Mark Blake, who has dedicated a good portion of his career to chronicling Pink Floyd, personally interviewed Roger Waters, Dave Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Rick Wright over a 33-year period, right up until last year when he completed his oral history. Well, Wright's involvement didn't last quite so long, as the keyboardist died in 2008, and it shows in the relative scarcity of his quotes, but he still gets his say.
Most significantly, so does Syd Barrett. Elusive since the sixties, and having died in 2006, Barrett was never one of Blake's interview subjects, but Blake makes sure not to ignore the band's key character by including numerous archival interview quotes, as well as chunks of letters he'd written to pre-fame girlfriend Jenny Spires. While these letter excerpts don't necessarily push the story forward, they do humanize a man who irritatingly tends to get reduced to some sort of "loony" caricature, even by his ex-bandmates.
Seeing the Pink Floyd story told in the voices of Pink Floyd also alters preconceived notions of the other guys. While Roger Waters has a reputation for being an ogre, and there are sufficient examples of that throughout the book, his quotations present a more measured mind, his assessments of Rick Wright's solo albums and The Division Bell being rare moments of first-person nastiness. Dave Gilmour comes off more personably than one might expect, and often talks very admirably about Waters. Nick Mason is the Floydian you'd probably most want to hang out with.
Are these less combative versions of Pink Floyd products of the quotes Blake chose to include or are they representative of who these guys really are? I kind of lean toward the former, but I didn't really mind because you still get a good idea of what's what from the material beyond the band's direct contributions. The synopsis of a Twitter battle between Gilmour and Waters that concludes the book certainly won't give fans any warm fuzzy feelings.
Along with the band members, many others from Floyd's inner circle shape Shine On. Syd's Floyd-averse sister Rosemary Breen helps to tear down some of the patronizing mystique surrounding her brother. Syd's nearly as mysterious ex-girlfriend and Madcap Laughs cover model Evelyn "Iggy" Joyce (aka: "Iggy the Eskimo") tracked down the author to throw some light on another shady nook of Barrett lore. Managers, collaborators, friends, photographers, artists (lots from Storm Thorgerson), and others help flesh out the story in a completely satisfying way. Oral histories are usually fun reads but often feel like they need to be supplemented with a standard biography for a full picture of its subject. Shine On did not feel that way to me.
