Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Background information | |
| Origin | Cambridge, England |
| Years active | 1965–present |
| Members | David Gilmour Nick Mason Richard Wright |
| Past members | Roger Waters Syd Barrett Bob Klose |
Pink Floyd (formed in 1965 in Cambridge, England) are a British progressive rock band, noted for their progressive compositions, thoughtful lyrics, sonic experimentation, cover art and elaborate live shows. The group are one of rock's most successful acts, believed to have sold an estimated 73.5 million albums in the U.S. and 175 to 200 million albums worldwide.
Overview
Pink Floyd enjoyed moderate success in the late-1960s as a psychedelic band led by Syd Barrett. After Barrett's erratic behavior caused his colleagues to add guitarist David Gilmour (who eventually replaced Barrett), the band went on to record several elaborate concept albums, achieving worldwide success with 1973's Dark Side of the Moon and 1979's The Wall both among the best-selling and most enduringly popular albums in rock history.
Live Performances
Pink Floyd are renowned for their lavish stage shows, combining over-the-top visual experiences with their music to create a show in which the performers themselves are almost secondary. In their early days, Pink Floyd were among the first bands to use a dedicated travelling light show in conjunction with their performances, projecting slides, film clips, pyrotechnics (exploding flashpots and the exploding gong and fireworks) and psychedelic patterns created by heating drops of oil or dyed fluids onto glass slides (dubbed Daleks) onto a large circular screen (dubbed "Mr. Screen"). In the early shows there were numerous technical difficulties, such as an exploding flashpot that blew out the cones of all the speakers. Their early combination of music and visuals set the standard for subsequent rock tours on both sides of the Atlantic. Later shows featured over-sized balloons (notably a giant pig balloon which floated over the audience during performances of Pigs from the Animals album), a plane crashing into the stage at the end of "On the Run", a giant flowering disco ball (a projection screen which could be retracted and tilted), more than 100 multi-colored robotic 'dancing' spot lights, and multi-coloured lasers. Their constant push for technological innovation in their concert shows is famously demonstrated by their use of extremely powerful, isotope splitting copper-vapor (rather than the usual argon) lasers in the 1994 Division Bell tour. These gold-colored lasers were worth over $120,000 apiece and previously used only in nuclear research and high speed photography (Lighting Dimensions, September 1994).
The lavish stage shows were also the basis for Douglas Adams' fictional rock group "Disaster Area" (creators of the loudest noise in the universe, and making use of solar flares in their stage show) in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Douglas Adams was a personal friend of David Gilmour and made a one-off guest appearance, on guitar, on the Division Bell (he provided this title for David Gilmour) tour (October 28, 1994), purportedly as a present for Adams' 42nd birthday.
Split and reunion
In 1985, bassist Roger Waters declared Pink Floyd defunct, but the remaining band members twice recorded and toured under the Pink Floyd name without him.
Waters rejoined the band on July 2, 2005 at the London Live 8 concert, playing to Pink Floyd's biggest audience ever.
Band history
Syd Barrett led years: 1965-1968
Pink Floyd evolved from an earlier band, formed in 1964, which was at various times called Sigma 6, The Meggadeaths, The Screaming Abdabs, and The Abdabs (see Band members for previous line-ups). When this band split up, some of its members - guitarist Bob Klose, bass player Roger Waters, drummer Nick Mason, and future keyboardist Rick Wright, who at this point played primarily wind instruments - formed a new band called Tea Set. A short time after their formation, they were joined by guitarist Syd Barrett, who became the band's primary vocalist as well.
When Tea Set found itself on the same bill as another band with the same name, Barrett came up with an alternate name on the spur of the moment, choosing 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. The word Sound was dropped fairly quickly, but the definite article was still used occasionally for several years afterward, up to about the time of the More soundtrack.
In the early days, the band covered rhythm and blues staples such as "Louie, Louie", but gained notoriety for their psychedelic interpretations, with extended improvised sections and 'spaced out' solos.
The heavily jazz-oriented Klose left the band to become a photographer shortly before Pink Floyd started recording, leaving an otherwise stable lineup. Barrett started writing his own songs, influenced by American surf music 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.
As their popularity increased, the band 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 their first TV appearance on Top of the Pops in July 1967.
Released in August 1967, the band's debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (originally called "Projection") is considered to be a prime example of English psychedelic music. 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" to whimsical songs, such as "The Scarecrow", inspired by the Fenlands, the rural region north of Cambridge, Barrett, Gilmour and Waters's home town. The album was a hit in the UK where it peaked at #6, but failed to get much attention in North America, reaching #131 in the US. During this period, the band toured with Jimi Hendrix, gaining them further popularity.
