Pink Floyd History

Pink Floyd

Syd Barret, Roger Waters, Richard Wright, and Nick Mason all belonged to one of best psychedelic rock bands of all time known as Pink Floyd. Each of these members had a unique talent that created such great music. Syd Barret was a writer and vocalist/guitarist, on the bass was Roger Waters, Richard Wright was the organist, and the drummer was Nick Mason.

The history of the band starts back when they were all teenagers around the age of 16. All of the members were in a Saturday morning art class. They all enjoyed music and art together and they started to play whenever they had free time. Soon after they had been playing with each other for awhile and getting used to the style they all played they started playing at a night club called the UFO. The bands name has changed a lot since the start. They actually had quite a few names that they went by before Pink Floyd was introduced. The band started out being called Sigma 6, then they started getting referred to as T-set. One of the unusual names that they came up with after T-set was Meggadeaths. Meggadeaths was the idea of Roger Waters which stuck with them for not so long. Then Architecture Abdabs was an idea for a name since they all enjoyed architecture. Architecture Abdabs was the last name that wouldn’t stick for the band. The next name has stuck with the band for as long as anyone knows the name “Pink Floyd.” Syd Barret claims that there is a story behind it, but really there isn’t. Syd had two blues heroes as he was growing up listening to music. Pink Anderson, and Floyd Council both were major influences for Syd when he was growing up. They shortened those two names and now they are known as Pink Floyd.

The band really wasn’t anything big until they started to play songs from their first album which was called Piper at the Gates of Dawn. The way that Syd would get his lyrics was just anything that he read about he would make note of it and eventually it would appear in his songs. Another way that Syd got ideas for his songs was through major inspiration from the band known as The Beatles. Syd got the title of his first and last work from a children’s book. His whole idea for the name of the album was not to be based off of English psychedelic ideas. He wanted it to represent a deep concern of nature and mans place in the universe. Syd was the only band member that did any hardcore drugs. He knew that he was becoming more and more distant from the real world. With this being known he decided to throw this record together in his short time of not being insane and on drugs. Joe Boyd was a worker at the night club UFO which Pink Floyd went to and played at all the time. His job was to basically hold the door open for anyone coming in. “On June 2, 1967 I noticed something was not right, Syd was no longer the usual happy cheerful person he used to be. I remember saying hi to him and he looked at me with this lifeless face” (Dallas 22). When the band performed concerts he would just stand there and not do anything. This was probably the most depressing thing that happened to the band since he had so much creativity and he just threw it away. Whenever Syd would go on talk shows or make an appearance anywhere he would have no response. LSD had taken away Syd Barrets life and there was nothing he could do about it. His body was the only part of him present anymore. His mind was in another world that he chose not to leave. The band realized this and just stopped picking him up when they were going to practice, or record albums. David Gilmour a friend of the bands replaced Syd Barret after he was unable to even function as a human anymore. After Syds departure from the band many Pink Floyd fans thought that they have lost their true psychedelic touch.

The second album the band put together was called A Saucerful of Secrets. Even though Syd was no longer able to perform music, he still tried to stay in close contact with the band. He contributed to the bands second album, but his contributions were very limited. The song Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun is a combination of Syd and Roger Waters on the guitar. Syds last contribution to the band was the closing song on their second album called Jugband Blues. “The album closed with Syd’s вЂ?Jugband Blues’, whose disorientated single verse and chorus belied the sort of music that presumably, inspired its title. As a farewell to the band that was to continue for another sixteen years after he left, it is a chilling composition” (Dallas 93). After the release of their second album Syd departed from the band for good. This was nothing but bad news to the band since they have now just lost their main songwriter for good.

Now that Syd is completely gone the band decided to keep going. Roger Waters was put in charge of writing the lyrics. The release of their third album named Umma Gumma was half live performances, and half solo studio experiments. The live recordings include tracks from albums released before the recording of Umma Gumma. These tracks included Astronomy Domine, Careful with That Axe, Eugene, Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, and A Saucerful of Secrets. Roger wanted to keep the band going and keep recording and producing their own style of music. “He felt they had forsaken and betrayed their experimental manifesto, and become another rock and roll treadmill” (Dallas 49).

Not much changed for the psychedelic rockers until the release of their next album which was titled Atom Heart Mother. They started to drift away from the whole psychedelic rock genre, and ventured their way into serious progressive musicians. One of the bands problems for this record was inspiration. They had little to no inspiration to keep the trend of great music going. They felt like they had reached a low point in their career with no successful giant hit albums. Part of the reason they didn’t have much inspiration was from the fact of the band touring all over the place. They were worn out from the constant touring. Nick Mason the drummer says “This album is a load of rubbish, to be honest with you. We were at a real down point” (Jones 68). This down point however turned around when they had the release of the next album.

The band kept going and going. They could not be stopped they just kept recording and producing music. The label of their next album was titles Meddle. The band was planning on producing a record called “Relics” as a tribute to their former member Syd Barret. However they felt they should keep his unrecorded music off the market because they just felt bad for