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Pink Floyd started out like something around 1965. The original band line up consisted of the following names :
George Rogers Waters born on 9 September
1943.
Roger Keith (Syd.) Barrett. born on 6 January
1946.
Richard William Wright born on 28 July 1945
Nicholas Berkeley Mason born on 27 January,
1945
&
David Jon Gilmour born on 6 March,
1946 who joined them later.
Syd. Barrett joined the Cambridge High School for Boys along with Gilmour and Waters. Later he took on painting and playing guitars. Waters left Cambridge to study architecture in london where in his class he met Richard William Wright and Nicholas Berkeley Mason. They formed a music group called "Sigma 6" which they later changed to "T-Set" and then "The Meggadeaths," then to "The Architectural Abdabs," then to "The Screaming Abdabs," and simply "The Abdabs." but all this name changing did not brought success to them. Their actual line up was :
Roger Waters, Lead Guitars
Richard Wright, keyboards
Nick Mason, drums
Juliette Gale, vocals
Keith Noble, vocals
Clive Metcalf, bass
Yup none of them sunged at that time. Later Juliette, Keith, Clive left and group brought Syd. Barrett and Bob Close to the group afterwards even Bob left it. Now at this point Barrett renamed the band to Pink Floyd. The name was inspired by two blues artists, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council, who Barrett liked. Now they were Pink Floyd. In 1966 they played at many joints and hangouts they were furthermore inspired to release their album which they did in 1967.
In 1967 Pink Floyd released their album "Piper At the Gates of Dawn". The album had good songs like "Arnold Layne" which is about a person who stole ladies underwear from washing lines and "Matlida Mother" which was ranked among the top 10 psychedelic songs of 1960 at No. 8 . it also featured "Astronomy Domine" which is even today played at Pink Floyd Concerts. The album did one thing for sure it got Pink Floyd noticed the album entered the charts at no. 20. Barrett was very much of in control of the group right now. He wrote 10 of the 11 songs featured and also did the album cover design of the cassette. The success of "Piper At the Gates of Dawn" was too much for Syd. as he took vast amounts of drugs and started acting maniacally on stage and got more unpredictable and unpredictable. Now it was pretty clear that Syd. could no longer be actively playing for band and search for a different guitarist brought a obvious choice David Jon Gilmour who was also in Male Modeling into that time. Later out the band decided that they can do without Syd. Barrett and decided to leave him. later on Syd. came with two different records with help of floyd members as they were the producers of his album.
In 1968 Floyd released their second record "A Saucer full of Secrets". The album was medium business generator. Floyd at this time stopped doing Singles. Their concerts were now featured with light show on the background having million bubbles or something else adding a other dimension to their psychedelic music.
In July1969 they released the soundtrack they had written for Barbet Schroeder movie "More", also Peter Whitehead's "Tonite Let's All Make Love In London". Also in the same year they released Ummagumma which was a double cassette album featuring their live shows. Ummagumma was slang for "Fuck You" in Cambridge where they studied, only roger gave few individual songs in the album.
In 1970 they released "Atom heart mother" featuring very few songs which were written jointly by Pink floyd with Ron Geesin. In 1971 they wrote "Meddle" and in the same year they released their compilation album "Relics"
In 1972 they released "Obscured By the Clouds"
and in the same year they shot at pompeii a video take which includes video
of the songs of the Floyd which included "One of these days", "Set the
controls from the heart of the sun".
Then came the album which rocked the world.
"Dark Side of Moon" changed
the sound of rock forever. DSOM featured
songs which had psychedelic sounds
which were never heard before in rock. From
a simple cover with just a light
coming out of a prism in spectrum
colors with no group name no album title.
From different guitar tunes to outstanding
piano and drums matched with
unparalleled lyrics of songs. The Album
became an instant hit obviously reaching
no.1 in U.S. and U.K. immediately as it
was released. The album also holds the
record for longest staying on Billboard
top 200 chart run of about 746 in a
row (compare this to world no.1 Micheal
Jackson Thriller record of 222 weeks
and Led Zeppelin II record of 250 weeks).
DSOM went up to became the 3rd
largest selling album in the world and also
the largest selling rock and roll
record in the history. DSOM kept selling
a million records ever year and
reached a total of 30 million records album.
DSOM was basically a Roger
Waters project as he wrote the major chunk
of lyrics in the record, others did
also actively contribute but not as much
as the Waters did.
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