Before we jump into this video, I
want to thank my sponsor, Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning community
with thousands of inspiring classes for anyone who loves learning and wants to explore
their creativity and learn new skills. Invest in yourself and your personal growth!
Have a specific skill you’re trying to learn? Skillshare is the perfect place to start. From
photography and illustration, to graphic design, freelancing, and more, you can find classes
that match your goals and interests. Skillshare launches new, premium classes literally each
week, so there’s always something new to discover. So why don’t you give it a try? The first 1,000
people to use the link in the description of this video or use my code thebeatgoeson will get a 1
month free trial of Skillshare. Thanks again to Skillshare for sponsoring this video. And now,
it’s time to dork out about the band Pink Floyd. London
1963 Roger Waters and Nick Mason meet while studying
architecture at what is now known as the University of Westminster. Eventually, they
both joined a band called Sigma 6, although at one point the band was called the Meggadeaths
and they eventually settled on the name The Tea Set. Waters played lead guitar and Mason played
drums. There was also Keith Noble, Clive Metcalfe, and another fellow architecture student named
Richard Wright who played keyboard. For lack of a better word, The Tea Set was a standard
rock band that specialized in R&B covers. However, soon Noble and Metcalfe left the band,
and others took their place. There was Bob Klose, who played lead guitar after Waters shifted to
bass guitar. Klose introduced Waters to Chris Dennis, who became their new lead
singer. Meanwhile, Syd Barrett, a childhood friend of Waters, also joined up
with them playing guitar. In December 1964, they recorded for the first time at a studio
that one of Wright’s friends let them use. In early 1965, the Royal Air Force
assigned Dennis to Bahrain, so Barrett stepped in to become the band’s new
singer. A few months later, they became the resident band at the Countdown Club in London.
Each night into the wee hours they played three 90-minute sets. This was when their songs got
longer with more solos and they, dare I say, got more experimental with their sound. In the summer,
after pressure from his parents and teachers, Klose quit the band to focus on his studies,
and Barrett also took over lead guitar. After going through various more name
changes, by the end of 1965 the four of them- Syd Barrett, Nick Mason, Roger Waters, and Richard Wright- were now billing themselves
Pink Floyd. The name came from the combined names of two American blues musicians Barrett
loved, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. Pink Floyd played lots of gigs throughout 1966,
and even started to get paid for them! Led by Barrett, their sound was a weird mix of
rock, blues, and even music hall. Ultimately, their sound distinctly became known as
psychedelic, meaning music influenced by psychedelic drugs…hallucinogenic drugs that
created weird states of consciousness. Barrett, in particular, became a regular user
of LSD, and that heavily influenced the band’s music. The author Lewis Carroll
also heavily influenced Barrett’s lyrics. Anyway, at one show in 1966, a dude named
Andrew King and another dude named Peter Jenner saw Pink Floyd perform at the
Marquee Club, and they were blown away. They soon asked the band to become their managers,
and the band agreed. WIth Jenner and King’s help, Pink Floyd got better shows and they got
them a booking agent named Bryan Morrison, who managed a venue they played a lot at called
the UFO Club. Not all their shows were…um…well received. Because they were playing more and more
of Barrett’s experimental songs instead of R&B covers, audiences sometimes didn’t know how to
respond. After playing one show at a Catholic youth club, the owner refused to pay them,
saying the performance wasn’t music. King and Jenner sued but actually lost the lawsuit,
believe it or not! But by the end of the year, Pink Floyd had built a solid fan base and
soon attracted the attention of record labels. Morrison and a local club manager named Joe
Boyd got the band a recording session at Sound Techniques in London. Soon
after that, EMI signed the band, giving them a £5,000 advance, which
is nearly £100,000 in today’s money. EMI-Columbia released Pink Floyd’s first
single, “Arnold Layne,” on March 10, 1967. The song is about a man who steals women’s clothes
and underwear from clotheslines to wear them. Despite the subject of the song being taboo,
and despite several radio stations banning it, it was a hit in the United Kingdom. The
band even filmed a music video for it, and it’s amazing. Creepy, but amazing. In May,
Pink Floyd appeared on the BBC’s Look of the Week and I’m sorry I first just gotta play what the
