Latest / GARAGE TO STADIUMS Music History Podcast / The Story of Pink Floyd: The architects of sound and vision

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The Story of Pink Floyd: The architects of sound and vision · GARAGE TO STADIUMS Music History Podcast

• Garage to Stadiums Music History podcast Episode: The Story of Pink Floyd Host: Dave Anthony Guest: Mark Blake, author of "Shine On: Pink Floyd The Definitive Oral History" Dave Anthony 0:01 Hi there. I'm Dave Anthony, and this is the garage to stadiums podcast rated as one of the top 5% of podcasts globally. On each episode, we tell you the story of how one of our music legends rose from obscurity to fame and play some of the songs that mark that journey. Welcome to garage to stadiums. Today's episode is the story of Pink Floyd, a band that began in the underground clubs of 1960s London. They were early architects of the psychedelic era, fusing strange sounds, surreal lyrics and swirling lights into a new kind of musical experience. But their story didn't stop there. Pink Floyd evolved, experimenting with grand, cinematic soundscapes, deeply philosophical themes and live shows that felt more like journeys to the human mind than concerts. What you're about to hear is a roller coaster of creativity and chaos, a rise from the London Underground to global domination, a heartbreaking loss of their visionary leader, a bold reinvention that produced one of the best selling albums in history, and finally, implosion from within that fractured one of rock's most brilliant partnerships. Pink Floyd is one of the most successful acts of all time, selling over 250 million albums, and here to tell their story is our returning guest. Mark Blake, acclaimed rock journalist and author of books on Queen Fleetwood Mac and his latest book, Pink Floyd shine on the definitive oral history has just been released. Welcome back to garage, to stadiums. Unknown Speaker 1:35 Mark, Hello, good to be here again. Dave Anthony 1:41 Mark, you've written on Pink Floyd in the past. Tell us about how your latest book, Pink Floyd shine on came about. Mark Blake 1:48 I think I got the idea. About three years ago, I was going for an archive of interviews I'd done with the band. I wrote a Pink Floyd book in 2007 called pigs might fly, which came out as comfort was called comfortably numb in America. Pigs might fly in the UK, and I had a lot of material left over from that. Obviously, I'd interviewed the band members several times since that book came out, and the story needed updating, but I thought the best way to do it was to kind of put it here, all in their own words. Is what's cool, is what's what publishers call an oral history, which is always a rather unpleasant term, but it sort of refers to the fact that the bulk of the book, it's like talking heads on the documentary. It's all in their own words, which I thought would be good fun, because they all disagree with each other. So you can the reader can make their own mind up, and you Dave Anthony 2:39 give us a quick synopsis before we begin, so the audience gets a flavor for these individuals. Maybe you know their family backgrounds, who they were when they were adolescents, etc, what kind of family they came from? Mark Blake 2:51 Well, the three of them came from Cambridge, which is out in the UK. Here, it's not that far from London, but it's an academic towns, world famous university there. It's also surrounded by a lot of rural areas. It's an it's an unusual place. There's a lot of green surrounding it beautiful city. But three of the band members, Sid Barrett, the original member, Roger Waters, David Gilmore, all came from Cambridge. In fact, couple of them were so their parents kind of knew each other. In some cases, they moved to London, Sid Baron Roger Waters and the drummer Nick Mason and the keyboard player Rick Wright, and put the band together from there. But I mean, as if you look at the three Cambridge individuals, they all had a slightly shared background. Their their parents were either teachers or academics. They weren't necessarily particularly affluent, but they grew up in quite an academic sort of environment. They were artistic and musical. They were that side of their development was encouraged, but also the fact that all three of them had sort of slightly absent parents. I mean, Roger Waters and Sid Barrett's dads both died when their sons were very young. David Gilmore's parents sort of disappeared to the States when David Gilmore's dad got a job there, and he was sort of bundled off to boarding school when he was about five. And I think what all three of them had in common to certain extent, is they kind of left to fend for themselves a little bit parenting. Parenting in the 1950s and 60s was perhaps a little less hands on than it is now, but I always get the impression that you had three very kind of self contained individuals who knew how to take care of themselves. Dave Anthony 4:33 How did they come together in London? Then it was students. Mark Blake 4:37 Yeah. I mean, Sid Barrett was studying art at Camberwell art school and Roger Waters and the drummer Nick Mason met at Regent Street Polytechnic, where they were studying to be architects. And it really was a case of once, Sid Barrett came down. A year later, Roger and Nick had a bit of a band together playing in colleges. And they kept saying, Roger kept saying, look, I've got my friend, Sid, he's going to be great. And what. He joined the band, he started writing songs. That's a very condensed way of of of how it happened. But it wasn't a serious thing for two or three years. It was just a hobby and something to do, something to have fun. It's things started to pick up around about 1965 66 Dave Anthony 5:17 and it sounds like Sid came on before that, they did the usual British emulating the RnB, the stones Beatles, that kind of stuff. Then Sid comes on as the main lyricist. Like it's interesting that he's kind of considered this leader of the early version was, was he the leader or just the lyricist? I think it Mark Blake 5:37 was a strange sort of setup, because a lot of people were saying to me that if you wanted to talk about the practicalities and the business, their early manager said you always went to Roger Waters, but it was Sid Barrett that was writing the songs. He was the one that came