Original subtitles

[film rolling]

♪

Pete Murray, I'll always remember Pete Murray,

'cause he said, "Well, this band will last two weeks, that's it."

It really puts us down.

♪ Set the controls for the heart of the sun ♪

♪

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

Fearless, daring and sometimes, overreaching,

the enigmatic Pink Floyd pushed the boundaries of music

into new realms of artistic expression.

♪

Their recording career began during an era

of black and white television and ended in the internet age.

♪

They're living legends, they're not just legends.

They're like the beginning and the end of a book.

♪

They started off by causing a massive splash

in the psychedelic era, but then they went on to become

the biggest of all the stadium rock bands,

and they happen to have this misunderstood genius

in their ranks who then went on to become

an iconic legend.

♪

On one occasion, going, picking Syd up,

and he was wearing sort of full make-up.

Not quite drag, but towards that.

And there was just this sort of blank, let's not,

let's just pretend it's normal and carry on.

♪

There is no doubt that Syd was schizophrenic

and that he was taking medicine and those drugs

at the same time.

You have the responsibility of how much of this stuff

you use or don't use because I don't want to upset--

I don't want to upset his brothers, sisters,

uncles, aunts, anybody who loves him or whatever, so.

But you know, I mean, at this point, you know,

he was hiding around the door in the flat with his guitar,

trying to brain his girlfriend,

trying to brain Lindsay, who was living with him.

And I alerted his family to his condition

and tried to get them to look after him

and they singularly failed to do that.

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪

One of the things I do remember was the relief when Syd went.

We knew that it was quite likely to be a lot of the audience

who'd say, "Where's Syd?"

As they continued to do for the next 30 years.

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

Overcoming the loss of Syd Barrett,

Pink Floyd had little public identity outside their albums.

Their lack of rock and roll charisma

prompted many column inches

devoted to the paradoxical nature of their success.

They could look quite devilish,

'cause they had the light shining up into their face,

you know that effect.

And of course, the drugs helped.

♪

The thing that one couldn't miss was the fact that most of them

were totally disinterested, I mean, I remember Roger,

he very defiantly turned his back on the audience.

And they all looked as if they'd been

to the local charity shop

to get rather dreary, second hand clothes.

♪

It was excruciatingly embarrassing,

to the extent that I used to mostly play with my back

to the audience.

And I was really, really,

very embarrassed and very nervous

about what I was doing, I didn't feel at all sure of myself.

I didn't know what to play.

♪

♪ Witness the man who raves at the wall ♪

Pink Floyd have produced some of the most celebrated music

of all time.

They have sold over a billion albums,

yet their very public and acrimonious falling out

sometimes threatened to overshadow

their artistic achievements.

The problem really is that you're either fighting

or you're having fun, there's not much middle ground really.

Our personal problems in the band by that time

were sort of becoming more dominant.

Roger was becoming more dominant.

♪

♪ Set the controls for the heart of the sun ♪

Dave and I were already absolutely at loggerheads

by then and he had one whole idea about what

it was going to be like and I had a whole other idea.

I'm happy to say, my idea won in the end.

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

Dave and Nick went to Roger and said we want to tour

as Pink Floyd.

He just said, "You can't tour without me.

I am Pink Floyd."

And they said, "Righteous."

There weren't very many Roger songs played in our show.

Let's put it that way.

♪

I'm sorry, Roger, it's never been called

Roger Waters and the All Stars.

It's always been called Pink Floyd.

♪

It's a very classic tale.

You know, when solicitors tell people,

"Have your disputes, but don't put it in writing,"

they probably have Roger's letter resigning from Floyd

in mind as a good exhibit A in that argument.

♪

You have therapy to get over the business of being in the band.

We have a show to make.

[crash]

Three engines up and ready.

Three, two...

♪

Yes, that'd be better.

All right, I'll head over.

The Pink Floyd emerged from two overlapping sets of friends.

Syd Barrett, Roger Waters were all Cambridge mates.

Nick and Rick came from Pinner.

Unlike the Stones and the Beatles,

they didn't come from the working class.

They had very nice, comfortable backgrounds.

Unfortunately, I was at school with Roger Waters.

It was a strange school.

It was called the Cambridgeshire High School for Boys.

There was nothing high about it, but my earliest memories of him,

I guess, were at the school.

Now, it was a pretty rough school,

I mean, it was what might be called a grammar school.

But there were various kind of yobs, like me and Roger,

who didn't fit in to the grammar school,

which was essentially middle class milieu.

And both of us definitely smoked behind the bicycle sheds.

And definitely were out to burn the place down

at the earliest opportunity.

Roger, he was quite frightening.

He was quite scary.

But, he's worn really--he looks great now, doesn't he?

And yet he looked weird then because he had a very long face.

But he's worn really well, he has.

Also attending Cambridgeshire High School for Boys

was Roger "Syd" Barrett.

He was two years below me at school.

We became close, you know, when we were teenagers.

And when we were all sort of pretending to be interested

in Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg

and talking about smoking dope, but not doing it.

♪

It was in about '59,

which is about the time I first came across Syd,

or as he was still, almost then, Roger Barrett.

We used to go down to Grantchester Meadows, on punts,

and a picnic.

This is, of course, just prior to the arrival of pot.

When eventually that came our way, we were delighted.

My first memories of Syd, really, were of this sparky,

prince-like, elven creature.

A very, can I say, beautiful young man?

And we knew he was a poet,

an artist, a painter, and beginning to play guitar.

Cambridge, like many British cities at the time

was enlivened by a thriving music scene.

♪

We used to go down his mother's house,

on Hills Road, of a Sunday afternoon.

And there would be jamming sessions.

I can remember sitting around, playing acoustic guitars

with him in Cambridge.

♪

Roger was at the jam sessions in Hills Road.

And it's interesting because Syd's real name

was Roger Barrett and Roger Waters.

Both called Roger, both had lost their fathers.

And I think this really, really brought them

very close together.

