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Description
Mark Blake draws on his own interviews with band members as well as the group's friends, road crew, musical contemporaries, former housemates, and university colleagues to produce a riveting history of one of the biggest rock bands of all time. We follow Pink Floyd from the early psychedelic nights at UFO, to the stadium-rock and concept-album zenith of the seventies, to the acrimonious schisms of the late '80s and '90s. Along the way there are fascinating new revelations about Syd Barrett's chaotic life at the time of Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the band's painstaking and Byzantine recording sessions at Abbey Road, and the fractious negotiations to bring about their fragile, tantalizing reunion in Hyde Park.Meticulous, exacting, and ambitious as any Pink Floyd album, Comfortably Numb is the definitive account of this most adventurous and most English rock band. Read more
Listening Length: 17 hours and 4 minutes
Author: Mark Blake
Narrator: Graeme Malcolm
Whispersync for Voice: Ready
Audible.com Release Date: November 17, 2017
Publisher: Da Capo
Program Type: Audiobook
Version: Unabridged
Language: English
ASIN: B077J81H88
Best Sellers Rank: #24,344 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #26 in Rap & Hip-Hop Musician Biographies #80 in Rock Music (Books) #81 in Music (Audible Books & Originals)
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Top Amazon Reviews
It's not just a great narrative of the 5 characters that made up the band, their views of the band and the roles they played. Just as interesting is how the music came about, where the inspiration came from, and which of the members played and voted on the songs to include. It was fascinating to read that the band took a vote between doing The Wall or The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking, which Roger Waters would go on to do as a solo. The book does a superb job of upending many of the notions that are out there (e.g. Waters, after spurning the band, was desperate to reunite but it was David Gilmour who demurred; Syd Barrett's contributions were limited to a single record, more limited than I thought; the 1980s Floyd was not about raking money but about proving Waters wrong). The book is strongest after Gilmour enters the picture, and Blake gets to concentrate on the band and its music, rather than the circles around them. The personalities are truly interesting, the talented but lazy Rick Wright, the happy go lucky Nick Mason, who becomes alienated from best pal Waters, the stoic Gilmour, who soldiers on as best as he can, and Waters, who comes out awfully from this history. From the early Barrett years, Waters was already being difficulty and a bully, and his narcissism and ego ends up blowing up group dynamics. Superb read, couldn't recommend it any more.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2015 by JFMP
Pink Floyd had always been elusive to the rest of the world, namely music critics and the fans who gobbled up their albums with no real knowledge of who they were. Syd Barrett played a significant role first as song writer and lead guitarist, then acid casualty who was dismissed from the band after their first album. This exhaustive book revisits those people and places that made Pink Floyd a household name in rock music. I was impressed at the sheer volume of research concerning Syd Barrett and his downfall from the world of pop music. Equally impressive was the inclusion of Dave Gilmour, who taught Syd how to play guitar when they were just teenagers in late 1950's Britain. The stroke of genius was Dave Gilmour joining the band in 1968, saving the Floyd from being a footnote to the psychedelic music craze that briefly saw "Swinging London" rave ups, and hemp smoke filled dance halls. Pink Floyd would create a new direction with Gilmour, and albums such as Atom Heart Mother, Meddle, and the universally accepted Dark Side of the Moon forever brought them fame and fortune, all the while Syd's specter loomed in the background, as lyricist Roger Waters would build a career on isolation and madness from his departed friend. This fine book covers all the history of Pink Floyd from the early jams in 1964 right up to 2007. No stone is left unturned in this literary history of one of the greatest rock bands of all time. A must read for any hard core or casual Floyd fan. All of your questions will be answered.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2016 by G.M.Ilenda
Format: Hardcover
This book is extremely well written and researched. The quality of writing is impeccable. Covering the history of Pink Floyd until the present, it is full of fascinating material and clarifies or fills in stories about the band which have circulated throughout the years. Any PF fan who enjoys learning all about the crafting of the music, the individual personalities and points of view, and how the miracle of Pink Floyd came about will surely be delighted. I agree with everything that the previous reviewer had to say except for the comment about the Nick Mason book. I am not convinced that Nick's original intent was to go into depth about the band's various personality conflicts over the years. His book with its extensive collection of photographs was written from a loving perspective and with great humor. I value that book very much just as it is. It is a beautiful book with stunning artwork worthy of a true Pink Floyd product. I highly recommend both these wonderful books which compliment each other very nicely.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2007 by C. Stathos
Format: Kindle
A wonderful book. I echo many of the sentiments already put forth, namely in that Roger Waters was arrogant and yet the prime driving force behind what gave Pink Floyd its depth, and that he was better with David Gilmour than he was alone -- and the same goes for Gilmour, despite what the large Floyd concertgoer numbers show to the contrary in the years following Waters's departure. I saw Roger Waters and the Wall in Louisville in 2013, and I was blown away. He truly plumbs the depths of the human condition in a way that few rock artists have ever been able to do, and for that, I am thankful for the man. I'm also pleased that as he is now in his 70s, he sees some of the errors of his younger days, times when he was, by many accounts, a prick. Blake also explores effectively the romance, the tragedy, and the reality of Syd Barrett's decades away from Pink Floyd. Though largely reclusive, he pops up in different portions throughout the book, and Blake conveys just the basic sadness of his demise. I love all of the members of Pink Floyd, and the Wall remains my favorite album of all time. Blake has done a great job of showing the brilliance and the sometime-misery of this rock band.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2016 by Dana F.
