Having spent most of their career looking dour in T-shirts
and jeans, Pink Floyd wasn’t the most photogenic of bands. Perhaps that’s why
it has taken so long for someone to publish an image-heavy illustrated history
of the band when there are already quite a number devoted to their brethren in
The Beatles, Stones, Who, and Zeppelin. On the up side, they were always
interesting to look at in their paisley garb during their most vital era with
Syd Barrett and their stage sets were awe-inspiring enough in the later years
to consume the eye.
Writer Hugh Fielder seems pretty consumed by those sets,
spending quite a bit of time discussing the logistics of setting them up in Pink Floyd: Behind the Wall. Otherwise,
his text is a broad-stroke history of the band. Fielder is definitely not
writing for my fellow Syd cultists, summing up Syd’s albeit brief tenure in the
band in about thirty pages and giving the bulk of his attention and accolades
to Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall. For the majority of the book,
Fielder is not very critical of the music one way or the other, saving his
album-by-album assessment for an appendix as safe as the rest of it. My
favorite part was a two-page spread on the wacky Wizard of Oz/Dark Side
connection. More fun side roads such as these would have been welcome.
