Pink Floyd
In December 1967, the group added guitarist David Gilmour as the fifth member of Pink Floyd.Gilmour already knew Barrett, having studied with him at Cambridge Tech in the early 1960s. The two had performed at lunchtimes together with guitars and harmonicas, and later hitch-hiked and busked their way around the south of France. In 1965, while a member of Joker's Wild, Gilmour had watched the Tea Set. Morrison's assistant, Steve O'Rourke, set Gilmour up in a room at O'Rourke's house with a salary of £30 per week, and in January 1968, Blackhill Enterprises announced Gilmour as the band's newest member; the second guitarist and its fifth member, the band intending to continue with Barrett as a nonperforming songwriter.[6 Jenner commented: "The idea was that Dave would ... cover for [Barrett's] eccentricities and when that got to be not workable, Syd was just going to write. Just to try to keep him involved." In an expression of his frustration, Barrett, who was expected to write additional hit singles to follow up "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play", instead played the band's "Have You Got It Yet?", intentionally changing the structure on each performance so as to make the song impossible to follow and learn. In a January 1968 photo-shoot of the five-man Pink Floyd, the photographs show Barrett looking detached from the others, staring into the distance.
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Pink Floyd were founded in 1965 by students Syd Barrett, Nick Mason, Roger Waters, and Richard Wright. They gained popularity performing in London's underground music scene during the late 1960s, and under Barrett's leadership released two charting singles and a successful debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967). David Gilmour joined as a fifth member in December 1967; Barrett left the band in April 1968 due to deteriorating mental health exacerbated by drug use. Waters became the band's primary lyricist and, by the mid-1970s, their dominant songwriter, devising the concepts behind their critically and commercially successful albums The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977), The Wall (1979) and The Final Cut (1983).
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Then one day you find, ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun. - Pink Floyd, Time