Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd is a group of progressive Rock and psychedelic British formed in 1964 famous for its poetic and philosophical texts, its complex album-concept and of the original and worked out performances in concert. This group knew its hour of glory in the Années 1970 thanks to albums like The Dark Side off the Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977) and The Wall (1979), which had much influence at the time. Of its beginnings to today, the group sold more than 200 million albums.

Members of the group

Note: for more information on the members of the group, their collaboration with other projects and their solo production, to refer to the articles detailed with regard to them.

History of the group

1967-1968: psychedelic attraction

After several formations coeds with the members and the various names, the group is constituted in 1964 around Syd Barrett (Guitare S), Richard Wright (keyboards), Roger Waters (low) and Nick Mason (battery and percussions).

The group finds at one their professors with Polytechnic of London, Mike Leonard, and take the name in '' Leonard' S Lodgers '' for a time. Leonard manufactures machines with lightings that it projète on the walls, formant of the psychedelic forms. The group decided to start to play their instruments while taking as a starting point the forms posted on the wall.

One of the original names of the group, T-Set , is abandoned after the group was with the poster with another group of the same name. Barrett proposes on the blow an alternative, The Pink Floyd Sound , a reference to two musicians of Blues, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. It proves also that Syd suffers since the beginning from Schizophrénie, which would have appeared tardily, perhaps suddenly started by drug and the stress. Its scenic performances are limited to play the same note during all the evening. The behavior of Barrett in the everyday life became unforeseeable: he forgets where he is, does not go to the concerts. During a concert, into full in '' bad trip '' with acid, it tears off the cords of its guitar and flees while running. In order to allow all the same the group to play, the other members invite the Guitariste David Gilmour, friend of childhood of Barrett, to join the group in order to be able to ensure of the spectacles. Gilmour must deal with the parts of guitar and song normally ensured by Barrett. Pink Floyd plays five thus for very a short period, before excluding definitively Syd Barrett, become completely unable to play on scene.

Whereas Barrett wrote the major part of the first disc, The Piper At the Gates off Dawn , it contributes little to the second, has off Saucerful Secret , which appears in 1968, forcing the group to take a new direction. With the loss of their main thing Type-setter and founder, David Gilmour remains to maintain the integrity of the group. With its arrival, the sound hardens a little.

1969-1972: musical experiments and take-off of the group

In 1969, the group composes the original soundtrack of the film More of Barbet Schroeder. The latter is characterized by a sound in acid folk and even heavy metal with The Nile Song .

The following disc, Ummagumma (1969), is a mixture of scenic recordings of services and experiments avant-gardists signed separately by each member. With this album, Pink Floyd deviates from its claims underground for a its rock'n'roll a little psychédélique and more conventional confirmed in the three following albums.

Atom Heart Mother , left in 1970, is an example of album rock'n'roll Avant-garde with the long continuation éponyme instrumental 23 minutes, in which takes part a traditional orchestra, and another instrumental part, Alan' S Psychedelic Breakfast , joining of sounds of a breakfast (taken by Alan Stiles, one in '' roadie '' of the group) intersected with short musical passages. Stanley Kubrick would have asked for Roger Waters the permission of use Atom Heart Mother for its film Clockwork orange (1971). However, this permission was refused to him, because the group considered that, taken out of its context, the music would not have any direction. The group would thereafter have regretted this decision after having viewed the work of Kubrick. In the same moment, they take part in the music of the film Zabriskie Point of Michelangelo Antonioni left in February 1970. In spite of a certain dissatisfaction of the realizer, who keeps finally only a few pieces suggested by the group, the set of themes and the esthetics of film correspond completely so that Pink Floyd made at the time.

Left in 1971, Meddle is probably the album which devoted Pink Floyd like one of the major groups of the time thanks to One off Thesis Days , became traditional their concerts, and especially Echoes , 23 minutes a long title. A persistent legend wants that Echoes , last piece of Meddle , is synchronized with the last section of the film 2001, the odyssey of space realized by Stanley Kubrick, left three years earlier. In addition, it is Meddle which defines the progressive sound of Pink Floyd like , i.e. of long parts complex and often divided into several movements.

