![\"Pink](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Pink-Floyd-1965-Syd-Barrett-Nick-Mason-Roger-Waters-Richard-Rick-Wright-Far-Out-Magazine-F-1140x855..jpeg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n
Sat 13 September 2025 7:30, UK <\/p>\n
As much as the band as a whole might not like to admit it, the story of Pink Floyd <\/a>is divided into two men who saw themselves as the band\u2019s leader. <\/p>\n The first of these leaders was Syd Barrett. This is the one case where the other band members might actually admit he was the main man of Pink Floyd. It would be difficult not to, considering that he was their primary singer, songwriter and visionary during the band\u2019s first rise to notoriety in the London psychedelic rock scene. Then you get the other guy. <\/p>\n If you ask Roger Waters, Pink Floyd have been his band ever since Barrett had to leave the band due to his mental health issues, and there\u2019s basically no question about it. If you ignore how much of a dickhead he\u2019s been about the whole thing, he\u2019s got a fairly compelling argument for this. Two of the band\u2019s three masterpieces, The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall (we\u2019ll get to the other one), are albums that Waters conceptualised and wrote the majority of. Even the likes of singer and guitarist David Gilmour, keys player Richard Wright and drummer Nick Mason would tell you that the latter is basically a Waters solo album<\/a>. <\/p>\n However, they would say that it\u2019s a solo album, not because he had the best ideas, but because he didn\u2019t let anyone else put forward any ideas. Waters was a control freak, pure and simple. That\u2019s as undeniable as any great song he ever wrote. Considering he went and re-recorded The Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety as a solo album to try and phase the other members of Pink Floyd out of the royalties, that\u2019s still the case to this day. <\/p>\n So, the idea that there was any record of Floyd\u2019s that any member of the band would consider \u2018balanced\u2019 is a genuine miracle, especially when the person saying it is David Gilmour, president of the \u2018I Hate Roger Waters\u2019 club since the early 1970s and possibly earlier. It would take a seriously special case to get Waters to ease up on his tyrannical tendencies. However, for what might just be their best album, a seriously special case was exactly what they got. <\/p>\n The Dark Side of the Moon made Floyd one of the biggest bands in the world, fully transforming them from psychedelic rock weirdos to a fully-fledged, arena-slaying progressive rock giant. However, where the band went next was a question not even the band themselves could answer. Following the release of Dark Side\u2026, a few of Waters\u2019 new songs started to find their way into the setlists of the tour dates the band were playing, including on a lengthy new song the band would jam on called \u2018Shine On You Crazy Diamond\u2019. <\/p>\n The more the band continued in this level of stardom, the more that the machinations of the music industry (which they\u2019d never exactly been a fan of) began to rile them. Supporters they\u2019d had in the press moved on to other bands. Concert crowds were nowhere near as interested in extended jam sessions as they were in hearing \u2018Money\u2019 or \u2018Us and Them\u2019. This was all exacerbated by the man they saw as a victim of music industry machinations, their ex-frontman Syd Barrett<\/a>. <\/p>\n All this frustration, resentment and grief was poured into the band\u2019s third masterpiece, Wish You Were Here. Despite a muted reception initially, most of the band have gone on to regard Wish You Were Here as their favourite Floyd record, especially Gilmour and Wright, and for good reason. Gilmour himself detailed why he holds the record in such high regard in an interview conducted by documentary filmmaker John Edginton. <\/p>\n \u201cI think, for me,\u201d Gilmour says, \u201cthat album, the Wish You Were Here album, is the best balanced album in terms of the music having the emotional strength on its own to match the brilliant words that go with it and them all gelling together to make something that has a real emotional impact. To me, it works better than Dark Side of the Moon does.\u201d <\/p>\n High praise indeed, and praise for anything that Roger Waters had a hand in doesn\u2019t come naturally to David Gilmour, but for an album like Wish You Were Here, it\u2019s more than justified. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Sat 13 September 2025 7:30, UK As much as the band as a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,269,26420,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-420725","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-pink-floyd","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115196253600184569","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Pink](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Pink-Floyd-Far-Out-Magazine-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/a>(Credit: Far Out \/ Roger Tillberg \/ Alamy)Which was the most balanced Pink Floyd album? <\/p>\n