I remember when Syd went out and bought a Futurama III.

You know, a red, sort of plastic guitar.

Whereas before that, people had been fiddling around

with acoustic guitars, and Syd, I remember particularly,

you know, would learn to play "Apache."

♪

Syd Barrett, the legendary founder of the Pink Floyd sound

was to become one of the most the heavily mythologized men

in rock.

♪

I found Syd very inspiring.

And he had this sort of fairy-like quality about him.

And he turned heads.

He really did turn heads.

Even at the age of 14, 15, a sort of charismatic figure,

that people would sort of point at him, talk about him,

'cause he had some sort of magnetism.

♪

I thought, "Wow, that's so beautiful, he is so lovely."

And he looked like your sort of archetypal doomed poet.

He had these wonderful violet eyes

and messy black hair and he was slender

and he wore interesting clothes and he didn't say a lot.

And it was my mission to soothe his fevered brow.

It wasn't until later though that I managed to get

on my own with him

and actually make him notice me in that way.

He just was very, you know, a bright light

on the scene.

And I'm sure most people, including myself,

had certain jealousies

of what a bright light he appeared to be.

I don't know why, but we always had this notion

that when we hit London, 'cause London was the mecca

and that was where one had to be,

that we would start a band together.

♪

By 1966, a new underground scene was emerging.

Following two decades of post-war austerity,

the economy was booming.

Idealism and optimism were rife.

In this Kings Road that London is lumbered with

stands just a collation known as the Antiques Supermarket.

And "antiques" can mean clothes.

This lady's time machine is headed

for the flapper world of the '20s.

Doubtless a trip many a time traveler would love to take.

One way of saying "no" to authority is to parody it.

Some of the young, with little to say "yes" to, come to Soho,

that pulsating heart of swinging London

where girls join clubs to see old men strip.

Or is it vice versa?

And at the cutely named I Was Lord Kitchener's Valet,

buy uniforms of the past to affront the uniformity

of the present.

Everything was happening and it was the Beatles

and "Sgt. Pepper," and "All You Need is Love."

We were in the heart of it and it was amazing.

Very exciting.

That period of the '60s was a very unique time.

You know, you look at the great year from the summer of '66

through the summer of '67, which was the time

of the most wonderful ferment and activity.

World's End means were the Kings Road ends,

which shows what the Kings Roaders think of themselves.

Granny Takes A Trip, the shop behind the face calls itself

and it's typical of the non-typical,

conforming to the non-conformist's image

of the "in."

What they used to call "way out" and before that "with it"

and before that "groovy" and before that "hip"

and what Granny herself would have called

"the very latest thing, my dear."

♪

There is this whole idealized sort of concept to the '60s.

Some of it's true and some of it isn't.

The temptation, when thinking about the middle '60s,

is to think of it in terms of drug culture.

Not just sex, drugs, and rock and roll,

but everybody was gone on LSD,

and you know, there was sex on the hour, every hour.

I mean, the the whole thing must have been totally exhausting,

if that were true.

Self-evidently it wasn't true.

♪

Roger Waters, Rick Wright and Nick Mason

met during the first year of an architectural course

in London.

♪

Nick Mason and Roger Waters

were at Regent Street Poly together.

And like many people, they were inspired to form a band.

It went through a period where it was really

a sort of Regent Street Poly house band almost.

Where all of the rehearsals took place at college.

There were various incarnations and names.

They had the Screaming Abdabs, Sigma 6, The Tea Set,

Megadeaths.

There were a couple of other characters involved.

Keith Noble and Clyde Metcalfe were in early lineups.

I mean, I suppose the real start of the band was with Syd and Bob

and Rick and myself and Roger.

A couple of them made the big move to London

and they had a place at Stanhope Gardens.

And Syd turned up there one day.

By the time he arrived, I was already playing

with a few other people, so he kind of joined in.

He was living with a whole sort of community of people

who were very much believing, rather like Timothy Leary,

that you know, acid can release you

and you know, get to the truth.

♪

He lived in a place called 101 Cromwell Road.

That was just a haven of acid.

People were just dropping it in people's tea without telling,

it was really, really-- it was really too much.

I like to know when I was taking my acid.

101 Cromwell Road, we lived with Syd for awhile.

There were probably five or six of us and I was the only woman.

David describes 101 as a hip salon

where the great and the good would come and hang out,

the American Beats, like Allen Ginsberg.

People like Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, PJ Proby.

And the early Pink Floyd.

Every night was a party, really.

People were tripping and...

...the house was full of beautiful women.

We would take LSD and we painted our faces.

It was quite mad.

Lysergic acid diethylamide 25, LSD, came our way.

And I'll tell you this, it was legal.

Turn on, tune in, and drop out.

The message is very simple, he said six words.

Turn on, tune in, drop out.

♪

Turning on, tuning in, and dropping out

is what happens to you when you take a dose

of the strange new drug called LSD.

LSD has become a way of life with its own philosophers,

like poet Allen Ginsberg.

Yes, there's trouble in the United States.

Millions who would love to come out to a park like today,

and play with the children and sing together.

It's strange to be in a body.

Can I sleep with you?

Shall we sing together?

But above all, like, I don't want to feel bad

or I don't want to, ahh--

I don't want to have to fight them,

I don't want to fight myself all the time.

I wouldn't want to have to fight the camera,

to see the camera as an enemy or communications as an enemy.

What about the people looking at this, what do they think?

LSD stands for dextro lysergic acid diethylamide,

a chemical derived from a fungus that grows on rye.

It is not addictive like heroin or cocaine,

but it's far more powerful in its effects.

Taken in a pill or sugar cube, it acts in an hour

and lasts up to 24.

During this time, the user soars into another world

where consciousness is vastly expanded, or seems to be.

This is the famous psychedelic experience.

Doctor Timothy Leary, America's high priest of LSD

and its passionate public defender,

calls it turning on the mind, tuning into the infinite,

and dropping out of the here and now.

