Pink Floyd was the British rock band at the forefront of psychedelia in the 1960s, who later popularized the concept album for mass rock audiences in the 1970s.
The main members were lead guitarist Syd Barrett (Roger Keith Barrett, born January 6, 1946, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, died July 7, 2006, Cambridge), bassist Roger Waters (born September 6, 1943, Great Bookham, Surrey), drummer Nick Mason (January 27, 1945, Birmingham, West Midlands), keyboardist Rick Wright (born July 28, 1945 in London and died September 15, 2008, in London ) and guitarist David Gilmour (born March 6, 1944, in Cambridge).
Formed in 1965, the band went through several name changes before combining the first names of a pair of blues singers from Carolina, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. Their initial direction came from vocalist, guitarist and songwriter Barrett, whose mix of blues, music hall, Lewis Carroll references and dissonant psychedelics established the band as the cornerstone of the British underground.
The band signed with EMI and, in early 1967, they had their first British hit with the controversial "Arnold Layne", a song about a transvestite, followed by their debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, a lush experimental record that it has become a rock classic. Their sound was becoming more and more adventurous, incorporating sound effects, guitars and space keyboards, and improvisations such as "Interstellar Overdrive".
In 1968, Barrett, who was abusing LSD and battling schizophrenia, was replaced by guitarist Gilmour. Without Barrett's surprising lyrics, the band moved away from the singles market to focus on live work, continuing their innovations in sound and lighting, but with varying degrees of success. After recording a number of movie soundtrack albums, they hit the American charts with Atom Heart Mother (1970) and Meddle (1971). Making songs with a thematic focus but including lengthy instrumental passages, the band did much to popularize the concept album with incredible audience and commercial success with Dark Side of the Moon (1973). A grim treatise on death and emotional breakdown underscored by Waters' dark songwriting, which led Pink Floyd to megastar status, lingering on the American charts for more than a decade.
With the release of Animals (1977), it became clear that Waters had become the band's dominant influence, and there was growing internal conflict within Pink Floyd. Their sense of alienation was profoundly illustrated by the tour of the 1979 hit album The Wall, for which a veritable brick wall was built between the group and the audience for the performance.
After the appropriately named The Final Cut (1983), Pink Floyd became inactive, and legal disputes ensued over ownership of the band's name. Waters, who fired Wright after The Wall and took over most of the songwriting, was in even tighter control. As a result, the band split up, but, much to Waters' chagrin, Gilmour, Mason, and Wright reunited, continuing as Pink Floyd. In the late 1980s, Wright, Gilmour, and Mason released two albums, including the heavyweight A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987) and The Division Bell (1994).
while Waters pursued a solo career. Waters reunited with his former bandmates for a single performance at the Live 8 benefit concert in 2005.
Gilmour and Mason then used recordings made with Wright (who died in 2008) to create what they said was Pink Floyd's final album, The Endless River (2014). Pink Floyd was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.