forward and said, Look, I've got these ideas. And they encouraged it. If you had someone in a band that could write their own material, that took you out of just being another covers group playing, as you said, The Beatles and The stones, which they did do, but as they said themselves, musically, they were actually quite limited. They were not necessarily the greatest musicians in the world. I mean, a keyboard player, Rick Wright was a wonderful piano player, and he'd studied music, so he had an advantage. But the others were kind of, they were all sort of willing amateurs. So I think when Sid poked his head over the parapet and said, I can write a song. There was an element of, well, okay, off you go. Dave Anthony 6:26 Then, yeah, it sounds like in your book, your other book that I read, and even Nick Mason's book, he talks about how they were really just university students, and as you said, hacking about on instruments, they weren't even that great on them. Mark Blake 6:41 That's right. I mean, there's a point in the summer of 1965 one of the things we've got in this book is letters that Sid Barrett wrote to one of his girlfriends, which hadn't been published before she she she dug the letters out for me, and they make for very interesting reading, because you're not reading the the ramblings of a rock star. It's a 2021, year old art student who's thinking, well, I need to concentrate on my course. I'm having trouble doing this sculpture. Oh, and by the way, I think the band's going to break up because, you know, Nick Mason, Roger Waters are going off to work in architects offices. So there was nothing that you know. The idea they were going to become this world famous rock band was still some way off. Dave Anthony 7:22 Floyd does many of its early performances at the marquee Club, which was where the Rolling Stones played early on. They also played a club that was spelled UFO, but pronounced UFO. And a key differentiator for this band was their stage shows. They use projectors to project slides that contain oils, which became an avant garde experience of swirling colors and images as 1967 begins. They're signed by EMI records, which is the Beatles record label. Before they came to their final name of Pink Floyd, the band went through various name changes, including the megadeths Screaming AB dabs, Spectrum five and at one point decided to call themselves the tea set. When they discovered another band was called the tea set. Sid Barrett came up with the new name by combining the first names of two American blues musicians, Pinkney, pink Anderson and Floyd Council in 67 March, a single emerges, Arnold lane. Quite a story with this song. Who is Arnold lane? Mark Blake 8:25 Well, I don't think he ever really existed. I think they people like to think that he did, but no one's ever confirmed that it was based on one person. There was a guy around Cambridge who supposedly stole women's underwear off of what, off of clothes lines which people had in their back gardens, and they just wrote a SID Barrow song about it. Mark Blake 8:58 Let me cause a little bit of a fuss here in on the radio, right? But that song was banned. I think it was sort of loosely banned by the BBC, or they all pink. Floyd told people. Emi records told people it had been banned. I mean, the fuss around it created publicity. So it's, you know, yeah, everyone, everyone benefited from Dave Anthony 9:20 that couple months later, they release another single, again with Sid Barrett at the Lyric, lyrical controls. It's called C Emily Play, Dave Anthony 9:42 and I was gonna ask you question, is it fair to say that Sid's song seemed to always manifest as these late ditties hung in a theatrical like English accent? Mark Blake 9:50 Well, they were, but there was two sides to it, because when they signed to EMI, they had to curb their more experimental side, which is what they. They were doing live, the live show and what they recorded as singles were very, very different. This is what created this sort of weird dichotomy later on, quite quickly, in the band. But the light ditties is a bit misleading, because if you went to see them play live, they'd be doing a 15 minute version of some instrumental song, and Sid Barrett could be running ball bearings up and down the guitar and making all kinds of sort of ungodly racket while there was a light show going away and going on in the background. It was they were experimental really, because they weren't quite there as songwriters, and that was the hip thing to be at the time. The experimentation was fashionable. Dave Anthony 10:39 That's interesting. So the actual experimentation vibe that was everywhere played into their ends, because they could kind of go with it and not have the lyrics necessarily. Mark Blake 10:50 Sid Barrett wasn't trying to be Eric Clapton or Peter Green, which is so many other guitarists trying to do that. I mean, he didn't have, necessarily have the chops to do that, but he also didn't have the inclination he was doing something quite different at the time. Dave Anthony 11:05 The diddies kind of evolve in a more instrumental driven psychedelia, as you said, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, featuring these expansive songs like Astronomy Domine and Interstellar Overdrive. You Dave Anthony 11:31 and a song called Lucifer Sam that sounds like it could have been on the Batman TV series at the mid 60s that ran in America. You Dave Anthony 11:47 it's quite an evolution, Mark in sound from the diddies. What do you think inspired SID to go in that direction? Or was it all of them that decided this? Or was it just the vibe, Mark Blake 11:56 mainly Sid Barrett, but I mean, these, these were simply the songs that he was writing. I know when I spoke to Norman Smith, who produced that Piper at the Gates of Dawn record. I mean, Norman Smith had worked with The Beatles, and his job was to knock off the rough edges. He said, I wanted to make a pop album. Now, that's as far as he could get to making a pop album, because it's actually very left field for a pop album, even in 1967 but that kind of stuff. I mean, like you said, Lucifer Sam sounds like, sounds like something off of Austin Powers soundtrack, or something like that, any but that's this sort of I think what I like about those songs is, I don't think there's anything actually that