But there's another controversial side of LSD.

Not all trips are happy ones.

Some are upsetting, and even terrifying.

LSD certainly provides an intense interpersonal--

non interpersonal, interpsychic experience.

An intense interpsychic kind of an experience,

but I would not call it a consciousness expanding drug,

rather a consciousness decreasing drug.

♪

Syd, he started to dabble in this LSD experience

and it was about this time that we became interested

in Eastern mysticism.

Because having experienced this universal love,

this wonderful opening of the doors to perception on LSD,

many of us wanted to get in touch

with this greater meaning, naturally.

♪

Perhaps half of us became what's known as satsangis

and if you wanted to follow the path,

you had to give up drugs and alcohol

and become a vegetarian.

Syd asked if he could be brought in,

initiated into this form of meditation.

He came around and said that's what he was going to do

and that he wasn't into smoking dope anymore.

I said, "You can't stop smoking dope, you've got to smoke dope."

And he did go to the master to ask for initiation.

Charan Singh said "no," and that was a blow.

He was very upset.

He felt rejected.

I think Charan Singh could already see

that the man was unbalanced and that actually probably

traveling to India wouldn't be a good idea.

Jenny and I actually did go to stay with Charan Singh in India

and Syd and Lindsay moved into our room

and things did not go well.

♪

We came back to 101 Cromwell Road

only to find that in our absence,

they'd held a "legalize marijuana" evening.

It had rather drawn the attention of the Old Bill.

And I felt then, "Well, you know,

maybe 101 as the center of excellence has seen its day."

Roger Waters came round and said,

"Look, I bought this car,

this Chrysler Plymouth Powerglide.

Who'd like to come down to Greece, I want to go to Patmos,

where St. John had the revelations."

"Oh, yeah, Roger, what, you mean we'll go in the car?"

Yeah, so Jenny, myself, Roger, his girlfriend, Judy,

and Rick crammed ourselves

into this Chrysler Plymouth Powerglide,

which was pink, of course,

and set off for Patmos.

So we all went off.

And in the middle of the night, we're on, I don't know,

motorway, somewhere in Germany.

Rick was driving.

We woke up.

And it would only go backwards.

So anyway, it was broken, caput.

We dumped the car and settled for the train

and got ourselves a little boat out to Patmos.

Nobody had much money so we had to rough it quite a lot,

and we found a little house to live in

and it had no furniture,

and I think Roger and his girlfriend at the time, Judy,

they just laid on a mattress upstairs

and I think Nigel and I slept in the kitchen.

The inevitable tripping occurred.

That's where Roger Waters had his first acid trip.

On the Isle of Patmos.

Where we were looking at pictures of St. John

the Divine and there was this beam of light

coming to a hole in his head.

This is obviously the divine place,

there's a light pouring into his head.

And I think he found that quite strange, yes,

never to be repeated.

And I remember asking Roger if he'd like to be famous

and he said "Yeah!"

They came back and that's when it all started happening.

♪

Given the musical sophistication of their latter years,

it is difficult to conceive of Pink Floyd as a run of the mill,

rhythm and blues band, yet this is precisely how they began.

♪

Pink Floyd was originally supposed to be a blues band.

But the blues scene had kind of passed on in a way,

so I think the Floyd were never quite serious blues fanatics

the way that some of those other groups were.

Because of the drugs and everything, we'd become

tired of the two, three minute pop song.

And we wanted something longer to go into

and the Floyd really were the first music

of acid consciousness, I mean, they would play

forty minute riffs on one tune.

It would just go on like that, and that's what we liked

and we could lose ourselves in the infinite variety

of their solos and things like that.

By 1966, not only the Beatles, but a great number of groups

had discovered Ravi Shankar and all that that entails

and the sitar and the ragas.

You know, a raga can go on for 30 minutes

and that's just the introduction,

if you see what I mean?

And Roger had definitely been to a Ravi Shankar concert

at the Festival Hall.

So, I suspect that that was where the influence came.

♪

[cheering]

♪

We'd started off playing blues.

And I don't think any of us, I certainly didn't see

what kind of band we were going to be.

The early Pink Floyd started off with a lot of blues

and whatever you call that, R&B stuff.

And Syd would take them off into extended sort of jamming

as he got more interested in the new waves

that was happening at the time.

I remember sitting with a piece of paper with Syd,

drawing out what the line up was going to be

and what amps we were going to have.

Two AC30s we decided was it and put the vocals

and lead guitar through one AC30

and the bass and the rhythm guitar

and the keyboards through the other one.

So there was very much a plan always.

The group started by playing gigs at fringe events.

♪

They managed to get a gig at this club in Kensington

called The Countdown, where they were playing 90 minute sets,

three times a night.

And they found they didn't have enough songs.

So they started making the songs longer, improvising.

And that's how the Pink Floyd spacey instrumental started.

♪ Set the controls for the heart of the sun ♪

♪

Down in the sort of basin of Notting Hill

there was a place called All Saints Hall

and the Floyd were playing there

and when we went in there and heard them

we realized this was definitely the music of the future,

it was certainly the future for awhile.

The thing I remember about that concert

was it was the loudest noise I'd ever heard.

My eardrums were ringing for hours and hours

and hours afterwards.

You could say a lot of the music we played then was pretty bad,

but I suspect we got away with some of the stuff we did

because everyone in the audience was quite stoned.

The guy on Melody Maker, Chris Welch,

he described them as a sort of thunderous racket.

He couldn't handle the improvisations.

They were like a schizophrenic band.

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

♪ The heart of the sun

Certainly for quite some time, they were death commercially.

I mean, I don't think record companies wanted to know them.

The audiences certainly didn't want to know them.

And their later success, you can't believe that they went

through several years of not doing well.

♪

I came across the Floyd for the first time at a money raiser

for the London Free School at a church hall

in Notting Hill Gate.

And I remember seeing them and thinking, "Wow, they're great."