Barrett's decline
As the band became more and more popular, the stresses of life on the road and a significant intake of psychedelic drugs took its toll on Barrett. In January 1968, guitarist David Gilmour joined the band to carry out the playing and singing duties of Syd, whose mental health had been deteriorating for several months. Nevertheless, it was intended that Barrett would remain as the band's figurehead and main songwriter. With Barrett's behavior becoming less and less predictable, and his use of LSD almost constant, he became very unstable, often staring into space while the rest of the band performed. The band's live shows became increasingly ramshackle until, eventually, the other band members simply stopped taking him to the concerts.
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 their manager, and he remained with Pink Floyd until his death in 2003.
Finding their feet: 1969-1970
A Saucerful of Secrets
Whilst Barrett had written the bulk of the first record, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, only one Barrett composition, 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. The album contained hints of things to come, the center-piece being the 12-minute title track. Future Floyd albums would expand upon the lengthy compositions, offering more focused songwriting with each subsequent release.
More
Pink Floyd were 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 . Pink Floyd would use this and future soundtrack recording sessions to produce work that may not have fitted into their idea of what would appear on a proper Pink Floyd LP, many of the numbers on Music From The Film More being acoustic folk songs. The rest of the album consisted of incidental music with a few rockers such as "The Nile Song" thrown in.
Ummagumma
The next record, the double album Ummagumma, was a mix of live recordings and unchecked studio experimentation by the band members, with each recording half a side of a vinyl as a solo project (Mason's wife makes an uncredited contribution as a flautist). The album was Pink Floyd's most popular release yet, hitting UK #5 and making the U.S. charts at #70.
Atom Heart Mother
1970's Atom Heart Mother, their first recording with an orchestra, was a 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' "If", David Gilmour's "Fat Old Sun" and Rick Wright's "Summer 68"). Another lengthy piece, "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 album had the best chart performance for the band so far, reaching #1 in the U.K. and #55 in the U.S., although the album has since been described by Gilmour as the sound of a band "blundering about in the dark." The album was a transitional piece for the group, hinting at future musical territory. The popularity of the album allowed Pink Floyd to embark on their first full U.S. tour.
The band also developed and pioneered the use of a device called the azimuth co-ordinator, a joystick used to pan sound around their quadrophonic PA system.
Breakthrough era: 1971-1975
Meddle
The band's sound was considerably more focused on Meddle (1971), with the 23-minute epic "Echoes" taking up the entire second side of the LP. Meddle was considered by David Gilmour to be his first "real" Pink Floyd album, as it had the sound and style of the succeeding breakthrough-era Pink Floyd albums and stripped away the orchestra that was prominent in Atom Heart Mother.
Meddle also included the atmospheric "One of These Days", a concert classic, with Nick Mason's menacing one-line vocal, "One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces," and a melody that at one point segues into a throbbing synthetic pulse quoting the theme tune of the cult classic science fiction television show Doctor Who.
A glimpse into their humorous side was shown on "Seamus" (earlier, "Mademoiselle Nobs"), a pseudo-blues number featuring lead vocals by a Russian wolfhound called Seamus, belonging to Steve Marriott. Waters' jazzy "San Tropez" was brought to the band practically completed, requiring minimal help in arrangement from the other band members. Pink Floyd was rewarded with a #3 chart peak in the UK for Meddle; it reached #70 in U.S.
Obscured By Clouds
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 #6 at in the U.K. The lyrics of Free Four (coincidentally, 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.
The Dark Side of the Moon
Despite Pink Floyd never having been a hit-single-driven group (at the time they had stopped issuing singles after 1968's "Point Me At The Sky"), their massively successful 1973 album, The Dark Side of the Moon, featured a U.S. Top 20 single ("Money"). Although the album only hit #2 in U.K., it managed to become the band's first #1 on U.S. charts, a huge improvement over the last albums. The critically-acclaimed album stayed on the Billboard Top 200 for an unprecedented 724 weeks (including 591 consecutive weeks from 1976 to 1988), the world record, and making it one of the top-selling albums of all time. It also remained 301 weeks on U.K. charts, despite never hitting #1. The Dark Side of the Moon went on to sell over 40 million copies worldwide and still sells around 250,000 copies a year, more than any other album of the 70s. On its new release in 2003 it was reported that it was selling 8,000 copies per week.
The Dark Side of the Moon, the first of Pink Floyd's five concept albums, described the different pressures applying in everyday life. The concept (conceived in Nick Mason's kitchen) proved a powerful catalyst for the band and together they drew up a list of themes: "On The Run" was dedicated to travel; "Time" depicted the encroachment of old age; "The Great Gig In The Sky" (originally named "Mortality Sequence" and "Religious Theme" during development) dealt with death; "Money" satirically spoke of the corrupting influence of money that often comes with fame and power; "Us And Them" entailed violence, and futility of war (a theme to which Waters would return, throughout his career) and "Brain Damage" touched on themes of insanity and neurosis.
