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Reinventing Pink Floyd: From Syd Barrett to the Dark Side of the Moon
In celebration of the 45th anniversary of The Dark Side of the Moon, Bill Kopp explores the ingenuity with which Pink Floyd rebranded itself following the 1968 departure of Syd Barrett. Not only did the band survive Barrett’s departure, but it went on to release landmark albums that continue to influence generations of musicians and fans.
Reinventing Pink Floyd follows the path taken by the remaining band members to establish a musical identity, develop a songwriting style, and create a new template for the manner in which albums are made and even enjoyed by listeners. As veteran music journalist Bill Kopp illustrates, that path was filled with failed experiments, creative blind alleys, one-off musical excursions, abortive collaborations, general restlessness, and—most importantly—a dedicated search for a distinctive musical personality.
This exciting guide to the works of 1968 through 1973 highlights key innovations and musical breakthroughs of lasting influence. Kopp places Pink Floyd in its historical, cultural, and musical contexts while celebrating the test of fire that took the band from the brink of demise to enduring superstardom.
Reinventing Pink Floyd follows the path taken by the remaining band members to establish a musical identity, develop a songwriting style, and create a new template for the manner in which albums are made and even enjoyed by listeners. As veteran music journalist Bill Kopp illustrates, that path was filled with failed experiments, creative blind alleys, one-off musical excursions, abortive collaborations, general restlessness, and—most importantly—a dedicated search for a distinctive musical personality.
This exciting guide to the works of 1968 through 1973 highlights key innovations and musical breakthroughs of lasting influence. Kopp places Pink Floyd in its historical, cultural, and musical contexts while celebrating the test of fire that took the band from the brink of demise to enduring superstardom.
- GenresMusic
260 pages, Hardcover
Published February 9, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 11, 2018
Bill Kopp is far from the first rock critic to take on the legendary history of Pink Floyd, focusing on the formative years when band founder Syd Barrett captained the group’s first album to his departure and replacement by David Gilmour to the group’s various experimental projects up to the seminal release of the highly influential Dark Side of the Moon in 1973. I was intrigued to read Kopp’s introduction where he admits the Pink Floyd he knew best for many years was the period after Dark Side of the Moon with little awareness of what came before. That was exactly the reverse of my experience. Back in high school, we “heads”—to use the then prevalent term to describe those of us into non-mainstream music—usually owned at least one Pink Floyd album including The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, A Saucerful of Secrets, Umma Gumma, Atom Heart Mother or Meddle. Then and now, my favorite Floyd songs are “One of These Days,” “Interstellar Overdrive,” and “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.” All are pre-Dark Side tunes.
So when Dark Side came out and took the world by storm two years after my high school graduation, I was rather bemused by all the new listeners the band earned. I could understand why. Dark Side was, as someone I don’t know observed, the Sgt. Pepper of the ‘70s. Still, perhaps it was simple snootiness when, for years, I maintained the pre-Dark Side Pink Floyd was the Real Pink Floyd.
I got over that sentiment a long time ago. Now, I really have no excuse for any snootiness after reading Kopp’s new critical analysis of Pink Floyd’s evolution from 1967 to 1973. While this book was far from the first history of the band I’ve read, I learned something new on pretty much every page. For my money, two things distinguish Reinventing Pink Floyd from what has been published before. For one key matter, Kopp goes beyond the usual process of interviewing participants and contemporary observers and draws from his own background as a musician to comment on and analyze the songs, albums, and live performances from a musician’s perspective. For another matter, Kopp benefited from the release of the extensive 2016 The Early Years box set, a package he refers to at least once on nearly every page.
Even the most devoted Floyd fans are likely to learn tidbits they didn’t know before like the band’s first producer was Norman Smith who had worked on many of the Beatles albums. I knew about the existence of Pink Floyd film soundtracks, but not the details behind the creation of the usually experimental scores for the often-experimental films.