host, Hans Keller, had to say about them on it.I gotta say they’re responses to Keller’s
rude questions were delightful. EMI-Columbia released the band’s second single,
“See Emily Play,” on June 16, and it was an even bigger hit. They performed the song on the BBC’s
Top of the Pops, and came back on the show two more times in the coming months, even though
they hated to mime their singing and playing. Meanwhile, Pink Floyd had been recording their
first full-length studio album at EMI Studios in London with producer Norman Smith. During
its recording, Barrett had started taking LSD much more frequently, and the rest of the band
noticed it made him disconnected. Regardless, recording wrapped up quickly, and
EMI-Columbia released their debut album, called The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, on August
5, 1967. The album was a commercial success and critics adored it. The biggest
hit off of it, at least at the time, was “Flaming,” although the album also
featured the live favorite “Interstellar Overdrive.” Capitol Records would release their
first several albums in the United States. The band played many shows to promote
it in Europe, but had to cancel their shows scheduled in the United States due to
Barrett apparently having a mental breakdown, probably due to overusing drugs. After
canceling their appearance at the National Jazz and Blues Festival, King told the
press that Barrett was suffering from “nervous exhaustion.” King and Barrett’s bandmates
tried to get him help from doctors, but Barrett didn’t respond well to it. Whenever they did
play shows with Barrett in the fall of 1967, he sometimes played with the band ok,
and sometimes stared off into space, or played with his back to the crowd playing one
note over and over. Even on American national TV, like the band’s appearance on American Bandstand
on November 7, 1967, Barrett seemed barely there. This was embarrassing to the band, and King
ended their American tour soon after that. Back in the UK, the band
played a few shows with THE Jimi Hendrix, but things got no better with
Barrett, and the band agreed to add guitarist David Gilmour as a fifth member. Gilmour
actually was a long time friend of Barrett, and the idea was that Gilmour would perform
live with the band since Barrett couldn’t. By January 1968, it was clear that Barrett
was suffering from depression and probably schizophrenia. Once joyful and extroverted, now
he just wandered around and didn’t talk to anyone much. It was like he was a completely different
person. His bandmates couldn’t handle it anymore. Originally, Barrett was to stay with the band
to just write songs with them and not perform, but even that wasn’t working out. When Pink Floyd
recorded what would become their second album, Barrett did contribute one song that made the
cut: “Jugband Blues.” The song I think is a masterpiece, and seems pretty self aware
that the band was phasing Barrett out. And the band had a really difficult time letting
Syd go, but by April, he was no longer in the band. Within four years, Syd Barrett had left the
music industry, retired from public life and lived the rest of his life in obscurity, which probably
only increased his legendary status to be honest. Incredibly, Pink Floyd’s most successful and
creative years had yet to come. They hired a new manager, Steve O’Rourke. EMI-Columbia released
their second studio album, A Saucerful of Secrets, on June 29, 1968. It featured the single “Let
There Be More Light,” and it got all the way up to #9 on the UK album chart. A Saucerful of Secrets
was the first Pink Floyd album to feature Gilmour and the only one in which all Pink Floyd
members appeared on. The sound definitely was still psychedelic, with elements of a new subgenre
that the band helped invent called “space rock.” The day after the album’s release, the band
played a free concert in Hyde Park. They soon returned to the United States with The
Who for their first big tour there the next few months. On December 17, 1968, Pink Floyd
released the single “Point Me at the Sky.” In early 1969, the band returned to the
studio to record their third studio album and first soundtrack album for the film More.
EMI-Columbia released it on June 13, 1969. It received mixed reviews, but still got a lot
of radio airplay in the UK. Not wasting any time, the band also recorded their fourth studio album
that year, Ummagumma, released by Harvest Records on November 7. Ummagumma was unique in that
it was a double album, with the first half featuring live recordings from shows at Mothers
Club in Birmingham and the College of Commerce in Manchester from the spring of 1969, and the
second half featuring a single experimental take from each band member. It was the band’s most
ambitious album up to that point, and a bit risky, but fans and critics mostly dug it anyway.