contrived about them. I think that's just how they came out. I mean, Interstellar Overdrive would could go on for 15 minutes on stage. What, what they managed to get on the album was it was an abbreviated version that wasn't going to scare everybody, because they want, they wanted to sell some records. I think the album was a compromise. I think it's sort of naive and fun. Can't take it too seriously. But it was, it was just the condensed version of what they were doing live. Of course, the trouble is, when they went out live after that, they didn't want to play the hit singles. So Arnold lane and cm really play were hits. Cm really play especially was a hit. And then they go off and play the local ballroom, and they would refuse to play the song. Instead, they've been doing 1520, minutes of free form jamming, and audiences would get very upset. Dave Anthony 13:23 Yeah, I guess the audience should keep in mind that this is the Sergeant Pepper. Sergeant Pepper's era with psychedelia, kind of The Beatles down the hall. I mean, Mark Blake 13:32 this is it. The Beatles were making Sergeant Pepper that literally down the hall at Abbey Road Studio. So there was a lot of experimentation. The Beatles had opened the door to this even before that with with revolver. I mean, when, when pin Floyd went into Abbey Road to make that first album, they found all kinds of instruments and gizmos lying around that. So they threw everything at it. You know, there's a lot of there was a lot of instrumentation on there that they probably never considered using before, but they did so because it was there and it was different. Dave Anthony 14:02 Next, we will hear how one of the key figures in pink, Floyd, has tragic mental health challenges threatening the band's performances and ability to continue. Speaker 1 14:15 Are you a fan of Bob Dylan, The Who Jim Morrison or Bob Marley? Check out garage to stadiums on Spotify, Apple podcasts and more. Dave Anthony 14:25 We get mark to the next era, and this is where things start to get a little bit we say erratic SIDS behavior leads to 19 year old guitarist David Gilmore joining the band. Who you mentioned was from both Roger and Sid knew him from Cambridge. There's some stories of the band getting so fed up with Sid that they just stopped picking him up to go to gigs like leave him at home. Is that fair? Mark Blake 14:50 That's what eventually happened. I mean, sort of sometime around summer 1967 his behavior started to become very erratic. I mean, I'd into I've interviewed. Sister a few years ago, and her she's quoted a lot in the book. And you know, something to point out is, he was an unusual child. His brain worked slightly differently from other people nowadays. Maybe there would have been a diagnosis of some kind. We will never know. But I think he moved to London. He wanted to be an art he wanted to be an artist. He sort of gets sidetracked into being in a pop group. Suddenly, he's a pop star. People are expecting him to write more songs, and I think he buckled under the pressure. And on top of that, he was experimenting with a lot of drugs, as others were at the same time, dope mandrax, which I think used to call Quaaludes in America, and LSD as well. And I think that the opinion of his sister, which is the one I tend to take, because I feel she would have known him better than anyone, is that he took something, or took too much of something, and he just knocked the wiring out in his in his brain. Perhaps that's a very crude way of putting it, but whatever it was didn't mix well with the way his mind worked, and his behavior became more erratic over a period of few months, until it was around January 68 by that time, they brought David Gilmore in to help out. The idea being that David Gilmore would sort of pick up slack on stage, but Sid was playing properly when at some of the shows, or turning up late and so on and so forth. So one day, they just went ahead without him, and then he never really looked back after Dave Anthony 16:32 that, it's striking how Pink Floyd's story echoes another great rock tragedy, just as Fleetwood Mac lost their virtuoso guitarist and chief songwriter, when Peter Green's brilliance unraveled, his mental struggles accelerated by his own psychedelic drug intake, forcing him to step away in 1970 Mark Blake 16:52 I suspect, based on the people I spoke to, that's that's kind of what Sir Barrett was like. I mean, he lived quite reclusively At the end of his life, or for many, many years, and just went to the shops, would get on a train and go to London, visit the museums, do all these things, but he did not want to be reminded of ever being being a musician or a pop star, right? Dave Anthony 17:16 So he departs the band. The saucer full of secrets is the first album where he barely appears, and this is where Gilmore starts taking over on guitar. It's almost a more spacey sound that they're starting to move towards. Dave Anthony 17:41 Is that sort of, I guess they're moving towards the sound they're ultimately heading towards. Mark Blake 17:45 Yeah, I think these are all the stepping stones, aren't they, to to the dark side the moon, and wish you were here in the huge albums. But it takes in the best part of three or four years to get there. I mean, this is the beginning of, kind of, in the UK, definitely, of an album rock, where the album, rather than the single, becomes king. They their argument is, we couldn't write hit singles after Sid Barrett left, so let's not bother doing trying to write singles at all. And they didn't. They stopped. They stopped making singles, and they concentrating on albums. And I think you know, those early records source full of secrets. They did a soundtrack to a sort of a European art house film called more. There's some nice stuff on all of these records, but you have to kind of cherry pick through it, and a lot of it is of its time. And if you talk to some of the band members now, you know, on occasions, they've been slightly dismissive about that stuff. The drummer, Nick Mason, less so because, I mean, he, in recent years, He's toured with his own little group, playing that early stuff. But, you know, I think, yeah, Nick Mason, source of the secrets, as it is called, which is a lot of fun, and I think he's had a whale of a time doing it. But, yeah, if you talk to Gilmore or to Roger Waters, they're a little bit more dismissive of that stuff? Yeah, they feel their songwriting and what they were good at, their songwriting improved quite considerably, I think after that period. Dave Anthony 19:11 Yeah, there's some cherry pick is a good word, because there are some dreadful things on omagama. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There's the song titled several species of small furry animals gathering together and grooving to a PICT. And I had to Google what a PICT was. And apparently, the tribe in northern Scotland in the Middle Ages that use body paint and p, i, c, t mark the shortening of a Latin phrase for paint. My goodness, I Dave Anthony 19:51 you'd have to be smoking some serious stuff to be coming up with this stuff. Well, I Mark Blake 19:55 think there was some smoking going on, but I also think it's that kind of slightly British stew. Humor. I mean, it's sort of shades what Monty Python was just around the corner. I think it was just them having a laugh. They got they got let loose in Abbey Road. And the idea was on the studio sides of amagama, because one half of it's live, is that each of them had a chance to do a piece, to do pieces of music on their own. Now, Roger Waters absolutely embraced this, and one of his pieces was, was several species, the others were mortified, I think, by and that David Gilmore said that he was, he said, Never clue what to do. But this is, this is what happens when you've got unlimited studio time. And you know, they negotiated the deal for unlimited studio time. And Emi, they were selling records. I mean, omagama was a, I believe, was a number one album. I think one or number three. I'd have to check that someone will, I'm sure will correct us. But they were selling a lot of records of this stuff. You know, people were sitting cross legged on the floor with headphones on, smoking something illegal, and listening to, you know, several species of small furry animals, painted Scottish, Dave Anthony 21:11 picked, that's right, the the This has got to be the era, like some of these songs on these albums, Adam Heart, Mother, 23 minutes long. Mark Blake 21:21 Adam heart, mother is the title track sounds like it sounds like four or five sound film, film theme scores welded together. They had an orchestra or orchestral players on this you Mark Blake 21:46 but again, it's, it's all an experiment. I mean, Roger Waters once described it as a complete pile of shit. You know, he was incredibly dismissive for it. I think they've softened. In their opinion, there are some nice bits in it. There are some bits I like. There's some sort of strange bit that sounds like monks chanting, where they've got a choir on there. It sounds like the music, some sort of, it's one minute it sounds like a spaghetti western, some sort of Sergio Leone thing. And then the next minute, it sounds like a horror film. Again, I mean, again, it's, it's utterly of its time, you know, and Stanley Kubrick wanted to use it in 2001 A Space Odyssey, I believe. But they wouldn't. They wouldn't let him use the music so Dave Anthony 22:31 interesting next the wandering, uncertain Pink Floyd still trying to fuse Sound Vision and meaning silenced every doubt with a breathtaking triumph, it became one of the defining creations in modern music, a 1973 masterpiece that lifted them into Rock's highest stratosphere, garage to stadiums, part of the top 5% of podcasts globally. We continue on metal, which actually has a fairly well known track. One of these days Dave Anthony 23:12 which sets us up for 1973 Dark Side of the Moon. I mean, this album was everywhere. The legendary album that marked Pink Floyd emerging as a force to be reckoned with, songs like breathe Dave Anthony 23:39 on the run you the Dave Anthony 23:52 time. Dave Anthony 24:02 Wait Great Gig in the Sky, us And them, we're row. Dave Anthony 24:20 We're only and money. Dave Anthony 24:40 Oh, which became the band's what first hit single in the US making it to number 13 on the Billboard charts. I mean, what can you say about this? Other than it's what stayed on the charts for 741 weeks Mark March 1973 all the way to October 19. 88 an incredible span of 15 years on the charts. Mark Blake 25:04 I think the songwriting became better. I think that the LEAP even from medal to to dark side the moon was was quite incredible. I think that's a lot of that you have to give credit to Roger Waters for the lyrics and the idea and the concept. I mean, the thing about it is an album, the concept is very loose. It's about sort of everyday life, isn't it? You know, breathe. I mean, you couldn't get any more literal than breathe. Breathe in the air. Don't be afraid to care. It's pretty basically stuff about growing older, growing up. There's some stuff in there about madness. There's about jealousy, greed and so on. And I think it was a beautifully recorded record. It sounded amazing. It sounded particularly good on headphones and on, on the kind of newfangled stereo systems in the 70s when, when those things came along. But there was something about it that also connected with an American audience. Prior to that, these albums had not sold particularly well in the States. It was building slowly, but as you say, it connected in America. And Pink Floyd, they went back on their no singles rule to release, as you said, money only in America, only in the States. Of course, he gave them this huge, huge hit single, and that just catapulted them into performing in arenas and eventually into stadiums. So when they, when they finally got big, they got big very quickly. After Sid left, it was very much Roger Waters that drove the ship. You know, he was, he was the guy pushing. He was extremely ambitious and forward thinking. He wrote the lion's share of the lyrics. But what, what, what worked brilliantly was the chemistry that he had with David Gilmore and Rick Wright, who were superior musicians, certainly at that time, and probably still, you know, in later years, they were able to take those ideas, those raw ideas, and turn them into something like dark side the moon. That's a very simplistic way of putting it. But again, it's that indefinable chemistry that certain groups have, but I don't think it was that democratic a process. I think waters perceived himself as the band leader. Don't think the others