Fans who think of the post-Barrett Floyd as essentially the David Gilmour and the Roger Waters band with the late Richard Wright and Nick Mason as mere supporting players may well gain a new and deeper appreciation for the band’s keyboardist and drummer. Richard Wright aficionados, in particular, should appreciate reviewing in minute detail just how much he contributed to the music of this period of the band’s creative development.
Clearly, this is a book strictly for Pink Floyd fans, especially for readers who aren’t intimately familiar with the pre-Dark Side era. It would help to have some knowledge of musical terminology, especially the equipment and techniques used in the recording studio. In the end, Reinventing Pink Floyd is a treasure trove of musical history for a very particular audience. But it’s a worthy addition to any rock fan’s library.
This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on March 11, 2018:
http://1clickurls.com/p2UsiG4
January 5, 2023
This book offers a mostly enjoyable trek from the Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd's first single, "Arnold Layne," to the band's game-changing album, "The Dark Side of the Moon." Given Bill Kopp's experience writing liner notes, it's not entirely surprising that the book feels a bit like extended liner notes -- in particular, the liner notes that I could imagine Kopp imagining himself writing for 2016's "The Early Years" box set, with which he is obviously enamored even though he seems a relative newbie to a lot of the material it contains. Given my love for pre-"Dark Side" Pink Floyd, I have listened extensively to that anthology, as well as collected Pink Floyd ROIOs from the late '60s and early '70s for several decades now, so there weren't a lot of surprises in the book, which was fine. I enjoyed the journey, my familiarity with the sonic materials lending the whole reading experience a kind of dual-layer of nostalgia (one for the original shows, which I never had the experience of seeing/hearing; the other for the mania of discovering ROIOs with different versions of "Careful with that Axe, Eugene," "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun," and "Echoes," back in the glory days of Napster -- Yeeshkul!).
Oddly though, Kopp's own experience with the pre-"Dark Side" material, particularly the unofficial live recordings, seems a bit sketchy, relying mostly on the music incorporated into "The Early Years" box set. There is almost no discussion of the recordings of live shows and radio and TV broadcasts still only unofficially, and yet widely, available on the Internet. All the same, Kopp's writing was engaging enough to keep me moving through the discography timeline and left me mostly satisfied with this reading experience. For one thing, I'm glad that it wasn't a biography of the band. There are plenty of those. And so I dove through the book looking for the occasional insight into, and to share a fondness for, the expansive, pre-"Dark Side" Pink Floyd discography. There are several enjoyable differences in how Kopp and I interpret songs and sounds. He hears "A Saucerful of Secrets" as more of a violent, war-like setting with missiles and an arial attack kind of narrative; I feel that it is more exploratory and interdimensional. He hears the crazy sounds that Gilmour gets from his guitar on "Echoes" and some other earlier songs as whale sounds; I have always heard them more like screeching birds. These are great differences in how we hear and think about what we hear, and it points to one of the joys of how different people process abstract sounds differently.
I do have some nagging issues with the book. First the lighter criticism. Kopp has some quirks as a writer, repeating certain things too often, like the countless hilarious refrains about "The Early Years" that another reviewer on GoodReads points out (but I get it, Kopp was grateful to his buddy for buying/loaning him the very expensive set!). But it's all these comments about the box set that really make me feel like Kopp hadn't spent much time with or had much prior interest in the fan-shared concert and BBC broadcast (not to mention, the here-completely neglected French and Dutch broadcast) recordings. He also keeps tagging interviewees like Robyn Hitchcock and Willie Wilson, and even songs, albums and recording/release dates, as if he were introducing them for the first time, even when he's referred to them multiple times already. It makes the book feel a bit drawn out and disjointed, as if each major section was its own standalone chapter. Maybe each chapter is an imaginary liner note booklet for a different imaginary release. Even then, there is a lot of repetition even within a chapter or part of the book. Part of this just seems like bloat, but it also makes me unsure who Kopp has written this book for -- a long-time fan like me, someone new to this era of Pink Floyd, or someone in the middle -- and ultimately this lack of clarity of readership is never resolved.