It spent 21 weeks on the UK album chart. After recording some songs for the Zabriskie Point
soundtrack, the band spent much of 1970 recording what would become their fifth studio album, Atom
Heart Mother, which Harvest released on October 2. This would be the last Pink Floyd album
Norman Smith helped out with, and the band worked closely with composer Ron Geesin to
help them record, as well as conductor John Alldis, who actually led a choir to perform on
the record. Both Waters and Gilmour later said Atom Heart Mother was…uh…not a good album. In
fact, Stanley Kubrick wanted to use the album’s title track in his film A Clockwork Orange, but it
didn’t work out, and later Waters said “maybe it’s just as well it wasn’t used after all.” Despite
all that, Atom Heart Mother became the band’s first number one album on the UK chart. It
also did well on American radio stations. To promote the album, Pink Floyd toured a
bunch across both Europe and the United States. By 1971, the band was finally making a profit.
Yep, believe it or not, up to that point they were scraping by. That year, Mason and Wright settled
down and became fathers, buying homes in London. Gilmour, who was still single, moved to an old
farm in Essex. Waters built a home recording studio out of a converted tool shed at his
house in Islington. Perhaps not trusting his old toolshed, the band returned to Abbey Road Studios
in London to record some new material. I’d argue that this is when Pink Floyd had fully developed
their distinct sound that most people recognize today. Waters, in particular, took more control
of their sound, especially with the lyrics. Still, by this point Gilmour was contributing just as
much with the overall songwriting. It was even more experimental than anything they had worked
on up to that point. One crazy thing they did to mix things up in the studio involved each
band member playing on a separate track, with no reference to what the other bandmates
were doing. Each member played around an agreed chord structure, but the tempo was completely
random. All of this experimentation led to what became their sixth studio album, Meddle, released
by Harvest on October 30, 1971. Critics adored its ambition, and it did well in the UK, but it
initially didn’t sell well in the United States, probably due to poor marketing there. Still,
with Meddle, Pink Floyd had taken progressive rock to the next level, especially with the
album’s epic song “Echoes,” which clocks in at over 23 minutes. To promote the album, the
band toured the UK, United States, and Japan. In early 1972, the band recorded what
would become their seventh studio album, Obscured by Clouds, which became the soundtrack for a French film of the same name.
Harvest released it on June 2, 1972, and it featured the single “Free Four,” which
sounds happy but has quite depressing lyrics. Obscured by Clouds would soon be overshadowed
by a much greater album, however. This one would be a concept album, unified by one
theme...that theme being the various stages of life. More specifically, the themes of conflict,
greed, time, death, and mental illness. Waters made early demo tracks of it as his tool
shed studio, and based on that the rest of the band wrote and produced new material at Abbey
Road Studios from May 1972 until January 1973. The legendary Alan Parsons engineered it using
some pretty fancy studio techniques such as tape loops and the band used synthesizer sounds likely
never recorded before. Also with these recordings, Wright and Gilmour had mastered harmonizing their
voices. Harvest and Capitol Records released their eighth studio album, The Dark Side of the Moon,
on March 1, 1973. Then and now, almost everyone agrees that it’s a perfect album, and is generally
considered the band’s masterpiece. In fact, many critics consider The Dark Side of the
Moon one of the greatest, if not THE greatest, albums of all time. It only held the
number one spot on the Billboard 200 chart one week, but it STAYED on that chart for
736 weeks, on and off, all the way up to 1988. And yes, it eventually became Pink Floyd’s most
commercially successful album and has sold an estimated 46 million copies worldwide, making it
possibly the third most commercially successful album ever created. Woahness. Obviously, this was
the album that turned Pink Floyd into superstars and brought them great wealth. While it
produced two hit singles, “Money” and “Us and Them,” the album was meant to be played
as an album, and it was, and it still is. The band toured Europe, the United States,
Australia, and Japan in 1973 to promote the album, but they really didn’t have to. Due to its
success, they began to sell out stadiums, and the audience now was dancing and going crazy.
To re-recreate The Dark Side of the Moon live, the band added saxophonist Dick Parry
and female backing singers to each show. After touring in France and the UK in 1974, the
band returned to Abbey Road Studios to record new stuff. Waters also wanted their next album to
have a conceptual theme about alienation, both with relationships and the music industry. Waters
wrote a song called “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” as a tribute to Syd Barrett, who now hadn’t been
in the band for seven years. Coincidentally, when the band was completing recording of
the song on June 5, 1975, Barrett randomly showed up to the studio to visit them. At this
point, he was overweight with a completely shaved head and shaven eyebrows. Because of
this, when he first entered the studio nobody recognized him. However, once they realized
who he was, many began weeping. They played “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” for him, but apparently
he couldn’t realize the song was about him. Barrett didn’t say much and snuck out without
saying goodbye. Except for Waters seeing him at the store a couple years later, this would be
the last time the band ever saw Barrett alive. Pink Floyd wrapped up recording the
next month, and on September 12, 1975, Harvest released their ninth studio
album, Wish You Were Here. By this point, the band had dropped Capitol Records in the
United States and Columbia released it there. While that album got radio airplay
with songs like the title track, “Have a Cigar” and “Welcome to the Machine,”
critics were a bit more harsh about the album, saying it was a bit pretentious and self
indulgent. That said, today most critics argue Wish You Were Here is one of their best albums,
and both Wright and Gilmour maintained it’s their favorite Pink Floyd album. While it couldn’t
match the success of The Dark Side of the Moon, it still eventually sold over 20 million copies.
