| The name Pink Floyd, seemingly so far-out, was actually derived from the first names of two ancient bluesmen (Pink Anderson and Floyd Council). And at first, Pink Floyd were much more conventional than the act into which they would evolve, concentrating on the rock and R&B material that were so common to the repertoires of mid-1960's British bands. Pink Floyd quickly began to experiment, however, stretching out songs with wild instrumental freak-out passages incorporating feedback; electronic screeches; and unusual, eerie sounds created by loud amplification, reverb, and such tricks as sliding ball bearings up and down guitar strings. These studio antics alongside exceptional musicianship garnered them a steadily building stream of popular albums. 1973's "Dark Side Of The Moon" finally broke Pink Floyd as superstars in the United States, where it made number one. More astonishingly, it made them one of the biggest-selling acts of all time. The album spent an incomprehensible 741 weeks on the Billboard album chart. Additionally, the primarily instrumental textures of the songs helped make the album easily translatable on an international level, and the record became (and still is) one of the most popular rock albums worldwide. The album would be hard to top in any genre but six years later they surpassed that with 1979's "The Wall." The bleak, overambitious double concept album concerned itself with the material and emotional walls modern humans build around themselves for survival. "The Wall" was a huge success (even by Pink Floyd's standards), in part because the music was losing some of its heavy-duty electronic textures in favor of more approachable pop elements. Although Pink Floyd had rarely even released singles since the late 1960's, one of the tracks, "Another Brick In The Wall," became a transatlantic number one. "Another Brick In The Wall" and "Run Like Hell" were released on a promotional-only 12" single and became a double-sided club hit as well. This would be Floyd's only club hits. In the 1980's, the group began to unravel. Each of the four members had done some side and solo projects in the past; more troublingly, Roger Waters was asserting control of the band's musical and lyrical identity. That wouldn't have been such a problem had "The Final Cut" (1983) been such an unimpressive effort, with little of the electronic innovation so typical of their previous work. Shortly afterward, the band split up; for a while. In 1986, Waters was suing David Gilmour and Nick Mason to dissolve the group's partnership (Rick Wright had lost full membership status entirely); Waters lost, leaving a Roger-less Pink Floyd to get a Top Five album with "Momentary Lapse Of Reason" in 1987. In an irony that was nothing less than cosmic, about 20 years after Pink Floyd shed its original leader to resume its career with great commercial success, they would do the same again to his successor. Waters released ambitious solo albums to nothing more than moderate sales and attention, while he watched his former colleagues (with Wright back in tow) rescale the charts. |