They all knew who Joe Boyd was because he was

the big record producer of the underground.

Joe was an expatriate American who was already

a respected record producer

and plus he was instrumental in all the stuff

going on in the '60s.

♪

By the summer of 1966,

Pink Floyd had acquired two managers.

Peter Jenner and Andrew King.

I knew Peter Jenner and Andrew King,

and I was the only person they knew in the music business,

so they said here's a tape of this group.

I actually tried to-- immediately tried to get Elektra

who I was still working for, to sign them.

And the boss of Elektra came to England and we set up a showcase

for them and he wasn't interested and I got fired.

But I really wanted to stay in Britain,

but I needed a source of income, I mean, some way to pay my rent.

Then I started bringing people down to the Palace Square

to hear the Floyd.

You didn't have to be a genius to figure out that they were,

that Syd was writing great songs

and this was a really interesting group.

Joe Boyd found a new vocation and opened Britain's first

psychedelic rock club.

We opened UFO on the 23rd of December, 1966,

the Floyd booked.

And we didn't really know who was gonna turn up.

I mean, our only advertising, I think we had a little tiny ad

in Melody Maker and an ad in International Times

and we passed out little leaflets in Portobello Road

the previous Saturday.

We were very nervous, 'cause we'd agreed to pay

I think 15 pounds for the rental of this Irish dance hall

for the night, Friday night,

and it was freezing cold,

and who knew who was gonna show up.

And in fact, we packed the place.

And...I would have to call the audience, generally,

what you would refer to as freaks.

♪

UFO was pretty seedy.

There was nowhere to sit, really.

You'd just all lie there, sort of out of your mind

staring up at the stage

or the films or whatever

because it really was a place just to drop acid and go to.

There was people...

actually were astonished

to find that there were so many like them.

They came down, they went, "Oh wow, we are not alone."

You know, "Me and my friends are not the only people

dressing in crazy clothes and taking funny substances

and wanting to listen to this kind of music."

So it was kind of revelation for me and for the audience

to see that there were so many people who were interested.

♪

The Pink Floyd, once called

the "underground's house orchestra."

On Friday nights, they and other groups play at UFO,

U-F-O, Unidentified Flying Object,

a night time environment where films, projection, and music

make the underground's nightclub a huge entertainment scene.

For the rest of the week it is, improbably, an Irish dance hall.

It's here that the underground becomes most obviously

a young people's movement.

The only people over about 30

are reporters come to investigate what's going on.

They're treated with amused tolerance by the people

they're investigating.

One of the aims here is to make music a felt experience.

To make the patterns of light and sound merge and fuse

deep inside each listener.

The attempt has been called psychedelic or mind expanding.

Psychedelic is a silly term used by commentators

as a blanket word to cover anything

they don't fully understand.

If this is psychedelic, then psychedelic music

may be with us for some time.

Many people claim it to be the next popular music,

music as experience, not as melody.

♪

I was taking a few trips then and I was just lying

on the floor while they played, not in my body.

And being transported, you know, hundreds, millions, light years

up into the cosmos on the sounds of their music.

♪

The group decorated those great songs with long improvisations

and played them in front of bouncing lights

and pulsing colors and all that kind of thing.

That was great because it just enhanced

the whole experience and I wasn't alone,

I mean, everybody felt that way.

It was very obscure and very odd.

And the whole effect was mesmerizing

and they were dressed in their beautiful satins and silks

and the lights were shining on them and they were like sort of

colorful gargoyles almost.

The underground movement in London is small, as yet.

Elsewhere, it has become a great force.

Instant theater, happenings, light and sound shows,

psychedelic music is spreading.

Today's underground may be the answer to tomorrow's leisure.

We were the so-called beautiful people,

but the News of the World,

who must have heard about all this

and come down and had a look,

said there were people there injecting reefers,

which is--yes, I'd like to try and do that.

So the outside world was starting to cop on

to what was happening on the so-called underground.

♪

I was asked by the editor of the News of the World

if I had any photographs of the Pink Floyd

and I said, "Oh no," but then I arranged them with Peter Jenner

who was their manager at the time.

And they said," Yes, come along, photograph them."

I was nervous when he said to me, "Don't accept any food,

drinks, cigarettes or anything like that."

I didn't ask why and I just accepted what he said.

I went there and they were so kind, they were so nice

and they said, "Would you like a cup of tea?"

And I said, "Oh, no," terrified, you know?

They seemed like four very well educated public school boys.

[shutter clicking]

They were rather bewildered in actual fact, yes.

I think that's quite a good word, bewildered.

♪

And I don't think they'd ever, you know, been asked

to move the instruments.

They were kind of looking quizzically at each other,

thinking, "I wonder what this mad woman wants."

I was asked to go again because the first time they all looked

rather, a bit odd really, somewhat.

And Jenner said, you know, he'd prefer to have another set

of pictures, where Syd Barrett didn't look so spaced out.

But in the second shoot, Syd took control

and they responded to him, whatever he said

of the whole session, really.

News of the World used it for an exposé on drugs.

I'd hadn't realized that that's what they wanted it for.

I thought, "Oh crikey, I'm going to be sued," you know?

It's hard to say how many people were high or not.

Probably in the first month,

there was probably a pretty good percentage,

but then the combination of the fact that the publicity

drew a lot of outsiders or people who hadn't

had much experience taking drugs.

Plus, the fact that police got interested and started searching

people in the queue outside meant as the crowds got bigger,

they got a little bit straighter.

♪

The Floyd's number one priority was to release a record.

In January 1967, Joe Boyd steered the group

into Chelsea's Sound Techniques Studios

to record the Barrett penned song, "Arnold Layne."

They were a pleasure to work with,

we had a lot of fun doing "Arnold Layne"

and the B-side and we did it.

I mean, we did it in one evening,

recorded it and mixed it the next night.

I mean, it wasn't a big, long process,

but it was a lot of fun.

