Pigs Might Fly: The Inside Story Of Pink Floyd
Mark Blake (Aurum Press, 2007)
PIGS MIGHT FLY (published as Comfortably Numb in the US) remains the most complete and level-headed Floyd biography. Commissioned immediately after 2005’s Live 8 reunion, its publishers wanted a book with the same gravitas as the standard works on the Beatles, Dylan and the Stones – and MOJO contributor Mark Blake delivered impressively. The story is told via the author’s numerous MOJO and Q magazine interviews with past and present Floyd members, as well as a vocal supporting cast of producers, musicians, managers, ex-girlfriends and now-exiled drug buddies.
It’s not uncritical, especially of the group’s weaker musical material and occasionally uncharitable behaviour (to others and each other), but an understanding of the milieu that produced its stiff-upper-lipped and at times emotionally repressed subjects helps provide a balanced and entertaining narrative. Pigs Might Fly has been updated twice since, with the most recent 2017 version acknowledging Richard
Wright’s death and the release of The Endless
River. (Clive Prior)
SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS: THE PINK FLOYD ODYSSEY
Nicholas Schaffner (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1992)
The first in-depth PF biography benefited from the author stowing away on some dates on their 1987 comeback tour. Certain facts and dates have been challenged since (thank you World Wide Web), but Schaffner’s study was required reading in the last decade of the
20th centur y.
THE MADCAP: THE HALF-LIFE OF SYD BARRETT
Tim Willis
(Short Books, 2003)
Times journalist Willis’s brisk telling of the Syd story benefits from having a sense of humour and raising an eyebrow at the mythologising and slavish fan worship. That, and access to the inner circle: both David Gilmour and Richard Wright’s ex-wife Juliet gave interviews.
THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON: THE MAKING OF THE PINK FLOYD MASTERPIECE
John Harris (Fourth Estate, 2005)
MOJO writer-turned Guardian political pundit John Harris casts a sweeping eye over Floyd’s most famous work. Good on the broader culture and the granular detail, including designer Aubrey ‘Po’ Powell’s tummy trouble while photographing the pyramids in Egypt: “The Nile was coming out of my bum.”
SYD BARRETT: A VERY IRREGULAR HEAD
Rob Chapman (Faber, 2010)
Blur guitarist Graham Coxon’s foreword sets up this lengthy love letter to Syd. The subtext here is: he wasn’t really mad, just artistic and his so-called friends pushed him out of his own group. Some may disagree, but Chapman makes his point well and goes deep into Barrett’s literary influences.
ECHOES: THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF PINK FLOYD
Glenn Povey
(Mindhead Publishing/Omnibus, 2007)
Exhaustive research and great love informs Brain Damage fanzine founder Glenn Povey’s tour-by-tour guide. Bursting with many rarely seen photographs, this and its predecessor, In The Flesh, were the go-to handbooks for facts and trivia before Floyd’s official website added a timeline of gigs.
BARRETT
Russell Beecher & Will Shutes (Essential Works, 2011)
Handsome two-volume compendium encompassing Syd and early Floyd photographs (many genuinely unseen before). Also includes a catalogue of Barrett’s known art, teenage love letters, sketches and ramblings (“I had curry for supper”), which sometimes feels voyeuristic but is hard to ignore.
IN THE PINK (NOT A HUNTING MEMOIR)
Nick Sedgwick (Nick Sedgwick, 2017)
Nick Sedgwick was commissioned to write this book in the mid-’70s but the group refused to sign off on it. His friend Roger Waters self-published it following Sedgwick’s death. Contains lots of backstage grumpiness and a toe-curling account of Waters’ first marriage going down the tubes.
PINK FLOYD: THEIR MORTAL REMAINS
Victoria Broackes, Editor (V&A Publishing, 2017)
Published to coincide with the V&A’s blockbusting PF exhibition, this officially sanctioned work is beautifully illustrated but also tells a story. MOJO’s Jon Savage and Mark Blake chart Floyd’s beginnings and the making of every album, respectively, while composer Howard Goodall offers a musicologist’s perspective on the work.