Mark Blake draws on his own interviews with band members as well as the groups friends, road crew, musical contemporaries, former housemates, and university colleagues to produce a riveting history of one of the biggest rock bands of all time. We follow Pink Floyd from the early psychedelic nights at UFO, to the stadium-rock and concept-album zenith of the seventies, to the acrimonious schisms of the late 80s and 90s. Along the way there are fascinating new revelations about Syd Barretts chaotic life at the time of Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the bands painstaking and Byzantine recording sessions at Abbey Road, and the fractious negotiations to bring about their fragile, tantalizing reunion in Hyde Park.