It reached about number 20 in the charts.

It got banned on Radio London for encouraging transvest-ism

or something.

Well it's about a guy sniffing girls panties in the backyard,

you know, it's a bit naughty.

You know, and this was 1967, the BBC wasn't--

They'd only just started playing pop music really

and all of a sudden they're presented with this record

about a guy who is kind of a pervert,

so their response was to ban it, which of course,

gave it a lot of publicity.

Now, I think it was a good enough record

to get higher in the charts if they hadn't banned it,

but you could equally make the argument that it got

into the charts at all because they did ban it.

Who knows?

Record label EMI was suitably impressed,

and signed the Pink Floyd on the basis

the band agreed to work exclusively

with staff producers at the label's own Abbey Road Studios,

leaving Joe Boyd unceremoniously dumped.

♪

Peter Jenner and Andrew King, they were able to get a deal

with EMI and they signed for 5,000 pounds.

I wasn't upset that they signed EMI,

although, yeah, I was upset that they didn't sign

my deal with my company through--to Polydor,

but I was particularly upset when EMI said,

"No, no, no we can't use Joe Boyd,

we're going to use our own producer."

That was not good.

♪

Joe was terrific for us and produced two really good singles

and then it all went a different way.

The band settled into recording their debut album,

"Piper at the Gates of Dawn" in Studio 3, Abbey Road.

Meanwhile, in Studio 2, the Beatles

were working on "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

One of the things that did work for us really well

was EMI as a record company because we rearranged

our record deal so that we had pretty unlimited studio time.

And we spent a lot of time in the studios,

and we spent a lot of time learning things.

And a lot of it was very much thanks to The Beatles.

They were working on "Piper at the Gates of Dawn"

in the Abbey Road Studios, in a studio and next door

the Beatles were working on "Sgt. Pepper."

They certainly visited each other

and listened to what each other were doing

and then out came the most psychedelic record

the Beatles ever did.

"Piper at the Gates of Dawn" was to draw frequent comparisons

with "Pepper" in the wake of its release and ascendancy

on the British LP charts.

Good rock musicians, like good composers,

like good artists anywhere, they're like magpies.

They'll steal bits from here and bits from there.

They all do it, nothing wrong with that,

provided what you're making is something new

and, I mean, a musician as attuned

and as acute as John Lennon,

there is no way he wouldn't have picked up on what

others were doing and seeing is there any way I can use this.

There's nothing wrong with that,

I think that's the process of all great art.

Syd was using a Zippo lighter to do a sort of slide guitar effect

and Rick Wright, he was always trying to work out new noises

to get out of his keyboard.

♪

Lennon felt that Pink Floyd were on the cusp of doing something

really important, again because of the Indian connection,

because by then they'd been to the Maharishi

and they for certain, a rather short time,

they wore a lot of beads and flowers in their hair

and talked rubbish about you know,

transcendental meditation.

I mean, it was absolute garbage, but there we are.

We've had enough acid, it'd done all it can do for us,

you know, there was no going any further

it only does so much.

Are you experiencing the subtler state

of thought at this moment?

No, I am out in the grass, speaking--

What do you have to do to obtain this state of thought?

Just a few instructions from a trained teacher,

and one begins to experience it.

How long does it take?

About half an hour.

How do you know when it's happened?

One begins to feel relaxed.

Right from the beginning, one begins to feel

some improved level of well being.

You just feel more energetic,

just simply for doing work or anything.

You just come out of it like,

"Let's get going," you know?

♪

"Piper at the Gates of Dawn" was rapturously received

and the band became the musical darlings

of the flowering counterculture.

♪

We were touring virtually everyday.

We were having the screaming girls

and Syd was definitely a star and he did like it, actually.

I think Syd really enjoyed that part of the whole,

the fame thing.

And I think the rest of us were more uncomfortable with it.

The album did really well, the first one,

but they were on the Top of the Pops

doing "See Emily Play," which got in the top ten,

but on the other hand, if you went to see them live,

they'd play "Interstellar Overdrive"

for like half an hour.

They were very exploratory, yet they had pop songs

that got in the charts and they had this balance going

for awhile, until everything changed.

♪

Even at this early stage, Syd Barrett was showing signs

of mental fragility.

They'd stopped playing at UFO because they got too big,

but they'd said, "We'll come back in the summer

and play a gig here for the old price,

just for old time's sake."

And so they did and he came in

and as he passed, you know, near me,

I looked at Syd and he--

Like somebody turned out the lights.

His eyes looked very vacant and very--

It was very distressing.

After their first album, "Piper at the Gates of Dawn,"

I remember Syd saying, "I'm not going to mime,

I'm not going to mime."

At that stage, one felt that

Syd was drifting away

from really being integrated with the band

and was beginning to disintegrate.

He really wanted to retain his artistic integrity.

He didn't like the commercialization of the music.

"See Emily Play" really took off after they made

their first Top of the Pops appearance.

They did three appearances for that single,

although Syd refused to do the third one.

He was already showing signs of being rather disturbed,

rebelling against being a pop star,

even before they were proper pop stars.

We were recording a Radio One show at the BBC

and Syd didn't turn up.

I think it was a Friday.

And no one could find him.

So we basically waited and waited

and I think we had to cancel the recording

or we tried to do some without him, I'm not sure.

And then the managers went off trying to find him.

And when they found Syd, which I think was a Sunday or Monday,

they told us, "Well, something's happened to Syd."

And something had happened to him, total difference.

Total difference.

♪

I went to the session when they made "See Emily Play."

Syd was a changed person.

He didn't appear to recognize me at first,

sort of stared right through me.

And had what Roger has very aptly put as black holes

in the sky for eyes.

♪

Tales of Syd's erratic behavior were numerous.

I was in the West End and I ran into Syd's girlfriend

in Cambridge Circus and she seemed a bit distressed

and she'd motioned and there was Syd

lying or sitting in the gutter on those little side streets

that goes down to Seven Dials.

