While the music of Pink Floyd has, for the most part, never embraced the happy-go-lucky ethos of so many of the band’s popular music counterparts in the late ’60s, the disparity between the band’s sound during the brief tenure of vocalist/guitarist Syd Barrett and what came in the wake of his departure is noteworthy when considering the whole of the band’s career. Originally called “The Pink Floyd Sound,” the name was an off-the-cuff moniker created by original vocalist/guitarist Syd Barrett in what would mark an almost cruel prelude for a band who despite earning every possible level of fame and fortune, would never be able to fully come to grips with those realities of losing friends, family, and even themselves along the way. The story of the band’s beginnings has been well documented with all manner of devoted fans eager to point out the fact that after several name changes (which included the always delightful and mildly prophetic Meggadeaths), the art students-turned-musicians derived the final permutation of the band’s name from blues artists Pinkney “Pink” Anderson and Floyd Council.
While their contemporaries honed in on every brilliant pop music formula from places like Liverpool and Southern California, Pink Floyd’s music quickly transformed into both a cautionary tale for the easily starstruck and a deeply personal narrative that became increasingly bleak and, at its most powerful, utterly heartbreaking. Pink Floyd’s most distinctive quality is likely the very thing that provided the greatest friction for the members themselves. It’s a fitting foreword to the band’s story which, over the last fifty years of their existence, has seen them embrace the rarity and mythos that is rock and roll legend with a disarming sense of apprehension, paranoia, and oftentimes rage. How appropriate that Pink Floyd would find their beginnings in the same year that saw the first person walk in space.
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