They continued to tour to promote the album. Meanwhile, the band bought some church halls
in Islington and converted them into a big recording studio…featuring…wait for it…24
tracks. That’s where they would record what would become their tenth studio album, Animals,
which would be released by Harvest and Columbia on January 23, 1977. It was another concept
album, of course, but this time it focused on the social and political conditions of
the UK at the time. During its recording, the band started doing something that they hadn’t
done much before…fighting. There was conflict mostly due to arguments over…you guessed it…money.
The division of royalties, specifically. While all members still contributed to creating new songs,
Waters took much greater control on Animals. The album was another commercial success, peaking
at number two on the UK album chart and number 3 on the Billboard 200. As the band toured huge
stadiums in Europe and the United States to promote Animals, they grew increasingly frustrated
with audience members who were disruptive. Waters, in particular, had an incident at a show in
Montreal in which an angry fan confronted him for not playing an encore and he spat
in the fan’s face. This experience later influenced Waters to write new music that
would become their next album, The Wall. Waters spent much of 1978 writing this album
and Bob Ezrin came in to help produce, actually writing a 40-page script for it based
on Waters fictional character of Pink, a depressed rock star who reflects on how he got
to that point in his life. The Wall would be a rock opera that examined both abandonment
and isolation, symbolized by…well ya know a wall. Pink Floyd spent almost a year recording
it, beginning in December 1978 and not wrapping things up until the following November. However,
Wright, who was going through some rough personal issues himself, had stopped showing up to
recording sessions. When he did show up, he apparently didn’t do much. Due to this,
the rest of the band reluctantly agreed that they would have to kick him out of the
band, and Wright agreed to quietly leave shortly before the new album’s release. That said,
most fans didn’t even notice, as Wright still stuck around as a salaried session musician
who still also played live with Pink Floyd Harvest and Columbia released The Wall, which was
their eleventh studio album, on November 30, 1979. The band admittedly rushed to release it since
they were going through some financial troubles. Fortunately for them, it was a huge hit. In fact,
it eventually became their second best-selling album of all-time, only behind The Dark Side
of the Moon. With over 30 million copies sold, it’s actually the best-selling double album of
all time. The Wall featured three singles that all became huge radio hits: “Another Brick in the
Wall, Part 2,” “Run Like Hell,” and “Comfortably Numb.” Critics adored it, and it’s also listed
today as one of the greatest albums of all time. For the next year and a half, the band supported
The Wall with an epic tour that featured big inflatable puppets on stage to represent
different characters from the storyline. Later, the band helped the director Alan Parker adapt
the album into a film. First released in 1982, Pink Floyd - The Wall received mostly positive
reviews and has since had a cult following. Meanwhile, tensions had continued to grow within
the band, and overall they had drifted apart. Waters and Gilmour had fought over what
material to include for the aforementioned The Wall film. Not only that, Waters now
wanted to make new music all by himself, without much input from the rest of the band.
