As the ‘70s began, Pink Floyd was ready for anything. Composing music for ballet? Let’s give it a shot. A soundtrack for a film set in New Guinea? Sure. Mounting a live concert in an empty Roman amphitheater in Pompei? Name the date! As George Purvis points out in his admirably succinct, informative account, Pink Floyd sometimes, by their own admission, pratfalled into pretense. However, their willingness to explore ideas remains inspirational decades on.
Pink Floyd in the 1970s has a psychedelic Syd Barrett preface—and a post-Wall coda—but the focus is on the decade when the band rose from obscurity to Olympian heights of popularity. Dark Side of the Moon (1973), the album that remained on the Billboard charts for 741 consecutive weeks, was a remarkable accomplishment of studio invention with an overarching theme drawn from band members’ reflections on anxiety. It struck a chord worldwide. Purvis summarizes a ream of secondary sources and is especially good at describing the process by which raw ideas were refined into some of the ‘70s most familiar tracks.
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