A Brief History of The Floyd

Pink Floyd' s first three members (Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright) met as architecture students in London where they attended the Regent Street Poly. In the beginning the band was failure. Their original name was Sigma 6, then later, when they're manager ditched them, they became The Architectural Adabs. They continued to fail in music, and eventually, Roger Waters (who fronted the band for most of it's success) decided to start taking his exams seriously and get back into school.

		"I found Physics and things like that quite easy tocope with and so I was pushed down that road. When I leftschool I was all set to go to Manchester University to do Mechanical Engineering. But suddenly the thought of another three years of the sixth form was more than I could stand.So I took a year off. My career choice was made by the NationalInstitute of Industrial Psychology where I took a whole bunch of aptitude tests - so I was completely passive about that as well. They told me I would do well at Architecture, which didn't sound as dull as MechanicalEngineering. So I said OK."

-an excerpt from this interview with Roger Waters

 

Soon enough, a young wildcat entered the band. Syd Barret was a child hood friend of Waters who was mostly consumed by the psychadelic era. He loved eastern religions and hallucinogens. He was definately the apparent opposite of a scientist. He fronted the band for a short while, but quickly dropped back out after eating too much LSD in one sitting. He was replaced as frontman by Roger Waters and as guitarist by David Gilmour.

 

Syd Barret

David Gilmour

 

Syd, however, did have a large interest in cosmology and astronomy. He had no rational understanding of any of it, but an interest nonetheless. With the arrival of Syd, though, came the end of Water's formal education, and the beginning of stardom for Pink Floyd's members.

Even though Syd drifted away from the band in a state of mental illness, he had left an impression on the remianing band members that was bound to hieghten the quality of their music for the next twenty years. Unfortunately, Roger did not become an architect...

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