saw him like that, but he was the guy that was coming through the door going, I've got an idea. You know, he tended not to be the others so Dave Anthony 27:20 much the Wish you were here that next album is contains, welcome to the machine. Unknown Speaker 27:40 AB cigar Dave Anthony 27:53 shine on you. Crazy Diamond light, Unknown Speaker 28:02 black hole. Dave Anthony 28:14 Like Mark once and for all, for all the floydians out there. What's your opinion is Shine On You Crazy Diamond about, you know, Sid visiting the studio and them seeing his descent into mental illness. Mark Blake 28:25 No, it's not about him visiting the studio, but it was definitely inspired by him, and it just, it was a coincidence that he turned up at the studio while they, supposedly, while they were finishing mixing the track. So it that was more of a happy accident than anything else. But, yeah, I mean, this is, again, this is a sort of a reflective album, because by this point, the money's come in, the success, I'd say, the fame. But they were all quite anonymous. They weren't like Mick Jagger or Keith Richards. You know, members of Pink Floyd could walk down the street without necessarily being hounded for autographs. But that everything they strive strove for since they were teenager had come to pass. And this is the point that Roger Waters started to particularly, started to get very disillusioned. Strange. At same time it became incredibly wealthy. He then started to sort of bite the hand that feeds. And that is a trait that very much continues with Pink Floyd for the next couple of years. Dave Anthony 29:22 Yeah, that's for sure. He takes control of the lyrics. He's got more overtly political songs as we move forward to animals contain songs named after pigs, dogs and sheep, and I guess was a spin on Orwell's animal farm where, you know, he's criticizing or a biting examination of class structure, capitalism, Mark Blake 29:42 yeah, that's exactly, that's exactly what it was. And it came out around to the beginning of 1977 here, where you had a lot of unemployment, you had a lot of civil unrest in the UK, a lot of industrial action. There had been riots. You really. Eight. Dave Anthony 30:11 Next bassist Roger Waters begins to question the very meaning of stardom, even as his grip on Pink Floyd's direction tightens, the result is seismic, a haunting, psychological odyssey of an album is released in 1979 and as leadership style becomes so forceful, it would cast a long, turbulent shadow over the band for decades to come. Speaker 1 30:35 You're listening to garage to stadiums with host Dave Anthony. Mark Blake 30:41 It kind of chimed with the times. It's very angry sounding record, and I think very different from which you were here, which has got this kind of smooth stoner vibe that runs through through most of it. I mean animals is, I mean, people talk about animals as being almost like a punk album. That's, that's overly simplistic. But if you look at what was happening in the UK at that time, with the clash and the Sex Pistols, it's interesting, a Pink Floyd, a band like that, had made such an angry sounding record. I mean, I think it's a great album, but it's, it's a nasty record. It's got a real edge to it, still, Dave Anthony 31:14 yeah, it's really political. It sounds like Gilmore wasn't thrilled with this direction of politics and political, what Mark Blake 31:25 I think is political with a small p. I mean, the thing that Gilmore has always said is that he didn't necessarily agree with everything lyrically, but he didn't disagree that much with with waters, his stance. I think the quote I had was he said, I don't paint people quite as black as he does, which is very much the case, but I don't, I don't think he, you know, was necessarily objecting to it. I think, I don't think that those problems came until a little later. Dave Anthony 31:58 Do you want to tell the story of the inflatable pig on the cover. Mark Blake 32:01 Yeah, that's right, they commissioned Roger Waters and commissioned an inflatable pig for the stage show, and so he came up with the idea of using it on the cover. And where he lived at the time, in Clapham in South London, very near a big landmark London building called Battersea Power Station, they had these four chimneys, which he said is sort of representing four fallacies for the four members of the band. Now that time, a couple of chimneys weren't working properly. So I don't know quite what that says about some kind of because that's a metaphor for some creative or sexual dysfunction. I don't know. But he had, they had the idea, let's buy the pig over Battersea Power Station. And that that's that's exactly what they did, except it, yeah, the pig escaped, I think on the second day, that's right, the first day they couldn't get the pig to inflate properly. On the second day the pig escaped, it's split from the moorings that were keeping it attached to the ground, at which point it sawed off up into the sky, and they had to notify the police, who shut down flights out of Heathrow Airport, which is also in West London. One of the people I interviewed for this was actually they had a helicopter pilot, and he was out there filming. He had someone in the pot, in the helicopter with him, filming the pig flying and all the rest of it. And this guy was in told to try and chase the pig. And the gentleman I spoke to had flown combat missions over Vietnam. He was American, and, you know, to go from, you know, being in the Vietnam War to sort of just a few years later to chasing an inflatable plastic pig across West London. I mean, must have wondered which you know, what strange turn his life had made eventually, eventually, the pig deflated, because as soon as he got too high, the air pressure took that, took the helium out of it, and it collapsed in a farmer's field in it out in rural Kent and then got retrieved by the roadies, and on the Third day, they flew it, and everything went off without a hitch. But of course, the pig becomes a real symbol in Pink Floyd, if you look at the not just on that album, but it became a part of the stage show for years and years later, and the subject of a bitter argument between David Gilmore and Roger Waters when, you know, after Waters had left, he didn't want them to use the pig anymore, and so to get around that, they had to