Floyd is one of the most well-respected and influential rock and roll bands of all time. Pink Floyd brought something new to the table of Rock and Roll. They created a sense of psychedelic hallucinations through their music and the lights they used during their performances. The band did not immediately come up with the name “Pink Floyd. ” The group first went by “Sigma 6” then “Architectural Bedaubs” before finally settling on the name Pink Floyd. Pink Floyd is comprised of four members. Sad Barrett and David Glamour both play guitar and are the vocals of the band.
Nick Mason is on drums, while Roger Waters plays bass, synthesizer, and sings some vocals. Rick Wright also plays the keyboard and the synthesizer. Sad Barrett passed away on July 7, 2006 and Rick Wright passed September 15, 2008. All of the other members are still alive today. The early Pink Floyd did not play the music we would expect to hear from them today. In the beginning years of Pink Floyd the band mostly played Blues and Rhythm covers. Sad Barrett created most of Pink Floods early music including the songs including “See Emily Play’ and “Arnold Laymen. Pink Flood’s debut album, “Piper at the Gates of Dawn” is thought to be their most “playful, creative, and whimsical album” (Rockwell. Com). A British music magazine “Q” said “Piper at the Gates of Dawn was a defining album in the psychedelic rock and roll submerge of music. The most well-known song from this album was a nine minute long instrumental titled “Interstellar Overdrive. ” Sad Barrett, one of the most significant and important members of the band, dug himself into drug filled hole. His intense use of the hallucinogenic drug LSI took him from a brilliant and unique song writer and composer to mentally unstable.
Barrett eventually left the band in 1968 and created two of his own albums with the help of his former band members. The albums were titled “The Madcap Laughs” and the other was self-titled “Barrett. ” These two albums were both very eccentric due to his heavy drug experimentation. Not long after the “Barrett” album was released Sad Barrett completely disappeared from the music scene. Pink Floyd did dedicate an album to their former band leader called “Wish You Were Here” in 1975. After losing Barrett, the band replaced him with David Glamour and stayed strong for another fifteen years.
The band released a double album titled Managua which I found very interesting. The album had two discs, the first was many of their live performances and the second was and individual piece by each band member. In all, Pink Floyd released eighteen different albums but one album stands out from the rest. In 1973 the band released an album titled “Dark Side of the Moon. ” This album broke all records and stayed on the Top 200 charts for an astonishing seven hundred and forty one weeks! The album was released in 1973 and stayed on the Top 200 chart until 1988. But the band did not stop there.
Pink Floyd released another wildly popular album titled “The Wall. ” Roger Waters told Rolling Stones magazine in 1982 that he “wanted to make comparisons between rock and roll concerts and war” and Intro to Music essay By Journalese Walters, is “The idea that we, as individuals, generally find it necessary to avoid or deny the painful aspects of our experience, and often in fact use them as bricks in a wall behind which we may sometimes find shelter… ” The band performed the song “Another Brick in the Wall,” which has three different parts, twenty four times all over the country, in a very theatrical manner.
Each time the band performed this song an actual wall was built in front of the band which collapsed at the end of the song. “The Wall” is said to be the most pessimistic album to ever reach number one. “The Wall” was the last album put out by Pink Floyd with the four members Waters, Glamour, Wright, and Mason. “The Final Cut” was released by Pink Floyd in 1983, but Glamour was absent from the album. All of the songs and the music in this album were written by Waters. Glamour had asked Walters to delay the release of the album so he could write a couple of pieces but Waters refused. The album received five stars by Rolling Stones magazine.
Soon after Glamour released a solo album titled “About Face. ” The band broke apart for a few years after that and remained silent until a bitter court battle broke out between members of the band. After that the band ended up releasing two more albums, “Momentary Lapse of Reason” in 1987 and “Delicate Sound of Thunder” and 1988 without Wright. During the nineties Pink Floyd released “The Division Bell” and “Pulse” which went straight to the top of the charts. On July 2, 2005 Pink Floyd performed together for the first time in twenty four ears with the four members Wright, Glamour, Waters, and Mason in Loon’s Hyde Park.
