Pink Floyd

19 December 2008

Any informed discussion of Pink Floyd's long and influential career is in fact a discussion of four dramatically different bands and eras, three of which produced some of the greatest psychedelic rock ever recorded.
Pink Floyd Mark I started in London in late 1965. Keyboardist Rick Wright, bassist Roger Waters and drummer Nick Mason met while studying architecture at Regent Street Polytechnic. They played together in a succession of bad R&B bands (the T-Set, the Meggadeaths and the Architectural Abdabs) before linking up with Roger "Syd" Barrett, a Cambridge-born painter and poet and the primary songwriter for the early Floyd. Swept up in the psychedelic fervor of Swinging London, Pink Floyd was essentially the house band of the new Day-Glo underground, providing the soundtrack for many a journey toward the white light, and even broaching the British pop charts with the single "Arnold Layne," the catchiest song ever about a transvestite kleptomaniac.


Unfortunately, Barrett was a bit too enthusiastic in his embrace of psychedelic drugs, and his near-constant tripping combined with an existing manic-depressive condition and the pressures of sudden fame sent him over the edge. (He would sometimes stand on stage and refuse to play; in one classic incident, he crushed a jar of pills and put the mess on his head with an entire tube of hair cream, appearing to "melt" under the hot lights.) The band hoped to ease Barrett into a role as stay-at-home songwriter, bringing his old Cambridge chum Dave Gilmour in to play guitar at gigs. But the five-piece Floyd was short-lived, and Barrett was officially ousted midway through recording the second album. Pink Floyd Mark II was a trippy, experimental and mostly instrumental combo that specialized in long, evocative soundtracks for interstellar overdrives. (And sometimes for art films, as in the cases of More and Obscured By Clouds.) This is the era that earns the band the tag of progressive or art rock, but those descriptions never really fit; even the longest and most indulgent compositions had hooks to draw you in, and the musicians were always more interested in setting a mood than showing off their virtuosity. Albums such as Meddle and Atom Heart Mother also saw the Floyd trying out some of the more succinct songs and headphone gimmickry that would come to fruition on its most successful album. Dark Side Of The Moon was released in March 1973, ushering in Pink Floyd Mark III, superstar rock band and staple of FM radio.
Waters moved into the role of primary lyricist, charting some of the pressures of everyday life ("Time," "Money"), while the band displayed more of its R&B roots and perfected all manner of studio trickery, to the delight of stereo salesmen everywhere. But though it's one of the best-selling albums of all time, Wish You Were Here and Animals, the discs that followed, are actually stronger and more subtle works, and they are the discs that stand as Pink Floyd's finest accomplishments. Released in 1979, The Wall is a bloated double-album rock opera that features the group taking a back seat to the increasingly self-important Waters, and it is the transition between Pink Floyd Mark III and Pink Floyd Mark IV. Following the all-Waters snoozefest The Final Cut, the auteur quit the band and set off on a solo career that went nowhere fast. Waters assumed the Floyd could never continue without him, but Gilmour, Mason, and (eventually) Wright regrouped without the old windbag and promptly began recording boring sludgefests of their own.
If the new music didn't exactly slay anyone, the group's live shows continued to wow audiences with more lights, lasers and floating pigs than any other shindig in rock, thereby guaranteeing that the lucrative franchise known as Floyd would continue past the millennium--regardless of whether it ever matched earlier moments of recorded brilliance.