I do have a more major complaint. Why does Kopp feel like the heavy songs -- "The Nile Song" and "The Gold It's In The ..." -- are such awkward anomalies and not to be taken seriously? He never offers an adequate explanation as to why these heavier Pink Floyd songs are somehow not really in keeping with the band's character. But this is only a slice of the disconnect that Kopp seems to have with Pink Floyd's shape-shifting. He comes across in a slightly dismissive manner of the Floyd catalog between "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" and "The Dark Side of the Moon," and I'm not sure he's too sold on "Piper" either! Nothing, including "Piper," is regarded much beyond the way in which it might point toward "Dark Side of the Moon," with a few exceptions. This casts a pall over the early material and makes it come across as less important on its own terms and only truly significant for what it portends. While there might be some value to this approach toward the band feeling their way through "Atom Heart Mother," and "Echoes," as sketches toward the triumph of "Dark Side," it just gets overwhelmingly teleological given how often we had to be reminded that everything was, fatalistically but gloriously, pointing to "the masterpiece," but always lesser on its own merits.
In my own experience over the years, I've come to listen way more to "More" (maybe my favorite Pink Floyd album), "Obscured By Clouds," and "Meddle" than "Dark Side of the Moon," and easily my favorite set of Pink Floyd songs comes from "Pink Floyd at Pompeii" (now remastered and presented in standalone audio format for its first official release in 2016's extensive set, "The Early Years 1965-1972" ... even though collectors have traded them for years and the "Early Years" collection drops "Mademoiselle Nobs").
Readers interested in enjoying pre-"Dark Side" material because of all its quirky and diverse merits are encouraged to catch Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets tour if possible, or at least check out the DVD/Blu-Ray. The sounds of many songs, from "Lucifer Sam" and "See Emily Play" to "The Nile Song" feel in many ways more contemporary than anything on "Dark Side of the Moon." Nick has put together a cracking good band who provide us with a great celebration of all the wonders to be found from the first single "Arnold Layne" on to "Childhood's End," tugging this wonderful material out of the over-familiar eclipse of "Dark Side of the Moon."
Oddly though, Kopp's own experience with the pre-"Dark Side" material, particularly the unofficial live recordings, seems a bit sketchy, relying mostly on the music incorporated into "The Early Years" box set. There is almost no discussion of the recordings of live shows and radio and TV broadcasts still only unofficially, and yet widely, available on the Internet. All the same, Kopp's writing was engaging enough to keep me moving through the discography timeline and left me mostly satisfied with this reading experience. For one thing, I'm glad that it wasn't a biography of the band. There are plenty of those. And so I dove through the book looking for the occasional insight into, and to share a fondness for, the expansive, pre-"Dark Side" Pink Floyd discography. There are several enjoyable differences in how Kopp and I interpret songs and sounds. He hears "A Saucerful of Secrets" as more of a violent, war-like setting with missiles and an arial attack kind of narrative; I feel that it is more exploratory and interdimensional. He hears the crazy sounds that Gilmour gets from his guitar on "Echoes" and some other earlier songs as whale sounds; I have always heard them more like screeching birds. These are great differences in how we hear and think about what we hear, and it points to one of the joys of how different people process abstract sounds differently.
I do have some nagging issues with the book. First the lighter criticism. Kopp has some quirks as a writer, repeating certain things too often, like the countless hilarious refrains about "The Early Years" that another reviewer on GoodReads points out (but I get it, Kopp was grateful to his buddy for buying/loaning him the very expensive set!). But it's all these comments about the box set that really make me feel like Kopp hadn't spent much time with or had much prior interest in the fan-shared concert and BBC broadcast (not to mention, the here-completely neglected French and Dutch broadcast) recordings. He also keeps tagging interviewees like Robyn Hitchcock and Willie Wilson, and even songs, albums and recording/release dates, as if he were introducing them for the first time, even when he's referred to them multiple times already. It makes the book feel a bit drawn out and disjointed, as if each major section was its own standalone chapter. Maybe each chapter is an imaginary liner note booklet for a different imaginary release. Even then, there is a lot of repetition even within a chapter or part of the book. Part of this just seems like bloat, but it also makes me unsure who Kopp has written this book for -- a long-time fan like me, someone new to this era of Pink Floyd, or someone in the middle -- and ultimately this lack of clarity of readership is never resolved.