Thanks to the use of new 16-track recording equipment at Abbey Road Studios and the investment of an enormous amount of time by engineer Alan Parsons, the album set new standards for sound fidelity.
It was during this period that the band released the first of their films, "Live at Pompeii". Film Director Adrian Maben's film featured footage of the band's 1971 performance at an amphitheater in Pompeii with no audience present (only the film crew and stage staff). A later version of Live at Pompeii labelled "director's cut" was released on DVD which had each song interspersed with interviews and behind-the-scenes footage of the band in the studio recording The Dark Side Of The Moon.
The Dark Side of the Moon and the three following albums (Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall) are widely regarded as the peak of Pink Floyd's career.
Wish You Were Here
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. This theme is carried by the music as well as the artwork packaged with the album. Originally, the album was sold with a black cellophane wrapping, hiding any indication of what could be beneath. In addition to the classic acoustic title track, Wish You Were Here, the album includes the majestic, mostly instrumental nine-part Shine On You Crazy Diamond, a tribute to Barrett in which the lyrics deal explicitly with the aftermath of his breakdown. The album also includes the songs "Welcome to the Machine" and "Have a Cigar" (Roy Harper sang the latter), both of which harshly criticize the music industry. Pink Floyd achieved their first transatlantic #1 album with Wish You Were Here, reaching the top spot in both U.K. and U.S. The album eventually sold over 10 million copies worldwide.
Knebworth '75
Dark Side of the Moon had made Pink Floyd a major international act. In 1975, the band launched a massive tour after the release of Wish You Were Here, which eventually sold out stadiums. The last gig of the tour was as the headliner of 1975 Knebworth Festival, which also featured The Steve Miller Band, Captain Beefheart and Roy Harper (who joined Pink Floyd on the stage to sing 'Have a Cigar'). It was the second Knebworth Festival, which featured artists such as the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Genesis and Frank Zappa between 1974 and 1979.
The concert featured a large circular screen, lighting towers and great special effects for the time. Despite some technical problems, the band managed to perform a remarkable concert, before an audience of 125,000, their biggest until Live 8. It was the last time the band performed 'Echoes' and the entire Dark Side of the Moon with Roger Waters.
Roger Waters-led era: 1976-1984
Animals
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. However, Animals was considerably more guitar-driven than the previous albums, due to either the influence of the punk-rock movement or the fact that the album was recorded at Pink Floyd's new (and somewhat incomplete) Britannia Row Studios. Animals again contained lengthy songs tied to a theme, this time taken in part from George Orwell's Animal Farm, using pigs, dogs and sheep as metaphors for members of contemporary society. The animal theme pulled together two compositions which the band had been performing in concert for several years, Raving and Drooling which became Sheep, and You Gotta Be Crazy, which became Dogs. Roger Waters wrote the bitterly sarcastic Pigs (Three Different Ones) to round out the album, as well as the acoustic, two-part Pigs on the Wing which serve as intro and outro.
For the cover artwork, a giant inflatable pig was commissioned and floated over Battersea Power Station. This became one of the enduring symbols of Pink Floyd and inflatable pigs were a staple of Pink Floyd's live shows from then on.
In The Flesh
The 1977 Pink Floyd - In The Flesh tour was the last time Pink Floyd performed a major tour with Roger Waters. The tour featured the famous inflatable puppets, notably a 40 foot pig balloon, and a 'Nuclear family' with Mother, Father and two and a half children, later the band added a Cadillac, a television and a fridge. It also had a pyrotechnic 'waterfall' and featured one of the biggest and most elaborate stages to date.
Pink Floyd's market strategy for the Animals tour was very aggressive, filling pages of The New York Times and Billboard magazine. To promote their four-night run at Madison Square Garden in New York City, there was a Pink Floyd parade on 6th Avenue featuring pigs and sheep.
During the tour Waters began to exhibit more aggressive behaviour, and would often yell abuse at disruptive audiences who wouldn't stop yelling and screaming during the quieter numbers. In the New York shows they had to use local workers as lighting technicians. They had several difficulties with the apparently incompetent workers, as Waters had to at one point beckon one of the spotlights to move higher when it only illuminated his lower legs and feet while he was singing. After having enough of this, Waters brought the whole band to a halt for a moment to remark "I think you New York lighting guys are a fucking load of shit!" and then continued the song.
In the first half of the show, Pink Floyd played 'Animals', with 'Wish You Were Here' in the second. Although the 'Animals' album had not been as successful as the two previous ones, the band managed to sell out arenas and stadiums in America and Europe, setting scale and attendance records. In Chicago, the band played to an estimated audience of 95,000 and set an attendance record, in Cleveland, of over 80,000 people. They helped set another attendance record on the final night of the tour, in Montreal, where a festival that also featured Emerson, Lake and Palmer drew another 80,000-strong audience. That night, Waters spat in the face of a disruptive fan; The Wall grew out of Waters' thoughts about this incident, particularly his growing awareness that stardom had alienated him from his audience.