put a pair of testicles on the pig, because the original pig was a sow. So to fly the pig in a Pink Floyd show in the 80s and 90s, they had a big pair of nuts put Dave Anthony 34:36 on it. There you go. You heard it here first the What started as the Roger Waters taking over. The lyrics is now as we move into what 7919 79 they're writing the next album, The Wall, getting these lyrics in order. And he essentially forces founding member, keyboardist Rick Wright, to leave the band. How did the I mean, how did the other two? Members, guitar, Gilmore and drummer Mason, let him get away with this. Mark Blake 35:03 Well, I think they just I think the problem with Rick Wright was a gentler, more sort of a much gentler character personality than the others. And I think the story I've always been told, was it he, and he said this himself when I interviewed him many years ago, is he wasn't contributing. He just wasn't functioning creatively. His marriage was in trouble at the time. I think that was a big reason. And he just became sort of creatively inert in the studio. And I think this all coincides with Roger Waters thinking that he is the guy, and the war was his idea. It was his concept. You know, he brought it to the band. But of course, like before, as I said, before, it's what they brought the others brought to the table. And the CO producer, Bob Ezrin, you know, really made a huge difference. If you listen to the original demos, you know, a lot of work went into making that album what it was, but Rick wasn't pulling his weight. And yeah, they waters basically arranged to fire him, and the others went along with it. I mean, they've they said that they felt guilty, and they should have stuck up for him, and so on so forth, but they went along with it. Of course. The irony is, for the tour, he was re employed as a salaried musician, which meant he wasn't, he wasn't liable for any of the astronomical costs of putting the stage show on and building a wall in front of the audience night after night. So, you know, he walked out of there, I think, even think he was getting a few $1,000 a night. So, you know, Dave Anthony 36:34 yeah, because the kind of the tour lost a lot of money, and Mark Blake 36:37 lost money, or certainly didn't make a lot of money, although it was a huge theatrical rock statement at the time i i saw the show when I was 15. I mean, now, if you were to go back and see it now, it would probably look slightly amateur and a little bit like a an amateur drama production, because the technology's moved on so much since then, as a concept, in the context of the times this it was quite a groundbreaking piece of work. Dave Anthony 37:02 Well, that's a good point, because they were using massive props animation. An actual wall was built on stage. That was, what, 30 feet high and 160 feet wide. It was cardboard bricks. Mark Blake 37:14 Cardboard bricks. You had inflatables. Again, the pig came back. You had an airplane that sort of crash thing over the stage. Dave Anthony 37:21 What do you think was behind Rogers? What are the themes that he's exploring here? Mark Blake 37:25 Well, the theme is loss of his dad, his loss of his father was killed in second world war before he'd even, you know, when he was an infant. And that is a that is a recurring theme. And also, I think Sid Barrett comes into the story. The breakdown of Roger walls is his first marriage probably comes into the story. I mean, it's, it's not all autobiographical. It's a composite of things that he'd seen, stuff that happened to Sid Barrett, experiences they had had. And also just think is, is sort of disillusionment with the world in general. And that became a bigger and bigger theme from the wall onwards. Dave Anthony 38:05 Yeah, because there was an incident in Montreal, Canada, where did he not spit on a fan, or something Mark Blake 38:13 goes to spat the fan. This was, this was in on the animals tour in 1977 some a fan was screaming and trying to climb up there. There was some mesh in front of the stage, and he, supposedly, they leaned over and spat at him. Now, no one in the band remembers seeing it. And Nick Mason, the drama, told me that, you know his exact quote was, it's unlikely he received any saliva in reference, in reference to the guy, because, I mean, how far can you spit? This was all about his utter disillusionment. We're playing in stadiums. I mean, there are fabulous bootlegs from those to us, where he's trying to perform a set, a quiet, acoustic number, and you can hear people letting off firecrackers in the audience, and he just loses his rag and just starts swearing at the audience, calling the motherfuckers, which sounds great in a very polite English accent, and he's berate. He starts berating the audience. And it's like, but they're like, we're here for the party, you know? Yeah, play something we know. So it's he becomes incredibly cross about all of this. You Speaker 2 39:31 for sake, stop letting off fireworks and shouting and screaming. I'm trying to sing the song. Mark Blake 39:38 I think they all struggled with it. But this would this was the root of, let's build a wall in front of the audience, Dave Anthony 39:44 right, right? And the wall contained the Floyd's first single release in years. Another Brick in the Wall in sold over 4 million copies, went to number one. You. Mark Blake 40:09 Christmas a Christmas number one hit here in 1979 now, I know it's like in the States, but Christmas number ones are not normally songs like another brick in the wall part too. So there's certain perverse pleasure, I think, to be had in there. And of course, it can. It contains comfortably numb, which is, you know, probably one of Pink Floyd's greatest known songs. You know, Dave Anthony 40:33 sure, comfortably numb. Run like hell. You Dave Anthony 40:47 the mother. Unknown Speaker 41:01 Hey, you. Hey you Speaker 3 41:05 out there in the cold, getting lonely, getting old. Can you feel me? Hey you. Dave Anthony 41:14 I mean, this is quite the statement. This album, The was going to talk about how the next album, the final cut. This is almost a continuation of wall with overt theme of war and politics. It sounds like this was really a Roger Waters album. Mark Blake 41:29 Well, it to me, it always felt more like a solo album than than than a Floyd album. I mean, he'd completely taken