Saucerful of Secrets

Loneliness dancing on my head, I desperately wanted to stop it banging from all sides. I have been trying to keep myself busy doing something or the other and found the easiest available source to pass my time with books. It was a difficult and hard fight for me to improve my reading habits. Initially I tried to read few novels and none of them interested me, I had to stop after reading 40-50 pages. With most of the time wondering about human life my interests towards scientific books has increased sharply and started to get drenched in buying. After reading some books I could really feel the stars in all different sizes circling my head. This made me wonder about the way these scientists think and had become very curious to know about their personal life styles. I went into a bookstore and started searching for some good biographies of great scientists. Suddenly I saw a section of books categorized under Music. Out of curiosity I started browsing few biographies of some great bands. I found one book named “Saucerful of Secrects” with bright orange cover. It’s a biography of my favorite band Pink Floyd. I don’t know why, but the songs composed by them really mesmerize me. They are not a band with great players and are not occult on the stage too, but their innovation in creating amazing sounds had really captivated me.

It all started with three architects (Bass player Roger waters, Drummer Nick mason & Keyboardist Rick Wright) forming a band named Tea set. A short time after their formation, they were joined by guitarist syd barrett (Painter by profession), who became the band's primary vocalist as well. They came up with an alternate name “Pink Floyd”. In a short span of time their psychedelic rock music became very famous in the underground clubs. The growing popularity made them to give few hits in the music world too. As the band started to gain popularity, the stresses of life on the road and a significant intake of acids took its toll on barrett. This lead to some pathetic stage perfomances. In one of the show the band members literally had to drag barret on to the stage and made him stand in front of the microphone and he strummed one chord during the entire duration of the concert. This made the band members recruit a new guitarist David gilmour. The band's live shows became increasingly shabby and eventually, the other band members simply stopped taking barrett to the concerts. After finding their feet in music world the real era of breakthrough came during 70s. Over 25 million copies of the album“Dark side of Moon” were sold all over the world and the album stayed in billboard charts for 741 weeks. Even though Roger waters moved out of the band, the remaining three did hold together and performed some wonderful live performances to capture the hearts of many music lovers like me.

As such this blog is not sufficient to narrate a story of around 350 pages of book in 350 words, I just made a point to type few words on what I have read. I would also try to breif on any book I read here onwards. I have spent nearly an hour typing this blog now and its time for me to go back home.

Few pictures of the band "then" and "now"


Nick Mason, Syd Barrett, Roger Waters, Rick Wright and
David Gilmour(sitting)

Syd Barrett (Then)

Syd Barrett (Now)

Pink Floyd with Roger Waters at the London Live 8 concert (left to right: David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright).