Pink Floyd playing at Bob Geldof’s Live 8 charity benefit at Hyde Park in 2005 for their one and only reunion (Image: Getty Images)
The hypnotic sleeve of Pink Floyd’s classic album The Dark Side Of The Moon is universally seen as one of the greatest pieces of art ever to grace a record cover. Showing a beam of light refracting through a triangular prism, its simple beauty has captivated music fans ever since the landmark album’s release in 1973.
Yet its artists later stopped working with Pink Floyd for a hilariously trivial reason – singer and bassist Roger Waters fell out with designer Storm Thorgersen because the artist kept turning up late for their games of squash.
Although Thorgersen and his fellow designer Aubrey Powell worked with the rock giants since they first started as art students in Cambridge in the late 1960s, the famously fiery Waters’ short fuse meant he could no longer tolerate Thorgersen’s tardiness.
It’s one of many bizarre stories told in a fascinating new book on Pink Floyd, often regarded as being one of the most serious mega-selling bands in rock history.
Journalist Mark Blake has interviewed all of Pink Floyd and many of their associates for his new oral history, Shine On. And Blake insists that Pink Floyd aren’t as earnest as their reputation suggests – with their sporting prowess extending to having their own tough-tackling football team.
“The squash story is hilarious,” Blake tells the Express. “Roger was obsessed with the fact he’d book a squash court for half-an-hour, wait around for 12 minutes for Storm to show up, then have to immediately get changed back out of his squash gear as Storm was too late to get a proper game going. Anyone can get cross over timekeeping, and that story is classic bickering that anyone can identify with.”
Waters and guitarist David Gilmour’s feuding has been relentless ever since Waters left Pink Floyd in 1985, but they were able to get along on the football pitch in the 1970s for the amateur team World’s End Wanderers, started by Pink Floyd’s tour manager, Tony Howard.
“I love that David – who is generally seen as a reserved character – was such a hard man on the football pitch that his nickname was ‘Chopper’ Gilmour,” Blake chuckles.
“It says something about the band’s dynamics that team photos show that David and Roger seem to look more committed than the other members of the band.”
When Waters left, he was surprised and hurt that Gilmour took over as Pink Floyd’s singer, with drummer Nick Mason and keyboardist Rick Wright also staying in the band. They carried on for two more successful albums, calling it quits after a stadium tour for their final record The Division Bell in 1994.
Waters and Gilmour’s war of words has only intensified since.
It reached a nadir when, during a 2023 concert at London’s O2 Arena, Waters said of Gilmour’s novelist and journalist wife Polly Samson: “Imagine waking up to that every morning. Come on, you can do better than that.”
L-R): Nick Mason, Dave Gilmour, Roger Waters and Rick Wright in 1973 (Image: -)
Blake believes the pair were bound to fall out eventually, saying: “If the band had taken time off after The Dark Side Of The Moon did so well, it could have lasted longer, possibly. But they were too combustible with each other. It would have blown up eventually.”
In his book, Blake talks to many of Pink Floyd’s childhood friends. The band grew up in Cambridge, where they each endured unusual childhoods.
Waters’ father Eric, a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers, was killed in 1944 during fighting in Anzio when the singer was just three months old. His mother, Mary, was a schoolteacher and stern disciplinarian, though Waters has denied she inspired the tyrannical parent in Pink Floyd’s revered concept album, The Wall.
Meanwhile, Gilmour’s parents left him behind in England when he was just 15, after his academic father, Douglas, got a teaching job in the US.
“David had to stand on his own two feet younger than would be acceptable now,” explains Blake. “He’s a very self-sufficient person. I think being billeted in various homes in Cambridge when he was so young is where his determination comes from. Roger has that self-sufficiency too. He went hitchhiking around Europe when he was just 15.”
Pink Floyd’s original singer was Syd Barrett, the visionary frontman who sadly never recovered after leaving the band after their first hit single, See Emily Play, became a success in 1967. In the book, a friend of Barrett says the singer’s mental decline can be traced from his first joyful appearance on Top Of The Pops to his bewildered, distressing third performance on the show just weeks later.
