Pink Floyd
The English band that turned the rock album into a single sustained argument. Formed in London in 1965 by Syd Barrett, Nick Mason, Roger Waters and Richard Wright, Pink Floyd began as a psychedelic act built around Barrett's whimsical, unstable songwriting, and lost him to mental illness within three years of their debut. David Gilmour, brought in at the end of 1967 to cover for Barrett, stayed for the rest of the band's life. What followed was one of the most commercially improbable runs in popular music: The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall, four records built on alienation, money, madness and grief that between them sold in the hundreds of millions.
The success cost them the band. Wright was forced out in 1981, Waters left in 1985 and sued to stop the others using the name, and Gilmour and Mason carried on without him through A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell. Barrett died in 2006, Wright in 2008. All five were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, and the band received the Polar Music Prize in 2008 for what the citation called a monumental contribution to the fusion of art and music. The four surviving members played together once more at Live 8 in 2005, for twenty-three minutes, and never again.
Articles on Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd – Learning to Fly – Live in Venice
To play Venice in 1989, Pink Floyd had to turn their volume down by nearly half and perform from a stage floating in the lagoon — and the chaos that followed helped bring down the city's government.
Pink Floyd – Welcome to the Machine
Fifty Years Hiding in Plain Sight: Pink Floyd's "Welcome to the Machine" Finally Gets Its Video
Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here (Official Video)
Fifty Years Later, The Song Finally Gets Its First Official Video
Pink Floyd – The Great Gig In The Sky
She Got Paid Thirty Pounds And Left For Dinner
Pink Floyd – Another Brick In The Wall
A music teacher walked two dozen pupils down the road to a recording studio without telling his headteacher what they were going to be singing
Pink Floyd – Money
Roger Waters built the opening of "Money" out of household sounds — clinking coins, a torn page, a cash register — spliced into a seven-beat loop. It became the unlikely hit single that finally broke Pink Floyd in America.