Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd is a British rock band which came out in the 1960s who was well-known for the genre of psychedelia and rock. The group members included Syd Barrett (lead guitar player who went by another name too, Roger Keith Barrett) Roger Waters (bass player), Nick Mason (drums), Rick Wright (keyboard), and David Gilmour (guitar player).

Its name came from a mix of two blues players called Pink Anderson and Floyd Council, after having several other names. They were famous for being very successful commercially and for influencing popular music in their era.

Pink Floyd’s Genres

Pink Floyd started out in London with the underground music crowd. Their music was considered to be psychedelic, but they also played genres like hard rock, blues, country, folk, and art rock types like space rock, acid rock, experimental rock and pop, and proto prog. One of their first art rock songs was “Careful with That Axe, Eugene.” They were considered to be Britain’s very first psychedelic rock band. They loved improvisation and being spontaneous and often said they were just playing for the fun of it and weren’t sticking with just one music genre. They also were said to be very innovative when it came to progressive rock styles of the 70s, as well as ambient styles of music in the 80s.

Early Years

Pink Floy’s debut year was 1965, but their first British hit came in 1967 with the song “Arnold Layne,” which caused some controversy since it was about a transvestite. Their first album came shortly afterward, and it was called The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which got to number six on the British charts. Another song, “See Emily Play” also came out in 1967 and in 1968 they released “Point Me at the Sky.”

The following year one of the band members, Syd Barrett, got involved with LSD and had schizophrenia so he was replaced as the lead guitarist by Gilmour. This changed their style somewhat and they got more into doing live shows vice recording singles. Over the next few years they recorded some soundtrack albums of movies and by 1970 they had a hit song in America called “Atom Heart Mother” and another the following year called “Meddle.”

Controversial Problems

Despite their fame, over the years Pink Floyd underwent several member changes, as well as fights over its name by the end of the 70s, and personal tension between members. They had previously lost Barret to drugs and other medical issues, they lost Wright in 1979 for personal reasons and Waters also left the band in 1985. All that caused the band to become inactive for a while and to split up, but soon at least three of them would come back together to reform the group: Gilmour, Wright and Mason.

Even so, the band did manage to reunite again in 2005 when all the members except Barrett got together for a one time show at Live 8. Sadly, Barret died the following year and Wright also died in 2008, two years after Barrett.

The following is just a few of the hundreds of songs and albums the group had:

Music from the 1970s

The group had a lot of music that came out during the 70s. These included Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977), best-selling album The Wall (1979), and “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2” (1979) and Money in 1973. Other 70s releases included A Pillow Of Winds (1971), Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast (1970), Any Colour You Like (1973), Brain Damage (1973), Breathe (1973), Bring The Boys Back Home (1979), Biding My Time (1971), Childhood’s End (1972), Comfortably Numb (1979), Echoes (1971), Eclipse (1973), Empty Spaces (1979), Fat Old Sun (1970), Fearless (1971), Flaming (1967), Free Four (1972) Vera (1979), Waiting For the Worms (1979), Welcome To The Machine (1975), The Show Must Go On (1979), The Trial (1979), Time (1973)

Music from the 1980s

Some of the group’s 80s releases included the albums A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987), The Final Cut (1983), A New Machine (1987), Dogs Of War (1987), Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert (1983), Not Now John (1983), On The Turning Away (1987), Terminal Frost (1987), The Final Cut (1983), The Fletcher Memorial Home (1983), The Hero’s Return (1983), The Post War Dream (1983), Two Suns in the Sunset (1983), When The Tigers Broke Free (1982), Yet Another Movie (1987)

Music from the 90s

90s music for the group included: The Division Bell (1994), Keep Talking (1994), Coming Back To Life (1994), A Great Day For Freedom (1994), High Hopes (1994), Lost For Words (1994), Take It Back (1994)

Music from the 2000s

By the end of the 2000s the group had sold more than 250 million records. The very last studio album put out by Pink Floyd was The Endless River in 2014. It was put together with material from some Division Bell recording sessions that had been previously unreleased.

Film and stage

Pink Floyd also did music for a lot of films starting in the 60s. Some of these included: The Committee (1968), Barbet Schroeder’s film More (1969) and Obscured by Clouds from La Vallee (1971) to name some of them.

Concert tours

Pink Floyd is well-known for all their live concerts and for quirky special effects. But in the start of their career they were pretty low tech since they didn’t have lots of money to spend then. So some of the things they used to liven up their stage was slide projectors and even colored condoms, which they stretched over the lights to bring different colors into the scenes.

And they were the first band to use surround sound too! They did it with an

Azimuth Co-coordinator quadraphonic sound system.

And they had many concerts to include :

• Pink Floyd World Tour (1968)
• The Man and The Journey Tour (1969)
• Atom Heart Mother World Tour (1970–71)
• Meddle Tour (1971)
• Dark Side of the Moon Tour (1972–73)
• French Summer Tour (1974)
• British Winter Tour (1974)
• Wish You Were Here Tour (1975)
• In the Flesh Tour (1977)
• The Wall Tour (1980–81)
• A Momentary Lapse of Reason Tour (1987–89)
• The Division Bell Tour (1994)