The Wall
1979's epic rock opera, The Wall, conceived mainly by Waters, developed themes of loneliness and failure of communication, inspired by Waters' feelings of having constructed a metaphoric wall between himself and his audience. 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 playlists 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 the band distanced themselves, after Ezrin talked about the album to a journalist relative.
Despite never hitting #1 in the U.K. (it made it to #3), The Wall spent an astounding 15 weeks atop the U.S. charts during 1980. It sold well over 20 million copies worldwide and is often regarded as the best-selling double album ever. It has been certified 23x platinum by RIAA, for sales of 11.5 million copies in U.S. alone. The huge commercial success of The Wall made Pink Floyd the only artist since the Beatles to have the best-selling albums of two years (1973 and 1980) in less than a decade.
Even more so than during the Animals sessions, Waters was increasingly asserting his artistic influence and leadership over the band, prompting frequent conflicts with the other members, and the eventual firing of Wright from the band. Wright returned, on a fixed wage, for the album's live concerts. Ironically, Wright was the only member of Pink Floyd to make any money from the Wall shows, the rest having to cover the extensive costs.
The Wall Live
Pink Floyd mounted their most elaborate stage show in conjunction with the tour of The Wall. A band of session musicians played the first song, wearing rubber face masks (demonstrating that the individual members of the band were practically anonymous to the public), then backed up the band for the remainder of the show. Giant inflatable characters designed by Gerald Scarfe, including fully mobile giant puppets of a teacher and Pink's wife, with menacing spotlights for eyes, took the traditional inflatables to a whole new level.
During the first half of the show, a huge wall was built, brick by enormous brick, between the audience and the band. There were 340 white bricks forming a 160 foot wall which stood 35 feet tall. The final brick was placed as Roger Waters sang "goodbye" at the end of the song "Goodbye Cruel World". For the second half of the show, the band were largely invisible, except for a hole in the wall that simulated a hotel room setting, where Roger Waters "acted out" the story of Pink, and an appearance by David Gilmour on top of the wall to perform the climactic guitar solo in "Comfortably Numb". Other parts of the story were told by Gerald Scarfe animations projected onto the wall itself (these animations were later integrated into the film version Pink Floyd: The Wall). At the finale of the concert, the specially-constructed wall was demolished amidst sound effects and a spectacular light show.
The costs of the tour were estimated to have reached US$ 1.5 million even before the first performance. The New York Times stated in its March 2 1980 edition that "The 'Wall' show remains a milestone in rock history though and there's no point in denying it. Never again will one be able to accept the technical clumsiness, distorted sound and meagre visuals of most arena rock concerts as inevitable" and concluded that "the 'Wall' show "will be the touchstone against which all future rock spectacles must be measured".
The Wall concert was only performed a handful of times each in four cities: Los Angeles, Uniondale (Long Island), Dortmund, and London (at Earl's Court). The primary 'tour' occurred in 1980, but the band performed two more shows at Earl's Court in 1981 for filming, with the intention of being integrated into the upcoming movie. The resulting footage, however, was deemed substandard, and scrapped; years later, Roger Waters said that he had tried to locate this footage for historical purposes, but was unsuccessful, and he now considers it to be lost forever. There are, however, several unofficial videos of the entire live show in circulation.
Gilmour and Mason attempted to convince Waters to expand the show for a more lucrative large-scale, stadium tour, but because of the nature of the material (one of the primary themes is the distance between an artist and his audience) Waters balked at this. In fact, Waters had reportedly been offered a guaranteed US$ 1 million for each additional stadium concert, but declined the offer, insisting that such a tour would be hypocritical.
Waters later re-created the Wall show in 1990, amid the ruins of the Berlin Wall, joined by a number of guest artists (including Bryan Adams, Scorpions, Van Morrison, The Band, Tim Curry, Cyndi Lauper, Sinéad O'Connor, Marianne Faithfull, Joni Mitchell, Ute Lemper and Thomas Dolby). This concert was even bigger than the previous ones. Roger Waters built a 591 foot long and 80 foot high wall. The theatrical features of The Wall concert were increased to gather the attention of a sold-out audience of 200,000 people and of other estimated 500 million, in 35 countries, to whom the show would be broadcast. After the concert began, the gates were opened and an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 people were able to watch the concert.
Film
A film (essentially a music video for the entire album) entitled "Pink Floyd: The Wall" was released in 1982. The film, written by Waters and directed by Alan Parker, starred Boomtown Rats founder Bob Geldof and featured striking animation by noted British cartoonist Gerald Scarfe. It grossed over US$ 22 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 complilation album Echoes and recent re-releases of The Final Cut.
