and perhaps his best asset as a lead guitarist. Gilmour explained how he achieved his signature tone: "I usually use a fuzz box, a delay and a bright EQ setting ... [to get] singing sustain ... you need to play loud—at or near the feedback threshold. It's just so much more fun to play ... when bent notes slice right through you like a razor blade."

Sonic experimentation

Throughout their career, Pink Floyd experimented with their sound. Their second single, "See Emily Play" premiered at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, on 12 May 1967. During the performance, the group first used an early quadraphonic device called an Azimuth Co-ordinator. The device enabled the controller, usually Wright, to manipulate the band's amplified sound, combined with recorded tapes, projecting the sounds 270 degrees around a venue, achieving a sonic swirling effect. In 1972, they purchased a custom-built PA which featured an upgraded four-channel, 360-degree system.

Waters experimented with the VCS 3 synthesiser on Pink Floyd pieces such as "On the Run", "Welcome to the Machine", and "In the Flesh?". He used a Binson Echorec delay effect unit on his bass-guitar track for "One of These Days".

Pink Floyd used innovative sound effects and state of the art audio recording technology during the recording of The Final Cut. Mason's contributions to the album were almost entirely limited to work with the experimental Holophonic system, an audio processing technique used to simulate a three-dimensional effect. The system used a conventional stereo tape to produce an effect that seemed to move the sound around the listener's head when they were wearing headphones. The process enabled an engineer to simulate moving the sound to behind, above or beside the listener's ears.

Film scores

Pink Floyd, whose music was described as "tailor-made for soundtracks", also composed several film scores, starting in 1968, with The Committee. In 1969, they recorded the score for Barbet Schroeder's film More. The soundtrack proved beneficial: not only did it pay well but, along with A Saucerful of Secrets, the material they created became part of their live shows for some time thereafter. While composing the soundtrack for director Michelangelo Antonioni's film Zabriskie Point, the band stayed at a luxury hotel in Rome for almost a month. Waters claimed that, without Antonioni's constant changes to the music, they would have completed the work in less than a week. Eventually he used only three of their recordings. One of the pieces turned down by Antonioni, called "The Violent Sequence", later became "Us and Them", included on 1973's The Dark Side of the Moon. In 1971, the band again worked with Schroeder on the film La Vallée, for which they released a soundtrack album called Obscured by Clouds. They composed the material in about a week at the Château d'Hérouville near Paris, and upon its release, it became Pink Floyd's first album to break into the top 50 on the US Billboard chart.

Live performances

Regarded as pioneers of live music performance and renowned for their lavish stage shows, Pink Floyd also set high standards in sound quality, making use of innovative sound effects and quadraphonic speaker systems. From their earliest days, they employed visual effects to accompany their psychedelic music while performing at venues such as the UFO Club in London. Their slide-and-light show was one of the first in British rock, and it helped them become popular among London's underground.

To celebrate the launch of the London Free School's magazine International Times in 1966, they performed in front of 2,000 people at the opening of the Roundhouse, attended by celebrities including Paul McCartney and Marianne Faithfull. In mid-1966, road manager Peter Wynne-Willson joined their road crew, and updated the band's lighting rig with some innovative ideas including the use of polarisers, mirrors and stretched condoms. After their record deal with EMI, Pink Floyd purchased a Ford Transit van, then considered extravagant band transportation. On 29 April 1967, they headlined an all-night event called The 14 Hour Technicolour Dream at the Alexandra Palace, London. Pink Floyd arrived at the festival at around three o'clock in the morning after a long journey by van and ferry from the Netherlands, taking the stage just as the sun was beginning to rise. In July 1969, precipitated by their space-related music and lyrics, they took part in the live BBC television coverage of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, performing an instrumental piece which they called "Moonhead".

In November 1974, they employed for the first time the large circular screen that would become a staple of their live shows. In 1977, they employed the use of a large inflatable floating pig named "Algie". Filled with helium and propane, Algie, while floating above the audience, would explode with a loud noise during the In the Flesh Tour. The behaviour of the audience during the tour, as well as the large size of the venues, proved a strong influence on their concept album The Wall. The subsequent The Wall Tour featured a 40 feet (12 m) high wall, built from cardboard bricks, constructed between the band and the audience. They projected animations onto the wall, while gaps allowed the audience to view various scenes from the story. They commissioned the creation of several giant inflatables to represent characters from the story. One feature of the tour was the performance of "Comfortably Numb". While Waters sang his opening verse, in darkness, Gilmour waited for his cue on top of the wall. When it came, bright blue and white lights would suddenly reveal him. Gilmour stood on a flightcase on castors, an insecure setup supported from behind by a technician. A large hydraulic platform supported both Gilmour and the tech.

