I've been listening to more Pink Floyd and decided to do a bonus project on them for my English class.I was wondering how it affected their lyrics, their unit, their friendships etc. Also how did drugs affect the band? Same way as above
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Money got them a hell of a lot of money I guess ha. It contributed to a bigger picture called the Dark Side of the Moon. I know that Gilmour smoked a lot of weed, and Write or Mason did a lot of coke, but the main way drugs effected them was with Syd Barrett. Syd was one of the original founders of Pink Floyd and was with them on their first album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and a song on Saucerful of Secrets. Personally, Piper is one of my favorites by them, Syd was incredible. But he also did a ton of acid and was drugged a lot, and it triggered mental illness and he lost it. Sometimes on stage he would zone out and start strumming one note over and over and that would be all he did. Eventually they had to kick him out and brought in Gilmour. Waters said something like Pink Floyd could have never been started without Syd, but it couldn't have gone anywhere with him.
The album Wish You Were Here was hugely dedicated to Syd, especially the song Shine on You Crazy Diamond which bookends the album. While they were recording Shine On, Syd showed up at the recording studio and nobody could recognize him. He had gained a lot of weight, and shaved his head and eyebrows off. He listened to Shine and couldn't tell it was about him and said that it sounded old. Once they realized it was him, Rogers started crying. So I'd say that was the biggest way that drugs effected them was with LSD mixed with Syd. If you're doing a project on Pink Floyd, there's a lot of better things to do it on than the song Money, that song doesn't even touch base with the bigger picture in my opinion, even though it's one of their biggest songs, it's not even close to one of my favorites.