Finally, Obscured by Clouds (1972), soundtrack for a new film of Barbet spaniel Schroeder, the Valley , confirms the way borrowed by the group. This same year, the group turns a concert to Pompéi in Italy, which clashes by its complete absence of public: the group only plays in the middle of the ruins of the Roman city. For much, this concert, left as cinemas in 1972, is the height of the " its Pink Floyd" , progressive and planing.

1973-1977: glorious years

David Gilmour refutes the charges of commercial temptations when the album The Dark Side off the Moon is a massive success in 1973, in particular thanks to the title Money . This album remains in Signal 200 American during more than fourteen years (until 1987), leaf of many records. It is the third album more sold of all times with 35 million specimens. Its small pocket, works of Hipgnosis, the graphic firm of Storm Thorgerson, friend of the group which carried out the small pockets of the preceding albums, representing the refraction of the light through a prism, remained famous. The Dark Side off the Moon is a Album-concept whose dominant topics are the Vieillesse ( Time ), the Folie ( Brain Damage ) and the Mort ( Us and Them ). It is an album technically very elaborate, with the use of a new recorder 16 tracks with the Studios Abbey Road, the talent of the Sound engineer and producing Alan Parsons, the titles méticuleusement is méticuleusement connected, the guitar of David Gilmour is envoûtante; Richard Wright plays of his Synthétiseur S in a way so much innovating which it will give the example to a whole musical current, in Germany especially. Starting from this album, Roger Waters emerges like single lyric writer of the group, although he wrote the majority of the titles of the preceding albums. The Dark Side off the Moon and the three following albums ( Wish You Were Young stag , Animals and The Wall ) is often regarded as the most led of the career of Pink Floyd.

After the success gained by The Dark Side off the Moon , the group does not find any more inspirations. It thus launches out, at the end of 1973, in sessions for a new album which would not contain any conventional instrument, the sessions of the Household Project . The project does not lead to nothing and the group gives up it. Tensions start to emerge during the recording of Wish You Were Here (1975), which could have led to the dissolution of the group, but the efforts of the members generate a touching album. The principal piece, Shine One You Crazy Diamond is a long homage to Syd Barrett whose spirit seems to continue to haunt the group. Welcome to the Machine and Have Cigar are sour criticisms of the industry of the disc, held for person in charge of the forfeiture of Barrett. The song-title, ode acoustic with absent, concludes to some extent the album, connecting with the second part of Shine One . During the recording of this album, Syd appeared in the studio. The members of the group initially did not recognize it so much it had changed. This episode inspires the idea of an artist to him who would build a wall between him and his public, idea which becomes finally the album The Wall .

1978-1986: domination of Roger Toilets

At the end of 1978, Roger Waters presents to the members of the group two projects of albums: The Wall (whose main themes are the " mur" separating the artist from his fans and the Alienation of the individual by the company) and The Pros and Idiots off Hitch Hiking (which describes its own phantasms). The Wall will be chosen, and the second will be recorded in 1984 in solo by Waters.

The critic greets with enthusiasm The Wall when the album leaves in November 1979 in music. Some sentences extracted the texts will mark the spirits, as in '' We don' T need No education, we don' T need No thought control '' (“we do not need education, we do not need people who think for us”) on Another Brick in the Wall (Share 2) . It marks the beginning of a collaboration between the group, the type-setter Michael Kamen and the producer Bob Ezrin. Is this album, a prelude to with a series in concerts whose logistics is so heavy that the round will cover only four places (immortalized in 2000 by the exit of an double album into live Is There Anybody Out There? ), testifies to the growing influence of Roger Waters. The other members of the group undergo it, and Richard Wright is finally excluded by Waters during the meetings from recording from the album, playing however as musician of accompaniment at the time of the round. Finally, it will be paid better than the others, because the latter will spend of their pocket all the money necessary for the concerts.

The film The Wall , drawn from the album éponyme and carried out by Alan Parker, leaves in rooms in 1982, putting in the high-speed motorboat Bob Geldof in the role of Pink. It with the characteristic not to contain almost any conventional dialog, leaving the place to the pieces of the album. The filmed scenes alternate with animations of Gerald Scarfe.