Lyrical themes

Marked by Waters's philosophical lyrics, Rolling Stone described Pink Floyd as "purveyors of a distinctively dark vision". Author Jere O'Neill Surber wrote: "their interests are truth and illusion, life and death, time and space, causality and chance, compassion and indifference." Waters identified empathy as a central theme in the lyrics of Pink Floyd. Author George Reisch described Meddle's psychedelic opus, "Echoes", as "built around the core idea of genuine communication, sympathy, and collaboration with others." Despite having been labelled "the gloomiest man in rock", Waters was described by author Deena Weinstein as an existentialist.

Disillusion, absence and non-being

Waters's lyrics to Wish You Were Here's "Have a Cigar" deal with the lack of sincerity of music industry representatives. The song illustrates a dysfunctional dynamic between the band and a record label executive who congratulates the group on their current sales success, implying that they are on the same team while revealing that he erroneously believes "Pink" is the name of one of the band members. According to author David Detmer, the album's lyrics deal with the "dehumanising aspects of the world of commerce", a situation the artist must endure to reach their audience.

Absence as a lyrical theme is common in the music of Pink Floyd. Examples include the absence of Barrett after 1968, and that of Waters's father, who died during the Second World War. Waters's lyrics also explored unrealised political goals and unsuccessful endeavours. Their film score, Obscured by Clouds, dealt with the loss of youthful exuberance that sometimes comes with ageing. Longtime Pink Floyd album cover designer, Storm Thorgerson, described the lyrics of Wish You Were Here: "The idea of presence withheld, of the ways that people pretend to be present while their minds are really elsewhere, and the devices and motivations employed psychologically by people to suppress the full force of their presence, eventually boiled down to a single theme, absence: The absence of a person, the absence of a feeling." Waters commented: "it's about none of us really being there ... [it] should have been called Wish We Were Here". Critic Mike Cormack likewise points out that absence is a key theme for Pink Floyd, going all the way from the song "Paintbox" ("I open the door to an empty room / Then I forget") to "Summer '68" ("She let six hours ago") to "Saint Tropez" ("And if you're alone / I'll come home") to "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" to "Wish You Were Here" to "Comfortably Numb" to "Paranoid Eyes" ("You can hide, hide, hide / Behind petrified eyes").

Waters invoked non-being or non-existence in The Wall, with the lyrics to "Comfortably Numb": "I caught a fleeting glimpse, out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look, but it was gone, I cannot put my finger on it now, the child is grown, the dream is gone." Barrett referred to non-being in his final contribution to the band's catalogue, "Jugband Blues": "I'm most obliged to you for making it clear that I'm not here."

Exploitation and oppression

Author Patrick Croskery described Animals as a unique blend of the "powerful sounds and suggestive themes" of Dark Side with The Wall's portrayal of artistic alienation. He drew a parallel between the album's political themes and that of Orwell's Animal Farm. Animals begins with a thought experiment, which asks: "If you didn't care what happened to me. And I didn't care for you", then develops a beast fable based on anthropomorphised characters using music to reflect the individual states of mind of each. The lyrics ultimately paint a picture of dystopia, the inevitable result of a world devoid of empathy and compassion, answering the question posed in the opening lines.

The album's characters include the "Dogs", representing fervent capitalists, the "Pigs", symbolising political corruption, and the "Sheep", who represent the exploited. Croskery described the "Sheep" as being in a "state of delusion created by a misleading cultural identity", a false consciousness. The "Dog", in his tireless pursuit of self-interest and success, ends up depressed and alone with no one to trust, utterly lacking emotional satisfaction after a life of exploitation. Waters used Mary Whitehouse as an example of a "Pig"; being someone who in his estimation, used the power of the government to impose her values on society. At the album's conclusion, Waters returns to empathy with the lyrical statement: "You know that I care what happens to you. And I know that you care for me too." However, he also acknowledges that the "Pigs" are a continuing threat and reveals that he is a "Dog" who requires shelter, suggesting the need for a balance between state, commerce and community, versus an ongoing battle between them.

Alienation, war and insanity

O'Neill Surber compared the lyrics of Dark Side of the Moon's "Brain Damage" with Karl Marx's theory of self-alienation; "there's someone in my head, but it's not me." The lyrics to Wish You Were Here's "Welcome to the Machine" suggest what Marx called the alienation of the thing; the song's protagonist preoccupied with material possessions to the point that he becomes estranged from himself and others. Allusions to the alienation of man's species being can be found in Animals; the "Dog" reduced to living instinctively as a non-human. The "Dogs" become alienated from themselves to the extent that they justify their lack of integrity as a "necessary and defensible" position in "a cutthroat world with no room for empathy or moral principle" wrote Detmer. Alienation from others is a consistent theme in the lyrics of Pink Floyd, and it is a core element of The Wall.

