In 1975, ex-band member Syd Barrett turned up at the recording of 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond' at Abbey Road studios. According to reports, he was balding and fat, and looked so terrible that Roger Waters and David Gilmour cried.
Some unusual extra hands went into the making of The Division Bell album, their last album, made in 1994: Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, named it, and the scientist Stephen Hawking makes a guest appearance on it.
Syd Barrett was born Roger Keith Barrett. He got the nickname 'Syd' from his friends when he was 15, after a local drummer named Sid Barrett.
Before they were Pink Floyd, the band called themselves The Pink Floyd Sound. It gets worse: before that they were The Tea Set, and The Abdabs. And before that? Syd Barrett and David Gilmour played together in a band named Jokers Wild.
Pink Anderson and Floyd Council, the two Americans who inspired the band's title were both early blues singers. Both musicians died within a year of the release of Pink Floyd's seminal album, Wish You Were Here (1975). Anderson's son 'Little Pink Anderson' is a bluesman too, and he's still alive.
The title for their fifth studio album, Atom Heart Mother (1970), came from a newspaper heading about a woman who was receiving the first (atomic) pacemaker. The album saw the band experiment - mostly unsuccessfully - with prog rock.
When Sir Bob Geldof appeared in the 1982 film of Pink Floyd's The Wall he had to improvise as he wasn't given a script to work from.
"If you can't stand behind our troops, stand in front of them." "The West was not won with a registered gun."
"No law ever prevented a crime."