In 1983 leaves album The Final Cut , album dark and atypical which has album of Pink Floyd only name, since one can read on the small pocket that it is a work of Roger Waters, interpreted by Pink Floyd . Toilets, which took more and more importance in the group, estimates that this one really any more does not have of raison d'être. Not being able to dissolve the group by contract, it leaves Pink Floyd in 1986, by thinking that this one will not survive its departure since it had become the only creative force about it.

1987-1995: David Gilmour takes the reins

Roger Waters thinks that the group will live a long time now only it left, which is not the opinion of David Gilmour which, in 1986, decides to start again the group with Nick Mason. Legal battles begin between them and Roger Waters, who disputes to them the right in the name of the group without his presence. It is however under the name of Pink Floyd that the group leaves in 1987 the album has off Momentary Lapse Reason , having been joined meanwhile by Richard Wright, officially reinstated after the round which followed the album. Because of absence of Toilets, principal lyric writer of the group since one decade, the group had to be made shoulder with the writing and the recording by a certain number of external musicians, of which Tony Levin, bass player and Violoncelliste of Peter Gabriel, and Scott Page, Saxophoniste, guitarist and flutist inter alia group Supertramp during their round of 1983 like on the album Brother Where You Bound (1985), in which David Gilmour had taken part. This last admitted later that the contributions of Nick Mason and Richard Wright to this album were tinier, and good number of criticisms just like estimate that has Momentary Lapse Reason off should rather be regarded as an album solo of Gilmour, The Final Cut for Waters.

It is a group more welded which leaves Beautiful The Division in 1994, on which one will note again the participation of Michael Kamen. This album, that the critic preferred with her predecessor without however acclaiming it, is the prelude of a gigantic world tour, immortalized by the album P·U·L·S·E left in 1995.

Since 1995: towards a reformation?

Pink Floyd reformed the time in one concert at the time of the Live 8 the July 2nd 2005 with London, with Hyde Park. The group was complete, with David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Richard Wright. Before starting Wish You Were Young stag , Roger paid homage to Syd Barrett:

It is one moment moving, upright here with these three guy, after all these years. Upright with you all. At all events, we do it for those which are not there, in particular for Syd, well sûr.

During the week which followed, the albums of the group knew a renewal of sale: according to store chain HMV, the sales of Echoes: The Best off Pink Floyd grew of 1343%, and Amazon indicates that the sales of The Wall increased by 3600%, those of Wish You Were Here of 2000%, those of The Dark Side off the Moon of 1400% and those of Animals of 1000%. David Gilmour declared thereafter that it would transfer the share of the profits due to it in '' boom '' of the sales to charity works, and encouraged the other artists having taken part in the concert to make in the same way.

Rumors of a possible reformation of Pink Floyd circulated since Live 8, but they seemed unfounded. It is what David Gilmour with the Italian daily newspaper declared it '' [[Repubblica]] '', whereas many fans believed hard as iron that Pink Floyd would give again concerts before the end of the year 2005:

The group? It is finished. One just met for the good cause, but frankly I do not want any more of it… And that has nothing to do with Roger Waters, because even without him I will not reform Pink Floyd. To play with Pink Floyd would require too much work, and I have some enough of the pressures. Now I have a quiet life, and then I am 60 years old… I prefer to only work, and I live it very bien.

To note that, according to the magazine Rock'n'roll & Folk of August 2006 (number 468), David Gilmour invited Roger Waters for his last concert of its round One year Island in London. According to Nick Mason, “David invited Roger with the Royal Albert Hall, but this last repeated and could not make itself available;

  • a Astéroïde was named (19367) Pink Floyd in the honor of the group;
  • In the song Another Brig in the Wall , the children who sing are schoolboys with Islington Green School, a college close to the studio where the song was recorded.

Composition of the group

Discography

See also: Amorce=Pour a more detailed list, to see, Discography of Pink Floyd

Albums studio

Recordings live

Note: There also exists of very many discs of pirate recordings of more or less good quality whose principal interest is to propose versions live of pieces very little played. See Discographie pirates of Pink Floyd for more information.

Compilations

Others

Catalog of films

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