ABOUT THE BOOK Pink Floyd’s progressive and psychedelic rock sound, most famously featured on concept albums like The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall, have given them astounding critical and commercial success. When lead songwriter Syd Barrett succumbed to drugs and mental illness and left the band, the subsequent power struggle between artistically controlling frontman Roger Waters and guitarist David Gilmour led to one of the most famous feuds in rock-n-roll history. The band was originally composed of Roger Waters (bass), Nick Mason (drums) and Richard Wright (piano/keyboard), who all met while studying at Regent Street Polytechnic in London. 17-year-old Roger Syd Barrett, a childhood friend of Waters, joined the group in 1964. Barrett named the group Pink Floyd by combining the names of two blues musicians, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. MEET THE AUTHOR Sarah Bruhns graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in Creative Writing. She is a long-time volunteer at 826 Valencia, where she designed a comic book creation class, a magical realism workshop, and lessons for the English Language Learners Summer Series. Her favorite activities include hiking around the city, uncovering new eating experiences, and cooking with wine. She can be found at Borderlands Cafe in San Francisco, drinking way too much coffee. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK The Wall is a sprawling rock opera that explores abandonment, conformity, isolation and emotional numbness. The albums lyrics are cyclical as a reflection of inevitability a sentence (Isn’t this where ) begins at the very end of the album, and is finished (we came in?) at the very beginning. The story is arranged around a character named Pink, who loses his father in war, is tormented at school, and eventually as a rock star, builds a literal and figurative wall to protect himself from the outside world. During stage shows, the band played behind a gradually constructed wall, and giant inflatable pigs floated above the stadium. The band performed The Wall only 29 times in New York, Los Angeles and London. CHAPTER OUTLINEQuicklet on the Best Pink Floyd Songs: Lyrics and Analysis+ About Pink Floyd+ We Don’t Need No Thought Control+ You Have Found the Secret Message+ The Wall Was Too High as You Can See+ …and much moreThe Best Pink Floyd Songs: Lyrics and Analysis
