Description Comfortably Numb is simply the definitive, final word on one of the most beloved—and enigmatic—rock bands of all time, the band that traveled to The Dark Side of the Moon and built The Wall: the legendary Pink Floyd. Journalist Mark Blake draws on his own interviews with band members and the group's friends, road crew, musical contemporaries, former housemates, and university colleagues, to follow Pink Floyd all the way from swinging London’s psychedelic nights to the stadium-rock and concept-album zenith of the ’70s and through to the acrimonious schisms of the late ’80s and ’90s. Along the way there are fascinating new revelations about founder Syd Barrett’s LSD–soaked ménage at the time of Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the band’s painstaking and Byzantine recording sessions at Abbey Road studios, and the fractious negotiations that brought about their mesmerizing reunion in Hyde Park at the Live8 concert in 2005. Comfortably Numb also tells the real story behind Barrett’s mental illness and his subsequent years in seclusion, explains how his shadow haunted the band for years, and reveals the details surrounding his death in 2006. Perhaps most notably, Blake paints the most vivid portraits of Pink Floyd’s individual members—and their contributions to the group’s sound—to date. What emerges is a compelling, epic, and surprisingly moving saga of schoolyard friends who would accompany each other to the furthest edges of fame, fortune, and sanity, only to, in the end, implode in a maelstrom of ill will and fractured communications. As meticulous, exacting and ambitious as any Pink Floyd album, Comfortably Numb is the best account yet of this most adventurous, and most English, of rock bands.
Mark Blake is a former Assistant Editor of Q magazine, and a longtime contributor to its sister title, Mojo. He lives in London with his wife and son, and can be found on the Web at www.markrblake.com.
“Chances are you probably won’t see another Pink Floyd book on the
shelves anytime soon because this one gets it right.”—Kirkus
“Mark Blake peels back the layers of mystery around the band’s
history with a supple, readable biography, replacing much hearsay and apocrypha
with details and facts conveyed with the skepticism of a journalist and the
passion of a fan. . . . the definitive read on Pink Floyd.”—Popmatters “Impeccable . . . The most complete, insightful, and current account
of Pink Floyd to date, Comfortably Numb is nearly as essential as the music
itself.”—Austin Chronicle |
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