And she told me, she said, "He's been taking acid

every day for 7 days."

And he looked just completely out of it.

♪

It was hard to tell when he was on it

and when he wasn't on it, actually.

Lindsay and Syd and Nigel and I all went to stay in a cottage

in Wales and we all took LSD and Syd already,

we could hardly communicate with him.

He wasn't really there.

He was behaving very strangely and spent one night

balanced on a wine bottle,

with his bare feet on a wine bottle

and his hands on a low beam.

I think he was grinning, probably, but just like that.

Just spinning backwards and forwards.

And I think I was more concerned about his girlfriend, Lindsay,

because I think she was very distressed.

At that time, none of us knew how to handle that.

We were just trying to stay sane ourselves, really.

So I think at that time, we were not equipped

to be able to even begin to help him.

We said, "Oh, it's just poetic genius,

it's just LSD, it's just drug induced madness."

We didn't know--

Well, we had no experience actually of mental illness.

And I think he just slowly

drifted into becoming incomprehensible.

And none of us could help, none of us could help.

We have all these terms now, like bipolar and schizophrenia

and it's quite likely that he did suffer from one of those,

which combined with large quantities of LSD,

sent him over the edge.

♪

October 1967: Pink Floyd began a tour of America.

During the first few days, Syd's mental state soon threatened

to undermine it.

We did a tour in '68 of the States.

I mean, just of the West Coast.

I think we only did 3 gigs or something and, you know,

where it was quite clear that he'd gone,

he was no longer with us in any real sense.

We always said, "Well, is Syd going to make it tonight?

Is he going to get on stage, even?"

And then someone came in, I don't know who,

don't know if it was any member of the band and said,

"You've gotta come see what Syd's doing."

And he'd crushed up all these mandrakes and mixed it up

with Brylcreem and then rubbed it in his hair.

And then came on stage and it all started melting.

So bizarre.

One gig he just detuned his guitar on the stage.

Another gig he just played one note.

They had to get a guy called Davy O'List,

who was in The Nice,

who'd flown over to kind of deputize,

bolster Syd because the guitar just wasn't there

a lot of the time.

♪

Despite their ailing front man, on their return to Britain,

the band continued to perform.

♪

They were setting up for a gig one day

and it was like, "Should we go get Syd?"

And someone said, "No, let's not bother."

And they didn't get Syd, and that's it,

he was out of the band.

When I look back on how we treated Syd,

I don't see a bunch of very kind,

nice people, doing the very best they could.

Everyone was sort of thinking, "Well, how on Earth

can we get this under control so we can carry on?"

It's hard now to say--

Being wise after the event, there's a lot of other routes

that might have been taken.

On April 6th, 1968, it was officially confirmed

that Syd was no longer a member of Pink Floyd.

Roger Waters rang me and said,

"The Floyd have a gig tonight in Brighton,

but Syd's just not going to make it.

Would you ring David Gilmour and see if he could pack up

his guitar and join us?"

And David joined the band.

I guess he never looked back.

♪

In the beginning, I had no clue what I was doing,

it was probably dreadful and I thought

it wasn't a lot of fun, I have to tell you.

It was a huge relief to have Dave in the band,

didn't have the fear of what's going to happen next,

or whatever and we then started trying to learn to write,

I mean, Roger and me and Dave.

And I'm sure that's when I started doing my improvisation

or whatever on the keyboards.

The songs that came later that Roger and Dave wrote

are very different from Syd's songs.

They're not as dense, they're not as witty,

they're not as jaunty.

♪

After leaving the band in 1968, Syd spent the remainder

of the year in a fragile state.

I was in Harrods shopping and I saw Syd,

I don't think he saw me.

I saw him, he had his brown paper bag,

and was buying sweets 'cause I think he just lived on sweets.

That was the last time I saw him.

Syd's departure coincided with them becoming successful.

I'm speaking commercially.

So it was a terrible dilemma.

I mean, Roger felt almost brotherly love for Syd.

I mean, it was more than even that.

He felt responsible for Syd.

They were great friends.

They'd been together for God knows how many years.

It was a real tragedy and Roger for years worried about this.

And still worries about it.

And when Syd died, was still worrying about it.

He died in 2006, from pancreatic cancer.

Commendably, they all made sure he got his royalties,

right up until, you know, he died.

It's a shame for people to remember him as this sort of

burnt-out shell.

He is one of the few real musical geniuses

of this pop era, I think.

Although his actual output is pathetically small,

it is quite influential.

The specter of Syd haunted us subsequently.

I mean, obviously, we went back to it

with "Wish You Were Here" in a major way.

♪

Pink Floyd cultivated an impassive on stage demeanor,

calculated to keep their audiences entirely focused

on the music and state of the art

multimedia extravaganza.

♪

In 1973, after eight albums,

"Dark Side of the Moon" hoisted Floyd onto a plane

of popularity few bands experience.

The pivotal release became one of the most celebrated albums

in the history of recorded music,

remaining on the best seller chart for a phenomenal 26 years.

♪

The next release, "Wish You Were Here"

became one of the most successful follow-up albums

of all time.

♪

The "Wish You Were Here" album is probably

the best balanced album in terms of the music

having the emotional strength on its own.

To me, that works better than "Dark Side of the Moon" does.

♪

Following "Wish You Were Here,"

the quartet's chemistry rapidly disintegrated.

♪

When we were making that record, in the aftermath of the success

of "Dark Side of the Moon," you know, in a way,

I sort of knew, that really we were over

as far as the band of brothers

notion of a pop group was concerned.

We just weren't anymore and we were never going to be

that again.

♪

I think it was the last album where we worked well together.

I know that when we started off,

we weren't putting our heart into it.

The disagreements did start at that point.

Around that time, I split up with my first wife

and I remember in the canteen downstairs,

here at Abbey Road,

having a nervous breakdown.

