Pink Floyd

Released: March 21, 1983

Songwriter: Roger Waters

Producer: James Guthrie Michael Kamen Roger Waters

Button your lip and don’t let the shield slip
Take a fresh grip on your bullet proof mask
And if they try to break down your disguise with their questions
You can hide, hide, hide
Behind paranoid eyes

You put on our brave face and slip over the road for a jar
Fixing your grin as you casually lean on the bar
Laughing too loud at the rest of the world
With the boys in the crowd
You can hide, hide, hide
(“I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you three blacks, and play you for five")
Behind petrified eyes

(“Ta! You was unlucky there son”)
You believed in their stories of fame, fortune and glory
Now you’re lost in a haze of alcohol soft middle age
The pie in the sky turned out to be miles too high
And you hide, hide, hide
(“Time gentleman!”)
Behind brown and mild eyes

“Oi!”

Pink Floyd was a British rock band who managed to carve a path for progressive and psychedelic music in a way that was uniquely fascinating at the time and has remained equally momentous in the modern age. The name “Pink Floyd” came from two blues musicians that founding member Syd Barrett idolized—Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.

The band was formed in 1965 London by Barrett (guitars, vocals), Nick Mason (drums), Roger Waters (bass), and Richard Wright (keyboards). Sometime after releasing their debut album, 1967’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the group saw the addition of a second singer-guitarist, David Gilmour. This acted largely as a means of replacing Barrett, who was forced to leave in 1968 for mental health reasons, resulting in Waters taking over as the main vocalist.

The band broke into the mainstream with 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon, an album that became one of the best-selling and most influential records in music history. Their follow-up efforts, 1975’s Wish You Were Here and 1977’s Animals, also sold well. However, the band started to see some in-fighting while making their next album, a rock opera about how Waters felt frustrated and detached from his audience. Waters seemingly became extremely controlling, firing Wright over disputes about touring and his contributions to the album. The result, 1979’s The Wall, became the best-selling double album of all time. It spawned iconic songs such as the #1 hit, “Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2,” and the melodic “Comfortably Numb.”

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