The Final Cut
1983 saw the release of The Final Cut. 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 Fletcher Memorial Home") and his cynicism toward, and fear of, nuclear war ("Two Suns in the Sunset"). Michael Kamen and Andy Bown contributed keyboard work due to Wright's absence.
Though technically released as a Pink Floyd album, the interior sleeve specified "A requiem for the post war dream by Roger Waters, performed by Pink Floyd": the project was clearly dominated by Waters and became a prototype in sound and form for later Waters solo projects (Roger Waters has since said that he offered to release the record as a solo album, but the rest of the band rejected this idea). Gilmour also reportedly asked Waters to hold back the release of the album by a year so he could contribute material, but was rejected by Waters.
Only moderately successful by Floyd standards (UK #1, U.S. #6), the album yielded one minor rock radio hit, "Not Now John". The arguing between Waters and Gilmour by this stage was rumored to be so bad that they were never seen in the recording studio simultaneously. Gilmour even had his name removed from the production credits in protest over some of Waters' decisions. There was no tour.
David Gilmour-led era: 1987-1995
After The Final Cut, the band members went their separate ways, each releasing solo albums to varying degrees of success. Waters announced in December of 1985 that he was departing Pink Floyd describing the band as "a spent force creatively". However, in 1986 Gilmour and Mason began recording a new Pink Floyd album. (At the same time, Roger Waters was also working on his second solo album entitled Radio K.A.O.S.). 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". High Court proceedings went in favor of Gilmour and Mason, much to the chagrin of Waters, and the two camps continued working.
A Momentary Lapse of Reason
Gilmour and Mason returned to the studio, along with producer Bob Ezrin in 1986. Richard Wright also rejoined Gilmour and Mason during the final recording sessions of A Momentary Lapse of Reason (UK #3/U.S. #3) album, though he did not officially rejoin the band until the end of the subsequent tour. Gilmour later admitted that Mason had hardly played on the album. Because of Mason's limited contribution, many critics say that A Momentary Lapse of Reason should really be regarded as a Gilmour solo effort, in the way that The Final Cut can be seen as a Waters solo album. Having usually written only music with Waters responsible for drafting lyrics (the most recent Pink Floyd album to which Gilmour had contributed lyrics was 1972's Obscured by Clouds), Gilmour received further criticism for bringing writers from outside the band to assist him.
After the release of A Momentary Lapse of Reason in 1987, Pink Floyd embarked on what was initially meant to be an 11-week tour to promote the album. The two remaining members of the band, David Gilmour and Nick Mason, along with Richard Wright, who still not yet officially a band member, had just won a legal battle against Roger Waters and the future of the group was uncertain. Following the band's tradition, the tour was huge: 45 trucks were needed to carry the equipment necessary to build the biggest outdoor stage to date, 85 feet (26 m) high and 98 feet (30 m) wide.
Initially scheduled just to promote the album, it lasted until almost two years later, in 1989, after playing around 200 concerts, including 3 dates at Madison Square Garden and 2 nights at Wembley Stadium, to about 5.5 million people in total. The numbers of the tour speak for themselves: it made Pink Floyd the second highest grossing act of 1987 and the highest grossing of 1988 in the U.S. Financially, Pìnk Floyd was the biggest act of these two years combined, as it grossed almost US$ 60 million from touring, about the same as U2 and Michael Jackson, their closest rivals, put together. Worldwide, the band grossed around US$ 135 million. A further concert was held in 1990, at the Knebworth Festival in 1990, a charity event that also featured other Silver Clef Award winners. Pink Floyd was the last act to play, to an audience of 125,000. The £60,000 firework display that ended the concert was entirely financed by the band.
They released a double live album taken from their 1988 Long Island shows, entitled Delicate Sound of Thunder. They later recorded some instrumentals for a classic-car racing film La Carrera Panamericana, set in Mexico and featuring Gilmour and Mason as participating drivers. At one part of the race Gilmour and Steve O'Rourke (his map-reader in the race) 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 Pink Floyd Early Singles was also included. An interesting detail of the set's packaging is that when all the albums are stacked up, from the side they form the cover of The Dark Side of the Moon.
