Not now Pink !

Earlier today, I finished reading Pigs Might Fly: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd, my second read of Mark Blake’s excellent biography, and evidently I had forgotten how depressing the second half of the book is, when the band hit the ‘80’s, and suffered a dictatorial songwriter, an inevitable breakup, and a re-emergence as a dreary AOR outfit with all the rough edges that once made the group so special, thoroughly sanded away. The shots fired between Roger Waters and Floyd Mark III (Gilmour, Mason, Wright and a supporting cast of session players) makes for genuinely painful reading, not to mention the plight of Syd Barrett and his ailing mental health, which never stopped fans and the press intruding upon his life. I’ve always felt the Floyd did their finest work up to Dark Side of the Moon, and everything that followed was superfluous. When I picked up Mark Blake’s book, I was seriously considering buying the Discovery boxset, to upgrade my 1967-1973 CDs and finally add Wish You Were Here, Animals, The Wall, and subsequent albums to the collection, but upon completion of the book, that plan is no more...