Blake agrees that fame had a disastrous effect on Barrett, but warns that it’s too simplistic to state that success and experimenting with drugs such as acid were the sole reasons for the singer’s long-term mental collapse.
“Being a popstar didn’t suit Syd,” reasons the author. “It’s far more complicated than writing him off as an acid casualty. Syd’s sister, Rosemary, tells me in the book that today he’d have been diagnosed with autism. If you bring drugs to a mind like Syd, it’s not going to end well. It unsettled him, but I talk to plenty of people in the book who were acid heads, who now live a normal life.
“Syd was also freaked out by fame, at least in part as it was so repetitive. Rosemary says Syd hated doing anything twice. He’s written a great song, so in Syd’s eyes, why should he sing it again?”
(L-R): The original line up of Roger Waters, Nick Mason, Syd Barrett and Rick Wright (Image: Redferns)
Gilmour and Waters both tell Blake of their sadness that they didn’t see Barrett again before his death in 2006. A recluse ever since quitting Pink Floyd, he lived quietly in Cambridge. Blake says: “Syd’s is a sad story. He was a damaged man, who didn’t want to talk to anyone from the old days. It’s tragic.
“It’s credit to David and Roger that they don’t try to hide away from Syd’s influence on them, nor their sadness about not seeing him later as they’d respected his wishes.”
Despite the sadness and bitterness in Pink Floyd’s story, Blake insists it wasn’t all doom and gloom during their heyday. He reasons: “The mood can’t have been terrible all the time, or the band wouldn’t have lasted as long as it did. It wouldn’t have been as good as it is too. Roger and David complemented each other.
“David is a more naturally talented musician, but he’s not a prolific songwriter. Roger would run in saying, ‘I’ve got an idea!’ Without David’s gift for melody, those ideas wouldn’t have been as accessible.”
Gilmour, at 79 two years younger than Waters, joined Pink Floyd after Barrett left.
The age gap is possibly crucial to Pink Floyd’s creativity, as Blake theorises: “The age gap felt huge when Roger was 23 and David was 21. David has told me he felt different when he first joined. He says it was still a difference throughout their time together. I have wondered if there was always a new boy element in David.”
Pink Floyd reunited just once after Waters left, when they played Bob Geldof’s Live 8 charity benefit at Hyde Park in 2005. Musically, the performance was a triumph – behind the scenes, the atmosphere was toxic.
“It was a nightmare,” reveals Blake. “Everyone turned up late for rehearsals. Roger came in wanting to change the songs’ sound, wanting to play different songs altogether. David is stubborn and thought Roger was now the band’s guest.
“Tim Renwick, a session guitarist who played at the show, says how unbearable the mood was. Floyd could never have spun a tour from that reunion, as they’d have killed each other.”
Mark Blake’s book Pink Floyd Shine On: The Definitive Oral History, by Mark Blake (New Modern, £25) is out now (Image: -)
With Gilmour and Waters now enjoying successful solo careers, and drummer Mason performing early Pink Floyd songs on tour in his group Saucerful Of Secrets, the band seem better off without each other.
They can certainly live off their old royalties, having sold 45 million copies of The Dark Side Of The Moon alone. Even that album’s iconic cover had its tensions, however, as designers Thorgersen and Powell were frustrated at how quickly Pink Floyd settled on its classic image.
Blake grins: “Storm and Aubrey came away from the cover art meeting feeling very deflated. Rick Wright had told them, ‘We don’t want any more of your fancy surrealist designs.’ Instead, they wanted something that looked as simple as a box of chocolates.
“The band were offered six or seven different images for the cover, but they all immediately went ‘That one’. Aubrey felt really down, as he and Storm didn’t get a chance to explain the deep meaning behind their other ideas. Let’s be honest: the band was right. The cover they chose worked out pretty well…”
Mark Blake’s book Pink Floyd Shine On: The Definitive Oral History, by Mark Blake (New Modern, £25) is out now