War, viewed as the most severe consequence of the manifestation of alienation from others, is also a core element of The Wall, and a recurring theme in the band's music. Waters's father died in combat during the Second World War, and his lyrics often alluded to the cost of war, including those from "Corporal Clegg" (1968), "Free Four" (1972), "Us and Them" (1973), "When the Tigers Broke Free" and "The Fletcher Memorial Home" from The Final Cut (1983), an album dedicated to his late father and subtitled A Requiem for the Postwar Dream. The themes and composition of The Wall express Waters's upbringing in an English society depleted of men after the Second World War, a condition that negatively affected his personal relationships with women.

Waters's lyrics to The Dark Side of the Moon dealt with the pressures of modern life and how those pressures can sometimes cause insanity. He viewed the album's explication of mental illness as illuminating a universal condition. However, Waters also wanted the album to communicate positivity, calling it "an exhortation ... to embrace the positive and reject the negative." Reisch described The Wall as "less about the experience of madness than the habits, institutions, and social structures that create or cause madness." The Wall's protagonist, Pink, is unable to deal with the circumstances of his life, and overcome by feelings of guilt, slowly closes himself off from the outside world inside a barrier of his own making. After he completes his estrangement from the world, Pink realises that he is "crazy, over the rainbow". He then considers the possibility that his condition may be his own fault: "have I been guilty all this time?" Realising his greatest fear, Pink believes that he has let everyone down, his overbearing mother wisely choosing to smother him, the teachers rightly criticising his poetic aspirations, and his wife justified in leaving him. He then stands trial for "showing feelings of an almost human nature", further exacerbating his alienation of species being. As with the writings of philosopher Michel Foucault, Waters's lyrics suggest Pink's insanity is a product of modern life, the elements of which, "custom, codependancies, and psychopathologies", contribute to his angst, according to Reisch.

Legacy and influence

Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially successful and influential rock bands of all time. They have sold more than 250 million records worldwide, including 75 million certified units in the United States, and 37.9 million albums sold in the US since 1993. The Sunday Times Rich List, Music Millionaires 2013 (UK), ranked Waters at number 12 with an estimated fortune of £150 million, Gilmour at number 27 with £85 million and Mason at number 37 with £50 million.

In 2003, Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list included The Dark Side of the Moon at number 43, The Wall at number 87, Wish You Were Here at number 209, and The Piper at the Gates of Dawn at number 347. In 2004, on their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list, Rolling Stone included "Comfortably Numb" at number 314, "Wish You Were Here" at number 316, and "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" at number 375.

In 2004, MSNBC ranked Pink Floyd number eight on their list of "The 10 Best Rock Bands Ever". In the same year, Q named Pink Floyd as the biggest band of all time according to "a points system that measured sales of their biggest album, the scale of their biggest headlining show and the total number of weeks spent on the UK album chart". Rolling Stone ranked them number 51 on their list of "The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time". VH1 ranked them number 18 in the list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". Colin Larkin ranked Pink Floyd number three in his list of the 'Top 50 Artists of All Time', based on the cumulative votes for each artist's albums included in his All Time Top 1000 Albums. In 2008, the chief pop critic of The Guardian, Alexis Petridis, wrote: "Thirty years on, prog is still persona non grata [...] Only Pink Floyd—never really a prog band, their penchant for long songs and 'concepts' notwithstanding—are permitted into the 100 best album lists." The writer Eric Olsen called Pink Floyd "the most eccentric and experimental multi-platinum band of the album rock era".

Pink Floyd have won several awards. In 1981, audio engineer James Guthrie won the Grammy Award for "Best Engineered Non-Classical Album" for The Wall, and Roger Waters won the British Academy of Film and Television Arts award for "Best Original Song Written for a Film" in 1983 for "Another Brick in the Wall" from The Wall film. In 1995, Pink Floyd won the Grammy for "Best Rock Instrumental Performance" for "Marooned". In 2008, Pink Floyd were awarded the Swedish Polar Music Prize "for their monumental contribution over the decades to the fusion of art and music in the development of popular culture". They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005, and the Hit Parade Hall of Fame in 2010.

Band members

Nick Mason – drums, percussion (1965–present)

Roger Waters – bass, vocals, rhythm guitar, synthesisers (1965–1985; guest in 2005)

Richard Wright – keyboards, piano, organ, synthesisers, vocals (1965–1981, 1987–2008; session musician earlier in 1987) (died 2008)

Syd Barrett – vocals, lead and rhythm guitars (1965–1968) (died 2006)

David Gilmour – lead and rhythm guitars, vocals, bass, keyboards, synthesisers (1967–present)

Discography

Studio albums