While the band struggled to move forward, Harvest and Columbia released a greatest hits
album called A Collection of Great Dance Songs. Throughout 1982, Waters grew impatient with
Gilmour, who promised new material but failed to deliver, doing solo stuff instead. Waters
decided he would just write a new Pink Floyd album himself. Gilmour didn’t hide the fact
that he didn’t like many of the new tracks, but Waters moved forward with them anyway. The
final result was the band’s twelfth studio album, The Final Cut, released by Harvest and Columbia
on March 21, 1983. The Final Cut ended up being quite an appropriate title of the album,
as it was the last to feature Roger Waters. Featuring the single “Not Now John,” with
its F-bombs and all, the album received mixed reviews and was their worst performing
album since Obscured by Clouds. On June 18, 1983, Capitol released a compilation of mostly
unreleased songs by the band called Works. In 1984, their long-time manager, Steve O’Rourke
called for the band to meet for dinner to discuss Pink Floyd’s future. By this point both
Waters and Gilmour had had flourishing solo careers. Well, Gilmour and Mason
left the dinner thinking the band still had a future. Waters apparently left the
dinner thinking the band was done. Regardless, a few months later Roger Waters had officially
left the band, but Gilmour decided to keep the band going, bringing back Wright on keyboard
and determined to make a new Pink Floyd album, as difficult as it would be without Waters.
And yes, there would be legal fights between Waters and Gilmour over the Pink Floyd name,
but Gilmour ended up winning those fights. The band brought back Bob Ezrin to help
produce, and they recorded at various studios in late 1986 and early 1987. The results
ended up being their thirteenth studio album, A Momentary Lapse of Reason, released by EMI and
Columbia on September 7, 1987. It featured three singles that all got regular radio airplay:
“Learning to Fly,” “On the Turning Away,” and “One Slip.” A Momentary Lapse
of Reason received mixed reviews, and the band went on an 11-week tour to promote
it that featured incredible special effects. In August 1988, Pink Floyd recorded live
performances at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, New York over a period of five different
nights and they turned that into an album called Delicate Sound of Thunder, released
by EMI and Columbia on November 22. For the next few years, the band pursued
their own personal projects. Meanwhile, EMI and Columbia released a nine-CD box
set by the band on November 24, 1992, that coincided with the band’s 25th anniversary,
at least as a recording and touring band anyway. Finally, in 1993, the band returned to various
studios to record new stuff. In reality, it mostly was just Gilmour and Wright. Ezrin
once again returned to produce. The new songs ended up making up their fourteenth
studio album, The Division Bell, released by EMI and Columbia on March
28, 1994. While the album again received mixed reviews and didn’t have any major radio
hits, it still managed to sell more than 7 million copies. Pink Floyd went on another
major tour to promote The Division Bell, with bigger special effects than ever before.
A live album, called Pulse, and live film, also called Pulse, later documented several shows
on it. On September 19, 1995, the band released an EP and another film, both called London
‘66-’67, featuring previously unreleased songs. At this point, however, the band was pretty much
done, whether they knew it at the time or not. On January 17, 1996, Pink Floyd was inducted
into the United States Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. However, only Gilmour, Wright,
and Mason showed up to accept it. It’s no surprise that Barrett didn’t make it,
but sadly not even Waters showed up. For the next nine years, the band went on
a big hiatus. And then, Waters did show up. He reunited with the band as they performed
at the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park. Obviously, the fans there went crazy. Afterward,
Pink Floyd was offered £136 million for a final tour, but they turned it down.
That would be the last Pink Floyd concert, although all four did take part in a Syd
Barrett tribute concert in 2007. Barrett died of pancreatic cancer the previous year. Wright
would die from lung cancer the following year. But amazingly, Pink Floyd wasn’t done in the
studio...well at least not Gilmour and Mason. In 2013, the two decided to revisit
the unused Division Bell recordings and fix them up and add to them. The result was
the band’s fifteenth album, The Endless River, released by Parlophone Records on November
7, 2014. It would be their final album, although it’s worth noting they’ve released
several compilation albums over the past 25 years. Today, Pink Floyd remains one of the most
successful and influential rock bands of all time. They’ve sold more than 250 million records
worldwide. They are easily the most prominent progressive rock band to ever exist, known for
their long and complex songs, extreme sonic experimentation, visually stimulating live
performances, and deep lyrics. They played a tremendous role popularizing the concept album,
and just stretching the boundaries of what makes a song…ya know, a song. They began modestly…as a
blues band playing mostly R&B covers, but they ended epically…as a band that was responsible
for much of the future of all music. When I was making this, Mason and
Gilmore actually announced they're releasing a new Pink Floyd song to raise
money for humanitarian relief in Ukraine, so I will post that in the description of this
video. So what's your favorite Pink Floyd song or album? Which Pink Floyd era do you
like the most...the Syd Barrett era, the Roger Waters era, or the David Gilmore era?
Which band should I cover next for this series? I know that's a lot but let me know in
the comment section. Thanks for watching!