The Division Bell
The band's next recording was the 1994 release The Division Bell (UK #1/U.S. #1), which was much more of a group effort than A Momentary Lapse of Reason had been, with Wright now reinstated as a full and contributing band member. The album was received more favorably by critics and fans alike than Lapse had been. Saxophonist Dick Parry, a contributor to the mid-70s Floyd albums, also returned to the fold. This album showed the maturity of the Gilmore-led Floyd line up with another concept album that addressed the ever-present "communication breakdown" among humans. "High Hopes," "Keep Talking," and "Marrooned," among other solid tunes made this album a classic Floyd sound. The ensuing tour was promoted by legendary [Canadia]n concert impresario [Michael Cohl] and became the highest-grossing tour in rock history to that date, with the band playing the entirety of Dark Side of the Moon in some shows, the first time they had done so since 1975. The concerts featured a very large stage, a large round screen, special effects, quadrophonic sound and powerful lasers. Three stages leapfrogged around North America and Europe, each 180 feet long and featuring a 130 foot arch modelled on the Hollywood Bowl. All in all, the tour required 700 tons of steel carried by 53 articulated trucks, a crew of 161 people and an initial investment of US$ 4 million plus US$ 25 million of running costs just to stage. This tour played to 5.5 million people in 68 cities; each concert gathered an average 45,000 audience. At the end of the year, the Division Bell tour was announced as the biggest tour ever, with worldwide gross of over £150 million (about US$ 250 million). In the U.S. alone, it grossed US$ 103.5 million from 59 concerts. However, this record was short-lived; less than a year later, The Rolling Stones' Voodoo Lounge tour finished with a worldwide gross of over US$ 300 million. The Stones remain the only act ever to achieve a higher worldwide gross from a tour.
Solo work and more 1995-2004
Pink Floyd have not released any new studio material or toured since 1994's The Division Bell, nor is there a sign of any forthcoming, however the band released a live album entitled P*U*L*S*E in 1995. P*U*L*S*E hit #1 in U.S. and featured songs recorded during one of the record-breaking 14 presentations at Earl's Court, in London, which ended "The Division Bell" tour, and includes an entire performance of "Dark Side of the Moon" as well as other favourites from albums like "The Wall" and "Wish You Were Here".
In 1996, the band performed Wish You Were Here with Billy Corgan (of The Smashing Pumpkins fame) at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. A live recording of The Wall was released in 2000 compiled from their 1980/1981 London concerts, entitled Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980-81. It hit #1 on Billboard Internet Album Sales chart, but managed to only hit #19 on U.S. charts.
A two-disc set of their best-known tracks entitled Echoes was released in 2001. This compilation caused some controversy due to the songs segueing into one other non-chronologically, thereby presenting the material out of the context of the original albums. Some of the tracks ("Echoes", "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", "Marooned" and "High Hopes") have had substantial parts removed from them. Despite the controversy, the album sold over 200,000 copies in its first week and guaranteed a #2 on U.S. charts.
David Gilmour released a solo concert DVD called David Gilmour in Concert in November 2002 which was compiled from shows on 2001-06-22, and 2002-01-17, at The Royal Festival Hall in London. Richard Wright, Robert Wyatt, and Bob Geldof (Pink in The Wall film) make guest appearances.
In 2002 Q magazine named Pink Floyd as one of the "50 Bands To See Before You Die". Two years later, the same magazine would place Pink Floyd as the biggest band of all time, above the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin, according to a complex system for comparing bands which included album sales, charts performance and concerts attendance.
In 2003, a 30th-Anniversary SACD reissue of Dark Side of the Moon, featuring high resolution surround sound was released with new artwork on the front cover and went on to sell over 800,000 copies. Longtime manager Steve O'Rourke died later that year on October 30, 2003. The three remaining band members performed "Fat Old Sun" and "The Great Gig in the Sky" at his funeral at Chichester Cathedral, contrary to reports in the media claiming they played "Wish You Were Here".
In 2004 a remastered re-release of The Final Cut was released with the single "When the Tigers Broke Free" added.
Mason's book, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd, was published in 2004 in Europe and 2005 in the US. To promote it, Mason made public appearances in a few European and American cities, giving interviews and meeting fans at book signings. The book gives Mason's personal view of the band's experiences.
There has been talk of Roger Waters doing a Broadway musical version of The Wall, with extra music to be written by Waters. The Broadway version will feature all of the music written by Waters but it is not known whether the songs co-written by Gilmour ("Young Lust", "Comfortably Numb", and "Run Like Hell") will feature.
The 30th-Anniversary SACD reissue of Wish You Were Here is due early in 2006, also to feature high-resolution surround sound. Waters, Gilmour and Wright are reported to all be working on solo albums, with Waters' and Gilmour's due to be released in 2006.
Live 8, 2005-present
On July 2, 2005 Pink Floyd performed at the London Live 8 concert with Roger Waters rejoining David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright. It was the quartet's first performance together in over 24 years — the band's last show with Waters was at Earls Court in London on June 17, 1981.
Gilmour announced the Live 8 reunion on June 12, 2005:
Like most people I want to do everything I can to persuade the G8 leaders to make huge commitments to the relief of poverty and increased aid to the third world. It's crazy that America gives such a paltry percentage of its GNP to the starving nations. Any squabbles Roger and the band have had in the past are so petty in this context, and if re-forming for this concert will help focus attention then it's got to be worthwhile.
