Comfortably Numb

About this book

In July 2005 in Hyde Park before a global audience of millions Pink Floyd performed together on stage for the first time in 24 years. From the moment the metronomic pulse of a heartbeat thudded out to begin "Speak to Me" to the soaring guitar solo that climaxed "Comfortably Numb " these self-effacing men in their late fifties stole the show. Almost a year later the death of their troubled founder-member Syd Barrett made headline news worldwide. Both events signaled a kind of closure to the remarkable tale of one of the worlds biggest bands. Now in the first full-length history of the group for more than fifteen years Mark Blake tells the story of how a group of middle-class Englishmen conquered the world. Drawing on his own interviews with all of the band members interviews with the groups friends road crew producers former housemates and university colleagues as well as musical contemporaries including Pete Townshend and Alice Cooper Comfortably Numb follows Pink Floyd all the way from the early psychedelic nights at UFO in the mid-sixties to the stadium-rock and concept-album zenith of the seventies and finally the acrimonious schism that sundered the band in the 80s and 90s.