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Pink Floyd, British rock band at the forefront of 1960s psychedelia who later popularized the concept album for mass rock audiences in the 1970s.
The principal members of Pink Floyd were lead guitarist Syd Barrett (original name Roger Keith Barrett; b. January 6, 1946, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England—d. July 7, 2006, Cambridge), bassist Roger Waters (b. September 6, 1943, Great Bookham, Surrey), drummer Nick Mason (b. January 27, 1945, Birmingham, West Midlands), keyboard player Rick Wright (in full Richard Wright; b. July 28, 1945, London—d. September 15, 2008, London), and guitarist David Gilmour (b. March 6, 1944, Cambridge).
Formation and debut album
Formed in 1965, the band went through several name changes before combining the first names of a pair of Carolina bluesmen, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. Their initial direction came from vocalist-guitarist-songwriter Barrett, whose mixture of blues, music hall styles, Lewis Carroll references, and dissonant psychedelia established the band as a cornerstone of the British underground scene. They signed with EMI and early in 1967 had their first British hit with the controversial “Arnold Layne,” a song about a transvestite. This was followed by their debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, a lush, experimental record that has since become a rock classic. Their sound was becoming increasingly adventurous, incorporating sound effects, spacy guitar and keyboards, and extended improvisation such as “Interstellar Overdrive.”
The Dark Side of the Moon
By 1968 Barrett, who had overused LSD and was struggling with schizophrenia, was replaced by guitarist Gilmour. Without Barrett’s striking lyrics, the band moved away from the singles market to concentrate on live work, continuing its innovations in sound and lighting but with varying degrees of success. After recording a series of motion-picture soundtrack albums, they entered the American charts with Atom Heart Mother (1970) and Meddle (1971). Making records that are song-based but thematic in approach and that include long instrumental passages, the band did much to popularize the concept album. They hit the commercial jackpot with The Dark Side of the Moon (1973). A bleak treatise on death and emotional breakdown underlined by Waters’s dark songwriting, it sent Pink Floyd soaring into the megastar bracket and remained in the American pop charts for more than a decade. The follow-up, Wish You Were Here (1975), includes “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” a song for Barrett, and, though it went to number one in both the United States and Britain, it was considered anticlimactic and pompous by many critics.
Split and later albums
By the release of Animals (1977), it was clear that Waters had become the band’s dominant influence, and there was increasing internal conflict within Pink Floyd. Their sense of alienation (from both one another and contemporary society) was profoundly illustrated by the tour for 1979’s best-selling album The Wall, for which a real brick wall was built between the group and the audience during performance. After the appropriately named The Final Cut (1983), Pink Floyd became inactive, and legal wrangles ensued over ownership of the band’s name. Waters, who dismissed Wright after The Wall and took over most of the songwriting, was even more firmly in control. As a result the band split, but, much to Waters’s chagrin, Gilmour, Mason, and Wright reunited, continuing as Pink Floyd.
In the late 1980s Wright, Gilmour, and Mason released two albums, including the ponderous A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987) and The Division Bell (1994), while Waters pursued a solo career. Waters reunited with his former bandmates for a single performance at the Live 8 benefit concert in 2005. Gilmour and Mason later used recordings made with Wright (who died in 2008) to create what they said was the final Pink Floyd album, The Endless River (2014). Pink Floyd was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.
Grammy Award, any of a series of awards presented annually in the United States by the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (NARAS; commonly called the Recording Academy) or the Latin Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (LARAS; commonly called the Latin Recording Academy) to recognize achievement in the music industry. Winners are selected from more than 25 fields, which cover such genres as pop, rock, rap, R&B, country, reggae, classical, gospel, and jazz, as well as production and postproduction work, including packaging and album notes. Four general awards are also given for record, album, song of the year, and best new artist; in total more than 75 awards are presented. The honorees receive a golden statuette of a gramophone.
The Grammy Awards were first presented by NARAS in Los Angeles in 1959, when 28 prizes were given. Winners included Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, and the Kingston Trio. The number of awards has increased as musical genres have emerged. Rock was first recognized as a genre by the academy at the 1980 ceremony and rap at the 1989 presentation. An award for best music video was first handed out in 1982 to acknowledge the growing influence of the medium. In 2011 NARAS radically restructured the Grammy category system and reduced the total number of awards from 109 to 78. Gender-based categories were eliminated, as were those that distinguished between solo and group efforts. Awards recognizing genres such as Hawaiian music, Native American music, and zydeco were folded into a single category, dubbed “regional roots music,” and instrumental categories were drastically scaled back. Further adjustments were made in subsequent years, and by 2017 the number of awards stabilized at 84.
With the rise of Latin music, NARAS created LARAS in 1997. To be eligible for a Latin Grammy, a recording may be released anywhere in the world, but it must be recorded in the Spanish or Portuguese language between July 1 of the previous year and June 30 of the award year. The first Latin Grammy Awards ceremony was staged in Los Angeles in 2000, with Carlos Santana and Shakira among the winners.
Receipt of a Grammy of any sort usually results in greater record sales, as well as increased recognition to the artists. Among those who have received the most Grammys are Beyoncé (32 awards), Sir Georg Solti, Quincy Jones, Alison Krauss, Stevie Wonder, and Chet Atkins.