Saucerful of Secrets - The Pink Floyd Odyssey
In 1967 the Pink Floyd were the apostles of psychedelia and the toast of underground London. In 1977 Pink Floyd, the creators of The Dark Side of the Moon, one of the biggest-selling LPs of all time, were dismissed as dinosaur rock by punk prophets. By 1987 after the phenomenal triumph of The Wall, the Floyd were torn by internecine warfare, almost suing each other out of existence. But by 1990 Pink Floyd had risen from their own ashes before a new generation of fans, their performance a triumph of magisterial music and high-tech theatrics impeccably staged.
Nicholas Schaffner's authoritative, detailed and always entertaining account of these extraordinary transformations traces the band's history from the early Floyd's flowering in the Summer of Love with the inspired but impossibly erratic Syd Barrett to the wars of the 1980's and Roger Water's acrimonious departure.
When Syd left they said the band would never be the same again, and it wasn't - it was ultimately stronger. David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Roger Waters and Richard Wright ignored the conventions of mainstream music and defined their own limits, creating a new rock genre. They said the same when Roger Waters left, but the band continued to produce vintage Floyd and was massively successful. Saucerful of Secrets captures in black and white and day-glo the band's strange life and times and effectively provides the history of one of the richest strands in British rock.