HISTORY

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Pink Floyd is a British rock band noted for their progressive compositions, thoughtful lyrics, sonic experimentation, album art and live shows. Pink Floyd is one of rock’s most successful acts, having sold 73.5 million albums in the US alone. The group is also believed to have sold an estimated 175 to 200 million albums worldwide.

Pink Floyd enjoyed moderate success in the late-1960s as a psychedelic band led by Syd Barrett. After Barrett’s erratic behavior caused his colleagues to add guitarist David Gilmour (who eventually replaced Barrett), the band went on to record several elaborate concept albums, achieving worldwide success with 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon, one of the best-selling and most enduringly popular albums in rock history.

BAND BIO

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The story and biography of the band members of Pink Floyd. Including Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Syd (Roger) Barrett, Nick Mason and Richard (Rick) Wright.

Roger Waters

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Born George Roger Waters in Great Bookham, Surrey near Leatherhead, Waters grew up in Cambridge.

Although his father Eric Fletcher Waters had been a communist and ardent pacifist, he fought in World War II and died in action at Anzio in 1944, when Waters was only five months old. Waters would refer or allude to the loss of his father throughout his work, from “Corporal Clegg” (A Saucerful Of Secrets, 1968), through “Free Four” (Obscured By Clouds, 1972) and the sombre “When the Tigers Broke Free”, first used in the movie version of The Wall.

Waters’ loss is expressed in this latter song:

 “And kind old King George sent Mother a note when he heard that Father was gone.
It was, I recall, in the form of a scroll, with gold leaf and all.
And I found it one day in a drawer of old photographs, hidden away.
And my eyes still grow damp to remember, His Majesty signed in his own rubber stamp.”

David Gilmour

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Gilmour was born in Cambridge, England. His father, Douglas Gilmour, was a senior lecturer in zoology at the University of Cambridge and his mother, Sylvia, was a teacher and film editor.

 Gilmour attended The Perse School on Hills Road, Cambridge, and met future Pink Floyd guitarist and vocalist Syd Barrett who attended Cambridgeshire High School for Boys, also situated on Hills Road. He studied modern languages to A-Level, and along with Syd, spent his lunchtime learning to play the guitar. They were not yet bandmates however, and Gilmour started playing in the band Joker’s Wild in 1963.

Gilmour left Joker’s Wild in 1966 and busked around Spain and France with some friends. However, they were not very successful, living virtually a hand-to-mouth existence. In July 1992, Gilmour stated in an interview with Nicky Horne on BBC radio that he ended up being treated for malnutrition in a hospital. In 1967, they returned to England, driving a van with fuel stolen from a building site in France.

Syd Barrett

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Barrett was born at 60 Glisson Road in the English city of Cambridge to a middle-class family. His father, Arthur Max Barrett, was a prominent pathologist, and both he and his wife, Winifred, encouraged the young Roger (as he was known then) in his music. When Barrett was three years old, his family moved to 183 Hills Road.

After his brothers and sisters left home, his mother rented out rooms to lodgers, including a future Prime Minister of Japan. Barrett acquired the nickname “Syd” at the age of 14, a reference to an old local Cambridge drummer, Sid Barrett. Syd Barrett changed the spelling in order to differentiate himself from his namesake.

His father died of cancer on December 11, 1961, less than a month before Barrett’s 16th birthday. He attended Cambridgeshire High School for Boys, now known as Hills Road Sixth Form College in Cambridge and enrolled in Camberwell art school in South London in 1964 before forming his first band in 1965. During this pre-Pink Floyd time he wrote such tunes as “Effervescing Elephant” to play at local parties.

Nick Mason

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Nicholas Berkeley “Nick” Mason (born January 27, 1944 in Edgbaston, Birmingham, England) is the drummer for Pink Floyd. He has been the only constant member of the band since its formation. He also competes in auto racing events, such as the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

The son of the documentary film maker Bill Mason, he was born in Birmingham but brought up in Hampstead, London (many online biographies mistakenly cite the street address Downshire Hill – sometimes as “the Downshire Hills” – as a district of Birmingham) and attended Frensham Heights School, Surrey. He later studied at the Regent Street Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster), where he teamed up with Roger Waters, Bob Klose and Richard Wright in 1964 to form Pink Floyd’s predecessor, Sigma 6.

Mason has played drums on every Pink Floyd album, although it was later revealed that his contributions to the album A Momentary Lapse of Reason were quite minimal.

Richard Wright

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Richard William “Rick” Wright (born July 28, 1943 in Hatch End, London) is a self-taught pianist and keyboardist best known for his long career with Pink Floyd. Though not as prolific a songwriter as his bandmates Syd Barrett, Roger Waters and David Gilmour, he did write significant parts of the music for classic albums like Meddle, Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, as well as for Pink Floyd’s most recent studio album

The Division Bell. Wright’s richly textured keyboard layers have been a vital ingredient and a distinctive characteristic of Pink Floyd’s sound. In addition, Wright frequently sang background and occasionally lead vocals onstage and in the studio with Pink Floyd (most notably on the songs “Time”, “Echoes”, and on the Syd Barrett composition “Astronomy Domine”).

Wright was educated at the Haberdashers’ Aske’s School and the Regent Street Polytechnic College of Architecture, where he met fellow band members Roger Waters and Nick Mason. He was a founding member of The Pink Floyd Sound (as they were then called) in 1965, and also participated in its previous incarnations, Sigma 6 and The (Screaming) Abdabs.