I think that's the only way I can describe it,

but it was very, very short lived,

but it was like I was sitting at the table downstairs,

having something to eat, in a bad way

and suddenly everything telescoped.

Everything went down the other end of a telescope.

It all just went--

Everything, and I thought,

"Fuck me, I'm going mad.

This is what it must be like."

Suddenly, reality has changed completely.

♪

1979 brought the release of "The Wall."

Conceived by Roger Waters as an ambitious double album,

a spectacular live show and a groundbreaking feature film,

"The Wall" went on to achieve iconic status.

Roger Waters came to me about eight, ten years ago

and played me the raw tapes of "The Wall"

and said that he would be making a film of it

and a show of it, all of which we did.

And the we started thinking about what images

would go with the music and what parts we would illustrate.

I just draw the master drawings, which I pass

to the master animators and they draw out

all the main movements.

"The Wall" was probably

their most spectacular stage presentation.

It was all fostered weirdly by Roger spitting on a fan

during a gig, and he decided he'd like to do a gig

isolated from the crowd, which led, eventually,

to the band being gradually covered up by a massive wall

on stage, which was then demolished.

They'd really taken the stage show to limits

that even the Stones had never got to at that point.

They really were the most excessive,

huge band in the world.

♪

It was the biggest and best show that was on the road

at the time, and looking back at it now,

it was basically bicycle technology,

but at the time, it was cutting edge.

♪

It was a total touring entourage of about 120-130 people.

It was pretty well organized because it had to be

because it was such a big machine.

You were a cog in a machine.

I saw them do "The Wall" in Naples,

somewhere completely mad like that.

Rock and roll in the '80s became show.

You needed the lasers, you needed the big projection

at the back, you needed smoke going off,

you needed Mick Jagger coming up out of the pit,

as if he's the messiah,

and then you needed Madonna with pointed breasts,

I mean, the most pointed breasts ever seen on a human being.

It's hype, it's ridiculous, in other words,

it's got nothing to do with music anymore.

You know, if you're playing to a stadium of 50, 60,000 people,

which they did frequently, you're not making music anymore.

They can't hear themselves.

The audience can't hear it properly.

To have this huge crowd going--

Like this and sort of lighting a candle.

I mean, it's bollocks!

In stadiums, it's got nothing to do with music anymore.

And now they were just this behemoth of a band,

and it was going to implode and there was something

of a cocaine problem going on in the band

and it grabbed several members and that never helps.

♪

During the recording of "The Final Cut,"

Roger had actually fired Rick from the band,

which is a very, very sad thing to do to a gorgeous man

and it didn't make any difference.

It isn't as if there wasn't enough money to go around,

let him stay.

At one point, he'd been relegated

to being a session man, he'd left the band

and then he came back, just paid as much

as the session bass players.

I do think for him to be hired by the band he helped form

and paid as a session guy,

I think that's fairly disgusting.

That underlying angst in Roger

has caused him to treat some people

rather wrongly, I feel, and I think Rick

being the gorgeous, lovely, peaceful gentleman that he is,

that he was, meant that he did get the brunt of it.

They couldn't figure out what Rick contributed.

I remember several conversations with various other members

of the band who should be nameless,

is that they liked him, but they couldn't figure out

what he contributed.

And I think that was totally unfair.

But of course once that idea, that seed of an idea,

gets planted, then you're almost kind of thinking,

"I wonder what he contributes," if you see what I mean.

♪

By the mid '80s, the group began to unravel.

Relationships got really bad between Roger

and the rest of the band.

He was now traveling separately, and the last album

was entirely dictated by him.

It was called "The Final Cut" and every track was written

by Roger.

He left--by 1995 he was gone.

It happens, they grow up together, it's a long time.

And to be expected to be happy living in each other's pockets

for most of your lives, it doesn't happen.

It can't happen like that.

♪

I don't have any power in any of that decision making process

because the rights in all of the old stuff

reside with a company called Pink Floyd Music Limited

and there are four shareholders.

Rick Wright, Nick Mason, Dave Gilmour, and me

and we all have one vote so I can always be outvoted,

and I always am and so I don't really bother

to have much to do with it 'cause it's a waste

of my energy.

♪

Following Roger Water's departure,

the band members went their separate ways,

until 1987, when Gilmour and Mason forged ahead

with the Pink Floyd name, releasing albums

and staging tours.

The very first thing they did was to reinstate Rick Wright

as a full member of the band.

♪

They don't trash hotel rooms, and they don't hide

behind security guards.

Could you imagine the Rolling Stones

getting this close to the music press Rottweilers?

Were you particularly proud of last year's shows?

Yeah, yeah, very much so.

For what reason?

They're very, very good shows, we're proud of the album,

what we did before, and I think we put together--

I think this show is probably one of the best we've ever done.

I couldn't think of any other band who would start out playing

to drug crazed hippies and end up playing

to conservative cabinet ministers and possibly future--

I mean, it's not a criticism, I'm just wondering,

did you ever expect yourself to--

There are some areas in which we have gone backwards,

it has to be said.

We all still like to be successful and famous,

all things that apply to us when we were fighting our way up

sort of 20-something years ago still apply.

You're on a world tour, does playing in London

have any added significance for you?

Oh, it's the hassle in London.

Thousands of people wanting tickets, all that sort of stuff.

It's going to be great, it's the first--

Actually although people say it's a huge bar,

it is actually the smallest place we've played

and it's the last period of our tour,

so we're finished when we finish here.

Why do you keep doing it?

It's what I do.

Why do you keep doing what you do?

♪

Go back to your seats now, please.

Floyd are on a one hundred million pound world tour.

But a 1,200-seater stand collapsed minutes before

they went on stage.

Earls Court was evacuated, the Pink Floyd concert

was cancelled.

Now the Health and Safety Executive are examining

the wreckage to find out what went wrong.

♪

Things did go wrong quite often.

In Venice, our show was on a barge.

This barge was 360 feet long

and I think it was 120 foot wide

and 12 foot deep.

