The acclaimed, definitive biography of Pink Floyd, from their iconic
beginnings in psychedelic, Swinging London to their historic reunion at
the Live8 concert ("The most complete, insightful, and current account
of Pink Floyd...nearly as essential as the music itself."--Austin
Chronicle)
Mark Blake draws on his own interviews with band members as well as the
group's friends, road crew, musical contemporaries, former housemates,
and university colleagues to produce a riveting history of one of the
biggest rock bands of all time. We follow Pink Floyd from the early
psychedelic nights at UFO, to the stadium-rock and concept-album zenith
of the seventies, to the acrimonious schisms of the late '80s and '90s.
Along the way there are fascinating new revelations about Syd Barrett's
chaotic life at the time of Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the band's
painstaking and Byzantine recording sessions at Abbey Road, and the
fractious negotiations to bring about their fragile, tantalizing reunion
in Hyde Park. Meticulous, exacting, and ambitious as any Pink Floyd
album, Comfortably Numb is the definitive account of this most
adventurous--and most English--rock band.