over the writing process. But again, I don't think that necessarily David Gilmore or Nick Mason were feeling terribly inspired. Either they weren't bringing a lot of ideas to the table, yeah, but yeah, they their objection to it was that a lot of these the ideas were songs that had been left off the wall, and if they weren't good enough for the wall, why were they good enough for this album? I mean, final cuts, very political, because it came out, it talked about the fultons War, which was a huge thing in the UK. Here, you know, when Argentina basically tried to take back the Falklands and British government sent in, sent in troops. I mean, you know, I knew, I knew people that went to war in, you know, there was, you know, I saw someone come back from that war as a sort of 1718, year old, whatever. So it was a huge deal here. But again, it was, I think, probably too political a statement for for for what a wider audience, and more importantly, the songs weren't as good. The songs on it just aren't they're just not as good. Dave Anthony 42:35 Here's what I'm going to ask you, because I want to set up this band's crazy internal internecine, internecine, whatever the UK and the American pronunciations are the battles for this band's heart and soul. But let's talk maybe first to set that up, tell us about Nick Mason. Tell us about David Gilmore. Tell us about Roger Waters. What are their personalities like? Mark Blake 42:59 Well, Roger Waters is very confrontational and very forward, very ambitious, as I said earlier, regarded himself as the band leader. David Gilmore, quieter, a bit more user friendly, but incredibly stubborn, an immovable object, you know. And Nick Mason is really the luckiest man in rock music, because his job is simply to play the drums and to but also to just sort of mediate between these two warring personalities. So But Nick, Nick tends to be the ambassador and the most approachable out of the three of them. Dave Anthony 43:43 And because in 19, I guess, 85 Roger Waters says, I'm done with this band. 87 Gilmore and Mason want to take the show back on the road, Pink Floyd on the road. And Roger Waters goes ballistic. Mark Blake 44:00 That's why he tried to stop them using the name. I mean, he'd, he'd resigned from the band, and I think he presumed that it would, the band would fold and and David Gilmore had other ideas. And so then there's this very bitter sort of legal battle that goes on with waters trying to, he's trying to stop them using the name. He's trying to he's threatening promoters with legal letters if they if they advertise a Floyd show. A lot of it was hot air, though, because there probably no court in the land was was willing to rule in his favor. So a lot of it was just him putting up obstacles and being incredibly outspoken in the music press about how terrible they were without him. But of course, unfortunately for waters, what happens is they had the name, and the name is bigger than any of the individuals, so waters launches a solo career. But his solo career, in terms of record sales and concert tickets sold, does not come close to what Floyd were doing, and I think it's. A first example where you see that the power of the brand, rather than the band, people didn't care. Who was he really in the group. They were all quite anonymous anyway. And that sort of came back and worked against them, in some sense. It worked against waters, definitely. But it proved that if you called yourself pin Floyd and you had David Gilmore singing, playing guitar. It didn't really matter that Roger Waters wasn't there. It mattered in the studio, because the process of making new music became, I think, a lot harder. But in terms of a touring, they became a massive touring, a touring band in the in the 1980s Dave Anthony 45:38 that's an excellent point about the brand superseding the individuals, that's a great point. What bands were you say were influenced by Floyd, who were their contemporaries, or influenced by them? Mark Blake 45:50 I think, I mean, I think if you're going to look at somebody that's a group that have shown some of the same traits, predictably, is probably going to be a band like Radiohead, who've taken that similar thing of stepping back from the media. They do that. They're totally self contained. They do their own thing. They don't court the press. It's more to do with their approach, rather than necessarily the music. Although I do, I do see some parallels with some of what Pink Floyd were doing. I Mark Blake 46:28 but I think it's that single mindedness, that stubbornness and that determination to do what they just whatever the hell they want, which I think is something they perhaps had in common with Pink Floyd. I mean, unfortunately, I think Pink Floyd also create, also inspired some shocking kind of modern day for one of a better word, prog rock bands. And I've just got no stomach for I mean, you have some will say to me, we should listen to this. It sounds like, wish you were here. It's like, well, I don't want to hear that. I've got wish you, wish you were here. I've got works, fine. I don't want to hear a band in 2025 make a record that sounds like Wish you were here, yeah, to make record that I like as much, yeah, yeah. So I think it probably a bit like Led Zeppelin created some terrible sort of copyists. What would Dave Anthony 47:16 you say they will be remembered for? The Floyd Pink Floyd Mark Blake 47:21 the moon. It'll be dark side the moon, and it's it's the there's something about that album that just seems to transcend generations. I think that I mean the imagery, the imagery of the album. If you stood on the street corner and held up the cover with that prism and the rainbow, most people would be able to tell you what it was, even if they didn't know the record. It's sort of that the iconography of dark side the moon has become part of the cultural sort of landscape. If that doesn't sound incredibly pompous, but you know, it has. And I think that's ultimately what Floyd will probably if they're going to be remembered for one thing, it would be that album. Dave Anthony 48:03 Yeah, I remember going into a stereo store with a friend's older brother who was buying a system. And of course, they put the bang and Olsen speakers on display for them. And of course, what album do they put on? But Dark Side of the