PINK FLOYD – SHINE ON: The Definitive Oral History by Mark Blake

“If you’re in a room, as I was at Live 8, with David, Nick, Rick and Roger Waters, nobody speaks,” says Polly Samson, wife of David Gilmour since 1994. “There is nothing but awkward silences. They have no small talk with each other. They have no big talk with each other. They just do not speak. And then they get on stage and suddenly they’re so eloquent, and the way they communicate is beautiful.”

Time was when the concept of an Oral History of Pink Floyd was about as likely as Van Morrison inviting journalists to spend an evening drinking with him while he regaled them with stories about his days in Them. Not only didn’t they speak to each other, they didn’t speak to the press much either. What’s more, pretty much everyone around them was tight-lipped too. They were an enigma, a “faceless obelisk” as more than one of their accomplices comment in Mark Blake’s second book about the group, following on from Pigs Might Fly, his definitive biography, now in its third edition. 

Now, of course, everything’s out in the open. Indeed, it took the squabbling between Roger Waters and David Gilmour, over the latter’s decision to reform the group to record and tour without Waters, that set off a time-bomb, opening the floodgates for all manner of grievances to be aired in public. The air of mystery was dispelled and, suddenly, Pink Floyd was an open book. 

        That element of mystery is most often explained by the strange story of Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd’s founder, once its leading light, whose withdrawal from renown and eccentric behaviour was an ongoing source of invasive, sometimes salacious, speculation. But there was more to it than that, however; a detachment hinted at in the Dark Side song ‘Us And Them’: ”Who knows which is which and who is who?” 

        They didn’t like doing interviews, or having their photographs taken. On stage, they wore black and hid behind lights, screens and props. Their LP sleeves featured surreal, baffling imagery. It seemed as if they didn’t want their fans to know how they created their work, what they thought about it or even what they looked like. They were a conundrum, appealing to the curious, to problem-solvers, to those who believed – rightly or wrongly – that liking their music demonstrated a higher level of perception than, say, fans of Status Quo. 

Gradually, however, as the inner workings of Pink Floyd became exposed, what we saw wasn’t very nice. Beneath that aloof veneer, that inscrutable façade, lingered dysfunction and bitterness, rivalry and vanity, arrogance and greed – all of which Mark Blake reveals in spades this engrossing oral history.

Mark begins at the beginning, with Syd Barrett, or Roger as he was always known to his sister Rosemary, who speaks at length about the brother she tried hard to understand but never really did, and who cared for him later in life. We move on to how the group was assembled from among friends in Cambridge, with Syd as the central figure, soon to be joined in London by drummer Nick Mason and keyboard player Richard Wright. At this point Waters was the least musical, requiring Wright, the only trained musician, to tune his bass. For whatever reason, Waters looked down on Wright thereafter. 

Plenty of people talk about this era, when Pink Floyd was a pop group pure and simple, in frilly shirts, loon pants and kicking their legs in the air for photographers. The inscrutability came later, after Syd was abandoned to whatever was going on inside his head, which no one could understand, and with Gilmour as his replacement an element of professionalism is introduced, along with the walls erected to keep outsiders at bay.

Nevertheless, Mark Blake has unearthed plenty of bystanders to take us through the story, among them a surprising number of former girlfriends – they got married and divorced a lot, leaving a pool of embittered ex-wives who, no doubt, hoovered up a decent chunk of their earnings – road crew, some of whom were retained even when their services were no longer required, record producers and studio hands, management staff, flatmates, collaborators, photographers, journalists and, most especially, Aubrey “Po” Powell who, with the late Storm Thorgerson, made up the design team Hipgnosis, creators of Floydian artwork. Some 92 voices are credited in the acknowledgements, the interviews conducted between 1992 and 2025, which speaks for itself as far as Blake’s diligence is concerned.

The quotes are linked with Mark’s text to explain the background, much of it setting the scene for when and where he interviewed the members of the group and, in his own idiosyncratic way, comments on how they behave. We hear how Waters’ domination of the group tore it apart, how he bullied Wright and alienated Gilmour. For years Mason acted as a go-between but in the end opted for the Gilmour faction, a wise move. Waters’ incomprehension at how Pink Floyd could exist without him is at the heart of the tale. 

“You are antisemitic to your rotten core,” wrote Samson, never one to mince words, to Waters in 2023, “… a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac.”

“Imagine waking up to [her] every morning,” responded Waters.

And if the band you’re in starts playing a different tune…