Progressive Rock · Psychedelic Rock · Art Rock
From London’s underground to the best-selling album of all time — a band that thought in albums.
The biography
Pink Floyd formed in London in 1965 around guitarist and songwriter Syd Barrett, with Roger Waters, Richard Wright and Nick Mason. Barrett’s psychedelic vision drove The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967); his departure in 1968 — with David Gilmour joining on guitar — could have ended the band. Instead, it began its greatest chapter.
Meddle (1971) pointed the way; The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) became one of the best-selling albums in history — 14-times platinum in America, with more than 700 weeks on the Billboard 200. Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977) and The Wall (1979) — a US No. 1 album, 23-times platinum — completed a run of concept albums with no equal in rock. Waters left in 1985, and the band continued with Gilmour, Mason and Wright. They entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.
Why they matter to 1970–1989 music: Pink Floyd made the album a complete work of art — music, sound effects, concept and sleeve design conceived as one. They were studio innovators who treated the recording console as an instrument, and their live shows turned concerts into spectacles of light and sound. No band did more to prove that rock could be as ambitious as any art form.