Pink Floyd

1965–1995; occasional reunions since · British

Psychedelic rock, then progressive rock; the concept album

Pink Floyd began as Syd Barrett's psychedelic London club band and, after his breakdown and replacement by David Gilmour, became the most successful purveyors of the album as a single extended statement. Under Roger Waters they made records about madness, absence, money and war, staged with quadraphonic sound, inflatable animals and, eventually, a wall built across the stage. Their commercial peak is among the largest in recorded music.

How to spot them

▸Founders Syd Barrett, Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Richard Wright; David Gilmour joined in 1968 and Barrett left within months
▸Hipgnosis sleeves by Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell; the prism, the burning handshake, the flying pig
▸Cash registers, heartbeats, ticking clocks, spoken-word interviews and a soprano's wordless scream
▸Waters writes the words and the concepts; Gilmour supplies the guitar tone and, increasingly, the arguments
▸The name comes from two Georgia bluesmen, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council

Songs & albums

A 1973 sleeve of a beam of white light refracted through a glass prism against a black ground (1973)

The Dark Side of the Moon — designed by George Hardie for Hipgnosis; it ran for 741 consecutive weeks on the US Billboard 200.

A 1975 sleeve of two businessmen shaking hands on a Hollywood back lot, one of them on fire (1975)

Wish You Were Here — the stuntman's moustache was singed when the wind changed. The album is a lament for the band's absent founder.

A 1977 sleeve showing an inflatable pig floating between the chimneys of a London power station (1977)

Animals — the pig broke free during the shoot and drifted into Heathrow's flight path. The album recasts Orwell's farm as dogs, pigs and sheep.

A 1979 double album about an alienated rock star who bricks himself in, staged with a wall built across the stage (1979)

The Wall — 'Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)', with a choir from Islington Green School, gave them their only UK number one single, at Christmas 1979.

A 1967 debut of English whimsy and space-rock, named after a chapter in The Wind in the Willows (1967)

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn — written almost entirely by Syd Barrett.

A nine-part 1975 suite, its opening four notes written as a greeting to a former bandmate who wandered unrecognised into the sessions (1975)

'Shine On You Crazy Diamond' — Barrett, overweight and shaven-headed, turned up at Abbey Road during its recording.

A 1971 album whose entire second side is one twenty-three-minute piece opening with a sonar-like ping (1971)

Meddle, containing 'Echoes'; the sleeve is an extreme close-up of an ear underwater.

A 1994 album whose sleeve shows two huge metal heads facing each other across a Cambridgeshire field (1994)

The Division Bell — the last studio album of new material recorded with Richard Wright.

Quick-fire facts

•Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 by Billy Corgan; the plaque names Barrett, Waters, Wright, Mason and Gilmour
•The Dark Side of the Moon spent 741 consecutive weeks on the Billboard 200 from 1973 to 1988, a chart record, and has sold well over 40 million copies
•Syd Barrett left in 1968 after a breakdown widely linked to LSD; he lived quietly in Cambridge as Roger Barrett and died in 2006
•Roger Waters left in 1985 and sued unsuccessfully to stop the others using the name; they settled in 1987
•Richard Wright was forced out during the making of The Wall and played the subsequent tour as a salaried musician; he died of cancer in 2008
•The four-piece reunited with Waters for Live 8 in Hyde Park on 2 July 2005, their only full performance together after 1981
•The Endless River (2014) was assembled largely from Division Bell-era instrumental sessions as a tribute to Wright
•'Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)' was banned in South Africa in 1980 after black schoolchildren adopted it in protest against apartheid education
•In 2022 the band reunited briefly under the name Pink Floyd for the charity single 'Hey Hey Rise Up' in support of Ukraine
•In 2024 the band sold its recorded-music catalogue and name rights to Sony Music, reportedly for around $400 million

Drill it — 10 cards

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Sources

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — Pink Floyd — Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee page
Nicholas Schaffner — Saucerful of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey