Pink Floyd, a distinctively varied rock band, flitted smoothly through a range of styles during its three main decades as a recording outfit. The chapters were most obvious, as indicated by the band’s selected leader. Following Syd Barrett’s short stint, bassist Roger Waters managed Pink Floyd’s most seminal work. Following Waters’ departure in the 1980s, David Gilmour led the band for three more albums.
“Although Pink Floyd, along with Cream and The Jimi Hendrix Experience, were among the most popular psychedelic acts during Barrett’s first chapter. Blues first dominated the game.” “The band’s origins date back to 1963 when Roger Waters met fellow student Nick Mason. They were studying architecture at the London Polytechnic on Regent Street.”
“After discovering a similar interest in rhythm and blues, Waters and Mason created a band with fellow students Keith Noble and Clive Metcalfe. “They also included Noble’s sister Sheilagh in the lineup.” Later in 1963, Richard Wright, a fellow architecture student and keyboard wizard, joined to complete the six-piece known as Sigma 6.
“This early trio performed on private occasions and practiced in a tearoom in the basement of Regent Street Polytechnic. They frequently performed songs by The Searchers and material written by their manager, fellow student Ken Chapman.” After calling themselves the Tea Set and rearranging their lineup, Waters added his childhood friend Syd Barrett.
“In a period when everyone was being cool in a very adolescent, self-conscious way, Syd was unfashionably outgoing,” drummer Nick Mason recalls in Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd. “My enduring memory of our first encounter is the fact that he bothered to come up and introduce himself to me.”
By late 1965, Barrett had taken over as the band’s artistic director and proposed a new name, Pink Floyd Sound. The line “Oh, by the way, which one’s pink?” in ‘Have a Cigar’ jokes that Pink Floyd blends two names. “Barrett discovered that another local band went by the name Tea Set. He created Pink Floyd Sound by combining the names of two favorite blues musicians: Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.” Barrett’s record collection at the time heavily featured the pair, both of whom were American.
At this point, clean-cut R&B remained at the forefront of the band’s repertoire, but Barrett’s psychedelic sensibilities had begun to emerge. Mason stated in his book that, under Barrett’s early supervision, songs would “be extended with lengthy solos”.
In a 2008 interview, Cream’s main vocalist and bassist, Jack Bruce, addressed his band’s influence on Pink Floyd’s evolution. “I first met Hendrix when we [Cream] did a gig at the Regents Polytechnic,” he told Classic Rock. “Coincidentally, the individuals who became Pink Floyd were in the audience. It appears that viewing that occurrence inspired them to become Pink Floyd.” When I saw them recently, they told me this. I knew they were there, but I had no idea we were the ones who brought them together.”
Of course, Pink Floyd was already together when Cream debuted in 1966, but this concert surely influenced the band’s eventual embrace of psychedelic. “That same year, The Beatles released Revolver, their first foray into the genre, laying the groundwork for 1967. Following Syd Barrett’s short stint, bassist Roger Waters managed Pink Floyd’s most seminal work.
Listen to Pink Anderson and Floyd Council’s tunes below.