Format: Kindle
I learned many new things about Pink Floyd, but I found the storytelling to be a bit on the boring side. My appreciation for David Gilmour increased quite a bit from reading this book. I always knew Waters was the “ideas” person and main lyricist, but always thought Gilmour was the key person for the band musically. As I read this book, I kept wondering what might have been if Waters was able to appreciate Gilmour more.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2025 by Amazon Customer
Format: Kindle
Getting the inside story on any person or group is always an eye opener. Pink Floyd are my all time favourite band. Now, entering my sixties, I have taken the time to delve into why and how the music that bought me such pleasure over many years, has had a complicated and devisive background, from the tragic demise of Syd Barrett, to the ideological differences that tore the band apart in the late 70'/80's, to the recent events where the members have had a gentle but distant reconciliation. The band members had very distinct and diverse reasons for making music and followed their own paths. It is a well researched and written book, giving indepth insights into the fantastic, troubled, creative spirits which produced some of the best music, in my opinion, of the rock era. Unfortunately like a lot of bands from this era we will never see them play as the band they once were, so this book gives you a fascinating insight into why this happened and won't occur. It makes listening to the music more interesting as you can relate the different time periods to the albums and the story of what was occurring in the band's personal and group lives. A must for all PF fans!
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Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2013 by Scottie
To start, I read a lot of musician/band biographies. All of the members of KISS, plus two non-sanctioned KISS bios. Like 5 Grateful Dead bios. A lot. As a result I tend to have a good feel for them. I've read enough to say "as a bio this is [good|bad|average]." In this case I'd have to say, clearly, this bio is incredibly average. As a kid/teenager, I used to scour the biography section of my local library and would devour anything written about bands I was even vaguely interested in. At the time, in that bygone, pre-internet age, biographies were often allowed to be simple recitations of fact. John Lennon was born in this city on this day, George Harrison's first guitar was a blah, Ringo liked eggs, etc. As we lacked Wikipedia, Google, and Amazon, this was acceptable. You couldn't pop onto your smartphone and obtain the same information, in more digestible chunks. You had to read a book. Again, as a result a lot of writers were allowed to simply recite fact. Even basic research was more difficult; if you wanted to confirm the city of John Lennon's birth, you had to cross check multiple old news papers to validate fact. This would take time, hence the writer's job and primary focus was research, and therefore if their output was essentially just fact, then that was acceptable. Many, many biographies written up until ~2000 or so follow this pattern. Occasionally you have a few that were incendiary and would put in opinion or really sketchy "facts" to paint a new picture of an artist you thought you understood. Since 2000 or so, it seems that biographies have moved away from this model. You can obtain basic information from the internet very quickly, so that basic research job is now not really a job. As a result more recent biographies tend to bring something to the table, to entice readers from just reading a wikipedia entry. Exclusive interviews with former insiders that, in their old age and upcoming potential poverty, are more than happy to reveal secrets formerly kept quiet...for an interview fee of course. In some cases the writer will, due to the ease of obtaining previously unobtainable information from the internet, include some encyclopedic run down of some obscure set of facts. I've seen a few books that catalog entire tours, or even every show played by a band. Books that catalog, in detail, the day to day process of recording an album, or in a few cases a band's entire output. In the case of the Beach Boys and Beatles there are books that show what the band members were doing, daily, for their entire career. Alternatively some just attempt to mess with the form, and put in first person scenes from the artists "point of view" as fictionalized by the author. To summarize, in most cases, biographies, in our modern era, tend to include some sort of hook to make them stand out. Unfortunately, this biography, while well written, and carefully researched, simply does not have a hook. This book instead reads like a biography from my public library, circa 1992. Pink Floyd did this, then that, then that. No opinion, no deep dive into anything valid. Tours are passed over and individual shows are never mentioned, except in some very rare cases. Their album recording processes are not reported in a more substantive manner than a Wikipedia entry, for all intents and purposes. There is some time devoted to Syd Barret, and his time after Floyd is discussed slightly more than in some other Floyd books. That being said...Syd Barrett's substantive contributions to the band comprised less than 2 hours of recorded material. He had no direct influence on the greatest works from their catalog (DSM, and the Wall.) Some of the folks that are in their 50s - 70s now that like Floyd might want to read the Barrett stuff. Folks in my generation tend to have less patience for it. It reads like a cheesy PSA, blah blah rock star, blah blah drugs, blah blah goes crazy. Even those songs he wrote, while they started the band, are by far, the least listened too of any of their recorded output. As a result, the time spent on Syd, to someone that started listening to Floyd after Syd was long gone from the band, is misguided. Why continue to mention how crazy the guy was once he was gone. If you polled Floyd fans today 80% of them would have no clue who he was. I'm obviously not saying the guy should be omitted, but the page count spent discussing him after his departure feels like a waste of space to me. This lack of a hook is a bit of a bummer, hence the review. More and more these days, anyone attempting to publish a biography about a long established, over reported band, will do so with some sort of hook. The only thing I can see even remotely resembling one here is the fact that, yes, the author was able to interview a few members of the band, briefly, during Gilmore's 2006 tour. None of them say anything insightful when he quotes them during these interviews outside of simple things like "I don't like that album" "That was a great track" "Roger Waters is mean". I am a bit unclear on the "Inside Story" title. I've absolutely read other Floyd books, from other authors, that seemed to have a similar or greater level of access to the band and their associates. As a result the "Inside Story" part just seems like they're selling Snake Oil. As is, the book is just not worth recommending because it is so dry, and has no pertinent information that cannot be found, easily, on the web. Since it is a biography and it's recitation of fact is accurate I can give it three stars, but anything higher would be a lie. It just seems like this book, and the author, are stuck in a time warp, which is unfortunate as a modern, well written, insightful look at Floyd, with actual insider perspectives would have been great.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2013 by T Beezy
Format: Paperback
Great read for Pink Floyd fans. Candid. In depth, insightful and highly entertaining.
Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2025 by C. Miller