Think of a just a big, steel tank.

We built the entire show in the docks.

So the whole stage was on this barge,

it's the big festival outdoors, stadium stage.

We sailed in being towed by two tugs,

really early in the morning, through the mist

with Jolly Rogers flying off the PA.

We were the third tallest structure in Venice.

♪

Dave was standing in downstage center

looking at all this madness going on around him

and I went over and said, "Thanks, Dave,

this is wicked, this is," he said "It is the most

ridiculous thing I've ever done in my life, Bob.

I can't believe we're doing this."

♪

It was meant to be the most spectacular concert

in the history of rock.

Two hundred thousand people packed into St. Mark's Square

to hear Pink Floyd, 100 million watched on television

around the world.

But the following morning, there was another spectacle,

St. Mark's Square under a sea of filth and litter.

The concert had taken place with few facilities laid on

for the fans and virtually no public toilets.

Some fans had clambered onto whatever vantage points

they could, with inevitable results.

At least one historic monument was also said

to have been damaged.

Venetians were furious and now to defuse the row,

the mayor says he may resign,

together with the entire town council.

Venice is still recovering from last week's concert,

a team of architects had predicted that the decibel level

of Pink Floyd's music could cause permanent damage

to buildings.

In that case, Venice may be regretting

the day Pink Floyd came to town for a very long time yet.

♪

In 1996, Pink Floyd were inducted

into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,

followed by the same honor in the UK in 2005.

It's nice to be loved and for one's contribution

to be recognized in some way

and I suppose I do agree that I think that

we have had an influence.

I think we're really pleased.

It is an honor and it's very nice to be recognized

rather than having to watch other people being inducted.

...Floyd into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

I think it probably means that this is official,

that we never, ever have to be a support act ever again.

Thank you!

[applause]

♪

On July 2nd, 2005, for the first time in almost 25 years,

Pink Floyd reformed for their final performance.

If the Pink Floyd can agree on what to play,

surely the G8 summit can agree on what

to do about sorting out Africa.

I was intrigued to see it.

Roger seemed really pleased to be back.

And Dave seemed less so.

Now the body language was a bit odd.

There was obviously animosity there.

If there was tensions, it was very cleverly disguised.

If I'm honest, which I am, it was more about

being with Nick and Rick and Dave on stage again, I think.

There was an enormous joy in that.

From the moment we walked into rehearsals,

which we did on a sort of Tuesday afternoon

before the thing had started playing,

it was obvious it was going to be so easy

because there's nothing complex about any of the music.

I looked around at one point and there were people in tears.

It's something that no one thought they'd see again.

It brought a tear to my eye to see them all up there together,

delightful.

♪

The problem with Live 8 was you weren't quite sure

why you were there.

On that occasion, you felt

you were there because you ought to be there

rather than, "Gosh, isn't it good to see them?"

A lot of bands have a lot of acrimony,

a lot of splits and so on.

One of the reasons I was so happy to be on stage again

was to say, "Hey, whatever, we disagree, so what?"

They all stood on the stage with their arms

around each other, thank God that happened.

They had buried the hatchet and I'm really glad it happened

because Rick Wright died, not that long afterwards.

♪

Everyone was very distressed that he seemed just gone

for no particularly good reason.

I was very, very shocked to hear the news.

And I said, said a few things in my mind.

Thank you, Rick, thank you for everything you've done for us

and I'm so pleased to have met you

and so pleased I worked with you,

you were such a lovely, lovely man

and very, very dearly, very sorely missed.

He was like the life blood of Pink Floyd.

He was very underrated.

He was the unseen--if you're talking about geniuses,

I think you could say he inherited that mantle.

I was invited to Q to present Pink Floyd

with the Living Legends Award for 2009.

It was three weeks after Rick Wright passed away

and David got the whole of the Grosvenor Hotel

to stand up in unison

and raise a glass to Rick's memory

and it's not often I see people with tears in their eyes

coming up to me, telling me that was just one of the most

amazing things they've ever seen, it was amazing.

♪

Roger just didn't want to know, just didn't want to know.

Didn't believe it, didn't want to know.

That was misinterpreted as not caring.

But I think the extent to which he let it be known

that he didn't want to know was the extent paradoxically

that he really desperately cared

and was very, very upset about it.

The same with Syd, go right back to Syd Barrett.

Exactly the same situation.

♪

Roger Waters and David Gilmour have continued to pursue

solo careers, occasionally joined by Nick Mason.

There's almost like a primal therapy thing with Roger,

to explore his innermost psyche.

Which is a bit self indulgent, but at the same time,

there are people who will be able to relate to it

and he is speaking for a generation

of people like him.

I take my hat off to him for that,

because that takes some doing.

Dave Gilmour is seen as the face of Floyd now,

yet he's made solo albums that have done, done pretty well.

He gave away a house in West London to a charity,

and a part of that is I think compensating for the fact that,

"I didn't deserve all this money that I'm earning now."

He's also not afraid for a bit of experimentation

because he's just done a new album

with Dr. Alex Paterson of The Orb.

Four decades since their first album,

Pink Floyd continue to inspire rock fans

around the world.

♪

I've been in taxis in obscure corners of the third world

and you know, the glove compartment opens

and there's two cassettes in there

and one of them is "Dark Side of the Moon"

and the other one is Madonna, you know?

And if you told me that in 1967,

that 25 years later, I'd be somewhere in Indonesia

or whatever and see those cassettes in somebody's car,

I would have thought you were nuts,

but it's fantastic that it's true.

Everybody knows of Pink Floyd, you say something to Grandma,

and Grandma will heard of Pink Floyd.

It's kind of bizarre.

It's terrific, I mean, it's so great when people come up

and say, they'd like an autograph

and it's not for their Granny,

it's actually for their children.

Pink Floyd music will continue to inspire us

for centuries to come.

They captured so much of the spirit of the times.

Their music is timeless, deep, and wonderful.

♪