BARRETT

In the early 60s Roger “Syd” Barrett, Roger Waters and David Gilmour, talented teenage guitarists from academic backgrounds in Cambridge, came on the London scene and in 1965 met Nick Mason, an experimental percussionist, and Rick Wright, a gifted keyboards player. The result was Pink Floyd who fifty years later has risen from massive to almost mythic standing in the world of rock. Dark Side of the Moon has been on the charts since its inception in 1973. Darkside, an original radio production by Tom Stoppard, was written for BBC Radio 2 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the album in 2013. Through several changes in personnel, Pink Floyd’s album sales have topped 250 million.

Syd Barrett, the son of a university don, was the original creative force behind the band which he named after the Delta bluesman Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. He had perfect vision for the times and led the band to its first precarious fame, damaging himself irreparably along the way. Even years later he was an inspiration to Tom Stoppard in his 2006 play Rock ‘n’ Roll Although the Barrett era only lasted three years, it always informed what the Floyd became. These were the summers of love when LSD was a lifestyle choice for many young people who found their culture in science fiction, pastoral tradition and certain aspects of Victorianism. Barrett wrote loops, feedback and echo delay. Live, they played sonic freak-outs and featured light-shows and projections with Barrett’s spacey lead guitar over Waters’ trance-like bass and Wright’s and Mason’s sound scapes completing the effect. In the spring of 1966 they were spotted by their future managers Peter Jenner and Andrew King. A signing to EMI followed in early 1967. The single “See Emily Play” charted at Number 6 and soon after their first LP The Piper at the Gates of Dawn made the Top Ten. The album was mainly Barrett, a wonderful mix of the whimsical and weird. Barrett’s behavior began to threaten to bring the band down with him and they asked David Gilmour - now back after a sojourn abroad - to take over Syd’s role on stage, thinking he might become their off-stage songwriter but in the end they decided they could do without Barrett and by March 1968 were in their second incarnation and under new management.

Barrett went back to Cambridge for the rest of his life and the other four acquired a new manager, Steve O’Rourke, and finished their second album, A Saucerful of Secrets begun the previous year. Roger Waters now wrote the lyrics and apart from Barrett’s “Jugband Blues” the album’s standout moments included the title track and Waters’ “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.” This hypnotic epic signposted the style the band would expand upon in the 70s.

In July 1969 they released More, an accompaniment to the Barbet Schroder film about a group of hippies on the drug grail in Ibiza and in November released the double album Ummagumma, a mixture of live and studio tracks which reached Number 5 on the UK charts, and reworked “Careful With That Axe, Eugene” for Antonioni’s film , Zabriskie Point. Between October 1970 and November 1971 the group put out two more albums. Atom Heart Mother was their first Number 1 and Meddle included two timeless and largely instrumental tracks: “One of These Days” and “Echoes” that showcased their lead guitarist. The band recorded another movie soundtrack for Barbet Schroder, Obscured by Clouds, and began to work on an idea that would become their most popular album and with over 45 million sold, one of the world’s biggest.

The Dark Side of the Moon released in March 1973 demonstrated Waters’ talents as both lyricist and conceptualist and was also a musical tour de force by Gilmour. But Waters was becoming de facto leader of the band. The experience was becoming increasingly visual from the intriguing sleeve art work to the stage shows. In the dawning age of stadium rock, the Floyd were the masters. Dark Side broke Middle America through FM radio with the single “Money”.

The Floyd’s next LP Wish You Were Here was released in 1975 followed by Animals released in 1977 and the double album The Wall, the most ambitious project ever which sold 20 million and spawned the band’s only Number 1 single “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2” Waters drove the project and the others ceded to his increasingly personal direction and worked together on no new material for more than two years. When they did get back in the studio, it was to record The Final Cut released in 1983.

After three years during which all four band members had pursued solo projects, Waters announced he was leaving the Floyd and disbanding them. Wright had left the group some time before, playing no part in The Final Cut. An agreement was eventually reached that Waters would continue to perform the songs on which he worked while he was with the band as well as new solo material. Gilmour and Mason would continue to record and perform with Wright as Pink Floyd.

Their next album A Momentary Lapse of Reason came in 1987 and the subsequent world tour spawned the live Delicate Sound of Thunder which was the band’s longest and most successful ever. 1994’s album and tour The Division Bell broke similar records.

The band has not been untouched by sorrows. In 2003 their manager Steve O’Rourke died from a stroke and in 2006 Syd Barrett died from pancreatic cancer. In 2008 Rick Wright followed him but not before continuing the Pink Floyd story . In 2005 the band performed at Live 8 on the 20th anniversary of Live Aid and invited Waters to join them. He accepted. After that the three-man Floyd performed together during a solo gig by Gilmour in 2006 and at an all-star memorial tribute to Barrett in 2007.

The interest of die-hard fans has been rewarded by the release in 1995 of the double album P.U.L.S.E recorded on the Division Bell tour and containing the first complete live version of Dark Side. There have been remasterings, reissues, collector’s editions and box-sets in recent years and induction into both the US and the UK Rock and Roll Halls of Fame