I do have a more major complaint. Why does Kopp feel like the heavy songs -- "The Nile Song" and "The Gold It's In The ..." -- are such awkward anomalies and not to be taken seriously? He never offers an adequate explanation as to why these heavier Pink Floyd songs are somehow not really in keeping with the band's character. But this is only a slice of the disconnect that Kopp seems to have with Pink Floyd's shape-shifting. He comes across in a slightly dismissive manner of the Floyd catalog between "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" and "The Dark Side of the Moon," and I'm not sure he's too sold on "Piper" either! Nothing, including "Piper," is regarded much beyond the way in which it might point toward "Dark Side of the Moon," with a few exceptions. This casts a pall over the early material and makes it come across as less important on its own terms and only truly significant for what it portends. While there might be some value to this approach toward the band feeling their way through "Atom Heart Mother," and "Echoes," as sketches toward the triumph of "Dark Side," it just gets overwhelmingly teleological given how often we had to be reminded that everything was, fatalistically but gloriously, pointing to "the masterpiece," but always lesser on its own merits.
In my own experience over the years, I've come to listen way more to "More" (maybe my favorite Pink Floyd album), "Obscured By Clouds," and "Meddle" than "Dark Side of the Moon," and easily my favorite set of Pink Floyd songs comes from "Pink Floyd at Pompeii" (now remastered and presented in standalone audio format for its first official release in 2016's extensive set, "The Early Years 1965-1972" ... even though collectors have traded them for years and the "Early Years" collection drops "Mademoiselle Nobs").
Readers interested in enjoying pre-"Dark Side" material because of all its quirky and diverse merits are encouraged to catch Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets tour if possible, or at least check out the DVD/Blu-Ray. The sounds of many songs, from "Lucifer Sam" and "See Emily Play" to "The Nile Song" feel in many ways more contemporary than anything on "Dark Side of the Moon." Nick has put together a cracking good band who provide us with a great celebration of all the wonders to be found from the first single "Arnold Layne" on to "Childhood's End," tugging this wonderful material out of the over-familiar eclipse of "Dark Side of the Moon."
March 17, 2018
This book was an incredibly insightful read into the formative years of Pink Floyd spanning from the early days of Syd Barrett up until the release of the Dark Side of the Moon. Bill Kopp catalogs the bands progression through exclusive interviews, analysis of each individual album and the bands artistic endeavors. This book has personally helped me in my own creativity by understanding the progression of how Pink Floyd built upon their ideas and fine-tuned their craft after the loss of leader Syd Barrett. The book is an essential piece of the Pink Floyd story, as these early formative years are relatively unknown and overshadowed by the bands extensive work. A perfect 5/5, Thank you Bill Kopp!!
August 7, 2018
This era of Pink Floyd is pretty fascinating, so I appreciate the chance to dig in a little deeper. I think Kopp dos a really good job of pulling this all together in a fresh way, without spending too much time on the already over-covered legacy of Syd's mental state. There are a few weird things, like why Kopp cited a pretty obscure local U.S. magazine so many times, but I enjoyed it.
June 9, 2019
Cool stories.
April 21, 2018
Why another book about Pink Floyd, I hear you say and Kopp starts his biography with the same question. According to the author the period between the Floyd's debut to Dark Side Of The Moon is a shadowy mess for the average fan, with a wealth of gems that are often overlooked. I can only agree. Why this average fan, who only knows Dark Side and The Wall anyway, would suddenly be interested in the history of the Floyd's earlier albums is still a mystery to me and Kopp can't answer this either. (...)
Every good biography claims to dig out something new and this is not different for Reinventing Pink Floyd. At Yeeshkul Bill Kopp unfolded his cunning plans, but I don't think that he really found something earth-shattering. Interviewing Ron Geesin, Peter Jenner, Jerry Shirley, John 'Willie' Wilson, Davy O'List and Steve Howe is a great thing. Putting on your achievement list that you also interviewed members of tribute bands and 'Syd superfan' Robyn Hitchcock much less so. That's undervaluing your work before even starting it. (...)
