Pink Floyd History
- Change returns success -
|9 Sep., 1943
||27 Jan., 1945
||28 July, 1945
||6 Jan., 1946
||6 March, 1946
The band Pink Floyd is as most bands a result of several years of
changes, both in crew and musical styles. In order to understand what has
really happened over the years ever since their psychedellic era in the
London music underground in the late 60's it's important to see the band
through a historical perspective.
The ones to form the band were all born
at the end of and nearly after the second World War, which in many
ways should influence their music in the late 70's and early 80's. Most
band members came from working class families, except Nick Mason, who were
the one to later finance the recordings of Wish You Were Here. One might
also tend to call the Pink Floyd a Cambridge band, as most of it's members
abandoned this city for the swinging city of London.
The year of birth of Pink Floyd was 1965.
Nick Mason and Rick Wright, who both had gone to Frensham Heights and
Haberdashers, met Roger Waters in an architectural course at Regent Street
Polytechnic in London. They all got together and formed a band with
the other musicians Clive Metcalf, Keith Noble and Juliette Gale
(who later married Rick). The group was initially named Sigma-6, then T-Set
and Abdabs (including Screaming Abdabs and Architectural Abdas). Allthough they
had a fairly interesting repertoir consisting of romantic lyrics accompanied by
music pieces from Tchaikovsky the group did not break through. When the Abdabs
finally broke up Waters, Mason and Wright kept together. Bob Close and
Syd Barrett later joined as first and second guitar, and with Waters on bass guitar, Mason on drums and Wright on keyboard the group was named the Pink Floyd
Sound. The name was taken from one of Barret's recordings with blues
players Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.
The groups repertoir consisted mostly of rythm & blues, with songs like
"Louie Louie" and "Roadrunner". Jazz player Bob
Close finally left the group as Syd Barrett was driven more towards mystique
and pop. Syd later started writing his own songs replacing their
usual cover repertoir. The songs were all odd and new to the public, with
somehow childish lyrics and a new sound, which attracted a small crowd
every time the group held a school concert, but the small popularity
around the group was not enough the members felt. In the spring of -66 the
group was thinking of breaking up, and everybody were planning on spending
their summer vacation in different locations.
At what would be one of their last concerts in june -66 the group was
luckily discovered by a music agent called Jenner, who felt that the group
had a huge commercial potential. Jenner was very much into the music
styles of the London underground and he also absorbed much of the
vibrations coming from loudspeakers at hippie-gatherings all across the USA.
Forming Blackhill Enterprices with Peter Jenner introduced them to a whole
new set of lights and sounds. Sounds were adapted from other groups playing the
London underground, and light technichians came from the U.S. and
replaced their color slide light shows with oil slides projected on the
stage during concert. The name was changed back and forth from "the Pink
Floyd Sound" to "Pink Floyd" and finally ended as the last name which
is still in use. The band's popularity was increasing radically with the
increasing numbers of concerts, and in early spring -67 the band played as
as 20 conserts a month. The band was signed on with a record label
named EMI which held their first press launch on the 1. April 1967.
More to come in a few weeks.....
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