The band's set consisted of "Speak To Me/Breathe/Breathe Reprise", "Money", "Wish You Were Here" and "Comfortably Numb". As on the original recordings, Gilmour sang the lead vocals on "Breathe" and "Money", and shared them with Waters on Comfortably Numb. "Wish You Were Here" was the exception to this with Gilmour singing his usual verse, with Waters picking it up halfway through. During the guitar introduction of "Wish You Were Here", Waters said:
It's actually quite emotional standing up here with these three guys after all these years. Standing to be counted with the rest of you. Anyway, we're doing this for everyone who's not here, but particularly, of course, for Syd.
They were augmented by guitarist Tim Renwick (guitarist on Roger Waters' 1984 solo tour, who has since become Pink Floyd's backing guitarist on stage), keyboardist/guitarist Jon Carin (Pink Floyd's backing keyboardist from 1987 onward who has since performed on the 1999-2000 North American leg of Waters' "In The Flesh" solo tour), saxophonist Dick Parry during "Money" (who played on the original recordings of "Money", "Us And Them", and "Shine on You Crazy Diamond"), and backing singer Carol Kenyon during "Comfortably Numb". On the screen behind them, film of the iconic pig from the Animals album was shown flying over Battersea Power Station.
Many fans expressed the hope that the Live 8 appearance would lead to a reunion tour and a record-breaking US$ 250 million deal for a world tour is said to have being offered to the band. At first, however, the band has made it very clear that there are no such plans at that time. In the weeks after the show, the rifts that separated the members during the breakup seemed to have largely healed. David Gilmour confirmed that he and Waters were on "pretty amicable terms" and that they communicated via e-mail after the concert. Nick Mason said that the band would be willing to perform for a concert "that would support Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts."
Waters has offered what some see as conflicting comments on the issue, first saying, "Never say never [...] I mean, under sort of similar circumstances, or in some way, we might do things again" when questioned on the prospects of another performance. However in an interview in Rolling Stone, Waters appeared less optimistic: "I decided that if anything came up in rehearsals [for Live 8] — any difference of opinion — I would just roll over. And I did...I didn't mind rolling over for one day, but I couldn't roll over for a whole fucking tour". However, in an October, 2005 interview with Word Magazine, Waters stated he "really loved" playing with the band again and he held out some possibility of the band re-forming again. "I hope we do it again. If some other opportunity arose, I could even imagine us doing Dark Side of the Moon again - you know, if there was a special occasion. It would be good to hear it again". Also, Waters stated on a BBC2 Radio interview in September the possibility of a reunion album with Gilmour, Mason and Wright.
In the week after Live 8, there was a revival of interest in Pink Floyd. According to record store chain HMV, sales of Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd went up, in the following week, by 1343%, while Amazon.co.uk reported increases in sales of The Wall at 3600%, Wish You Were Here at 2000%, Dark Side of the Moon at 1400% and Animals at 1000%. David Gilmour subsequently declared that he would donate all profits from this post Live 8 boom in sales to charity, and urged that all the other performing artists and their record companies should do the same.
On 16 November 2005 Pink Floyd were inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame, by Pete Townshend. Gilmour and Mason attended in person, explaining that Wright was in hospital following eye surgery, and Waters appeared on a video screen, from Rome. It was stated that the chance of a reunion album is practically nil, and that any future concerts would be in the same vein as Live 8.
This was contradicted on the 25 November, when Waters stated that he was willing to play with Pink Floyd again as long as other members agreed [1].
The images of Pink Floyd
Integral to the music is the artwork that comes with it. The album covers and sleeve artwork add to the emotional impact of the music with vivid and meaningful imagery.
Throughout the band's career, this aspect was mainly provided by the talents of photographer and graphic artist Storm Thorgerson and his erstwhile graphic studio Hipgnosis ("hip" gnosis or hypnosis).
Many of these images have acquired fame in their own right; notably the famous picture of a man shaking the hand of his burning alter-ego for Wish You Were Here and the refracting prism for Dark Side of the Moon. The cover of Meddle also gave testament to the band's ideas about the visualization of sound with its close-up of the human ear accompanied by visible sound waves.
In fact, Thorgerson was involved in all the artwork for every album except The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the front cover of which was a photograph by Vic Singh and the back cover a drawing by Barrett; The Wall, for which the band employed Gerald Scarfe; and The Final Cut, the cover of which was designed by Waters himself, using photography made by his then brother-in-law, Willie Christie. A quote from Roger Waters from a video/DVD on the making of the Dark Side of the Moon album: "We always wanted to kind of... not be on our covers ourselves; not have pictures".
Discography and awards
- Main article:
Pink Floyd has released 14 studio albums, three live albums, one half live and half studio, and several compilations. Their albums have won numerous awards.
Bootlegs
Pink Floyd are one of the heaviest-bootlegged bands in history, with bootleg recordings of the band numbering at least in the hundreds. Collectors of these bootlegs often call them RoIOs, or Recordings of Illegal/Illegitimate Origin. The vast majority of these are audience recordings of their various concerts, as only a few studio outtakes and soundboard recordings have leaked to bootleggers. The most popular exceptions are the unreleased Syd Barrett songs "Scream Thy Last Scream" and "Vegetable Man", but there are others as well. Many bootlegs before the 1990's featured singles such as "Candy and a Currant Bun" that had not been released on compilation discs, but these disappeared when the The Early Singles disc in the Shine On box set was released. Collecting bootlegs is usually easy, as the internet has made bootleg sales for profit largely pointless. Organizations such as Harvested have made a hobby of cleaning up and remastering bootleg recordings and issuing them to traders for free.
The hundreds of audience recordings vary in quality from excellent (concerts in 1994 and 1988) to abysmal (the era between 1967 and 1971). Audience noise is often absent, because audiences of the band in their early days were very quiet. There are sometimes recordings of standout quality in a period of otherwise low-quality recordings; an example is the Electric Factory show in late 1970, which was nearly soundboard-quality during a period when most other recordings were extremely poor. (Audience recordings would not regularly be as good as the Electric Factory show until 1988). Other standouts include the "Fireman" source of the Hollywood Bowl concert in 1972, in which a complete rendition of the pre-release "prototype" Dark Side of the Moon suite was played, and an excellent recording of a 1975 show taped by the legendary taper Mike Millard. This recording contains the best-existing versions of the unreleased Pink Floyd songs "Raving and Drooling" and "You've Got to Be Crazy", which would eventually become "Sheep" and "Dogs", respectively.
One of the most useful bootlegs is A Tree Full Of Secrets, a massive 18-disc collection of all Pink Floyd material which ignores live recordings but includes all material released on albums outside the Pink Floyd discography (such as movie soundtracks), radio advertisements, television performances, studio outtakes, rehearsals and alternative mono/stereo remixes. It also features considerable solo material from Pink Floyd's members. It is the definitive collection of all Floyd rarities, and even includes materials suspected of being fake for the sake of completeness and allowing the listener to decide.
Band members
| (1965-1966) | |
|---|---|
| (1966-1968) | |
| (1968) | |
| (1968-1981) | |
| (1981-1985) | |
| (1986-present) |
Classic line-up
- David Gilmour - guitar, vocals (1968 - present)
- Nick Mason - drums (1965 - present)
- Roger Waters - bass, vocals, sole lyrics from 1973 until departure (1965 - 1985, Live 8 appearance in 2005)
- Richard Wright - keyboards, vocals (1965 - 1981, 1986 - present)
Former members
- Syd Barrett - guitar, vocals, lyrics (1965 - 1968)
- Bob Klose - guitar (1965-1966; does not appear on any of Pink Floyd's recorded output)
Bibliography
- For about ten years from 1982, a fanzine, "The Amazing Pudding", documented and archived the band's activities.
- In 1991 Nicholas Schaffner's book Saucerful of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey (ISBN 0517576082), an in-depth biography of the band, was released.
- In 2001, 'Lost in the Woods: Syd Barrett and the Pink Floyd' (ISBN 0-7522-2328-3) by Julian Palacios, on Syd Barrett and his time in the group, was released.
- In 2004 Nick Mason's book Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd (ISBN 0297843877) was released.
- Another Brick In The Wall: The Stories Behind Every Pink Floyd Song, By Cliff Jones (ISBN 0553067338) was released in 1996 by Carlton Books, records details about how each song was written and recorded throughout Floyd's history, from Piper at the Gates Of Dawn (67) right up until Pulse in 1995.
See also
- Pink Floyd trivia
- Publius Enigma - The Division Bell's hidden puzzle
- List of Rock Instrumentals
- List of songs over fifteen minutes in length
- List of best-selling music artists - World's top-selling music artists chart.
External links
Official links
- Pink Floyd official site
- Pink Floyd official U.S. site
- Roger Waters official site
- David Gilmour official site
Resources links
- Pink Floyd Archives - Resource of illustrated discogs, concerts, books, etc. by the author of The Pink Floyd Encyclopedia
Other links
- Neptune Pink Floyd - Comprehensive Fan Site
- The International Echoes Hub- Pink Floyd Concerts
- The Echoes email mailing list homepage
- Brain-Damage.co.uk - Pink Floyd related news
- Pink-Floyd.org - Pink Floyd fan club, home to the HTML Echoes FAQ [2]
- Pink Floyd Lyrics Searchable index of all of Pink Floyd's Lyrics
- Pink Floyd Guitar Tabs - Guitar and bass tab
- Pink Floyd Music Exercise - A series of exercises encouraging active listening of Floyd material, taking a scholarly approach.
- The Pink Floyd Concert Database - A database of known Pink Floyd roio's and voio's.
- Knebworth '75 Press Release Photos - Italian website with photos of advertisement and articles for their Knebworth '75 tour.
- Roger Waters Online - A periodical website about Pink Floyd.
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