In the Why (Another Book About) Pink Floyd chapter the author starts by giving his personal history of the band with some nice descriptions of The Wall / The Final Cut era, but he cuts a few corners too many. The Wall was performed live in four cities, not three, as he pretends, forgetting Dortmund. David Gilmour did not co-write the highly redundant Not Now John, he merely sings most of the slightly insulting and easy forgettable lyrics. Nick Mason only skipped drums for one track on The Final Cut (he can hardly be heard on A Momentary Lapse Of Reason though). Being careless in his statements is a repeating pattern. (...)
While Kopp gives very detailed reports of the Floyd's live tracks and their studio counterparts, he is pretty fragmentary on all other biographical subjects. The first American tour isn't mentioned at all and Barrett's alleged drugs intake only gets a quick mention. While his book wants to highlight the hidden musical gems from the band, there isn't a word about the Hipgnosis artwork that has been a part of the Floyd's mystery for decades. (...)
Actually, so I figured out while reading, this book isn't a biography but an infomercial for The Early Years box. It's not that I didn't like reading it but it omits too much biographical material to be of interest for the 'average 'Pink Floyd fan. You know, those fans that don't know what gems there are hidden in the Pink Floyd's pre-seventies catalogue. The book clearly is written for people who already are aware of the Floyd's history and their legacy.
But if you like musical analysis and if you are a Floydian anorak and if you think 35$ is not too much asked for a 200-pages book, be my guest and grab it at your local book-store.
(This is a shortened version of my review at: Your Possible Pasts.)
Every good biography claims to dig out something new and this is not different for Reinventing Pink Floyd. At Yeeshkul Bill Kopp unfolded his cunning plans, but I don't think that he really found something earth-shattering. Interviewing Ron Geesin, Peter Jenner, Jerry Shirley, John 'Willie' Wilson, Davy O'List and Steve Howe is a great thing. Putting on your achievement list that you also interviewed members of tribute bands and 'Syd superfan' Robyn Hitchcock much less so. That's undervaluing your work before even starting it. (...)
In the Why (Another Book About) Pink Floyd chapter the author starts by giving his personal history of the band with some nice descriptions of The Wall / The Final Cut era, but he cuts a few corners too many. The Wall was performed live in four cities, not three, as he pretends, forgetting Dortmund. David Gilmour did not co-write the highly redundant Not Now John, he merely sings most of the slightly insulting and easy forgettable lyrics. Nick Mason only skipped drums for one track on The Final Cut (he can hardly be heard on A Momentary Lapse Of Reason though). Being careless in his statements is a repeating pattern. (...)
While Kopp gives very detailed reports of the Floyd's live tracks and their studio counterparts, he is pretty fragmentary on all other biographical subjects. The first American tour isn't mentioned at all and Barrett's alleged drugs intake only gets a quick mention. While his book wants to highlight the hidden musical gems from the band, there isn't a word about the Hipgnosis artwork that has been a part of the Floyd's mystery for decades. (...)
Actually, so I figured out while reading, this book isn't a biography but an infomercial for The Early Years box. It's not that I didn't like reading it but it omits too much biographical material to be of interest for the 'average 'Pink Floyd fan. You know, those fans that don't know what gems there are hidden in the Pink Floyd's pre-seventies catalogue. The book clearly is written for people who already are aware of the Floyd's history and their legacy.
But if you like musical analysis and if you are a Floydian anorak and if you think 35$ is not too much asked for a 200-pages book, be my guest and grab it at your local book-store.
(This is a shortened version of my review at: Your Possible Pasts.)
January 8, 2023
This book is no fun. It reminds me (both in approach and language) of a very long master's thesis that gets rejected because it's all clichéd and torturous description and no interpretation.
May 3, 2025
This is a highly recommended essay on early Pink Floyd and how the band succeeded in becoming one of the greatest rock bands ever, after being inspired by Syd Barrett.
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