Moon, as you said earlier, that became the stereo store testing record to show you, yeah, it was the same equipment yeah for years after Mark Blake 48:27 Yeah, and it still sounds good now, you know, right? I don't think it's dated. You know, unlike a lot of music from from 1973 Dave Anthony 48:36 good point, we're at that point where we ask our guests to pick three of either their favorites, their under appreciated, songs that you think, or songs that maybe tell a story. I don't know. What do you think? Mark Blake 48:50 I mean, I think it would be churlish not to have comfortably numb in there. It would just make me sound like I'm trying to be too clever. You'd have to have comfortably numb. I Mark Blake 49:10 maybe shine on your crazy diamonds as well. Speaker 4 49:20 Shine I Mark Blake 49:31 think the hits, for want of a better word than they weren't the hits, but they are like the hits. Wish you were here as another great Speaker 4 49:38 How I wish you were here? Year, Mark Blake 49:52 that's that's the good stuff, that's the stuff you're going to play someone who's never heard and wants to know what their best work is. Dave Anthony 49:59 I. Today, we've been talking to Mark Blake, who's the author of Pink Floyd shine on the definitive oral history. And Mark is our always entertaining returning guests. And this book really sets out some really interesting interviews of various people in the Pink Floyd ecosystem to tell the story from different angles. And we appreciate you. Mark coming on today to help tell their story. Thanks very much, Dave, always a pleasure. Some closing notes on Pink Floyd in 1989 Pink Floyd performed a spectacular concert on a floating stage in Venice, broadcast worldwide to address city concerns about damage to historic buildings, the band agreed to play more softly, but because 200,000 fans overwhelmed the city, leaving litter everywhere and not having enough access to toilet facilities, the public outcry at The mess prompted the entire city council to resign the children's choir on another brick in the wall, part two, singing. We don't need no education came from Islington Green School in North London. The kids were paid modestly as session performers were at the time with no royalties, but in 2004 after media attention, some of the now adult choir members sought compensation, arguing their contribution was integral to the song's success. Although the case didn't result in substantial payouts, it renewed discussion about crediting compensating unrecognized session performers in a lucrative deal in 2024 highlighting the significant value of classic rock today, Pink Floyd sold its entire music catalog, image rights and the rights to the band's name for a staggering $400 million to Sony. Sid Barrett famously turned up at Abbey Road when Pink Floyd was recording the album. Wish you were here. He put on such excessive weight and he shaved his eyebrows and lost most of his hair. His appearance was so disturbing that waters and Gilmore reportedly cried, and the song shine on Crazy Diamond became about Sid Barrett retreating from the world. He spent decades in solitude, tending gardens and painting a quiet echo of his art school days. Sidbury passed away on July 7, 2006 age 60, leaving behind a haunting, fragile legacy. Alexandra. Palace in London is known for its panoramic views of the city and host to many artistic performances in 1967 Pink Floyd played a show there, and it was filmed incredibly. If you watch the film, you'll see Yoko Ono performing an art installation, and John Lennon is captured among the crowd, although at the time, the pair had not yet met. In the days before CGI, album covers were complex. For the cover of Pink Floyd's 1975 album, wish you were here. A person was actually set on fire. The cover shows two businessmen shaking hands with one of them and dramatically engulfed in flames, symbolizing the deceptive nature of human relationships and the idea of getting burned in the music industry. The shoot was done at the Warner Brothers studio in LA the stuntman set on fire was dressed in a fire retardant suit covered by a business suit with a hood protecting his head, hidden underneath a wig. But the wind changed direction momentarily, and the flames were forced into his face, burning off his mustache. In 1988 Russian cosmonauts on this Soyuz TM seven took a cassette copy the Pink Floyd live album, delicate sound of thunder into space, playing it on their way to the Mir space station, making Pink Floyd the first rock band to be played in space. Both David Gilmour and Nick Mason attended the launch of the spacecraft. Great Gig in the Sky composed by Rick Wright as an instrumental meditation on mortality, gained power from session singer Claire torrey's improvised, wordless vocal. She was instructed to improvise emotionally and used no words only, using her voice as an instrument to convey fear and mortality. The result was powerful. Dave Anthony 54:31 But Claire was initially paid only 30 pounds, but she later won co writing credit and royalties in 2005 for her haunting contribution. You know those sound effects at the beginning of money, on the Dark Side of the Moon? Well, they were created by splicing together recordings made by Roger Waters of clinking coins, tearing paper, a ringing cash register and a. Clicking ad machine. Special thanks to our guest today, Mark Blake, author of Pink Floyd, shine on the definitive oral history. Thanks for making garage sustain with one of the top 5% of podcasts in the world. We'd love for you to follow our shows on your favorite podcast platform so you can be alerted when our next episode drops. Follow us for some great music history content posted on our social channels, Instagram, X, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. Our YouTube channel has additional bonus coverage from our interviews. Visit us at garage to stadiums for more bonus content on all the bands featured and links to great downloadable playlists on Apple and Spotify. Thanks to our producers, Amina faubear and Connor Sampson, our program director Scott Campbell, Creative Director Chad Raymond and video director Nigel Campbell, you've been listening to garage to stadiums. I'm Dave Anthony. See you next time for another garage to stadium story, Unknown Speaker 56:04 Another blast furnace, labs, production, the.