Search results for ""Author Richard Butterworth""

Pink Floyd are one of the most innovative and enduringly successful bands in history. 1973's Dark Side of the Moon, though far from the first concept album, established a new model for quasi-symphonic, long-form investigations into the human condition. It is a record of thoughtfully poignant lyrics and some of the most powerful, genre-defining rock music ever made. Roger Waters, Rick Wright, Nick Mason and the tragically brilliant Syd Barrett fused English whimsy with electrifying voyages through inner and outer space. Their underground gigs are the stuff of psychedelic legend, but between 1968 and 1971, with Barrett replaced by David Gilmour, their sonic inquiries were never braver. Some were delivered instantly while others were revealed slowly, but all played crucial parts in rock's development. During the 1970s, the music matured as the messages darkened. While Floyd continued to prove that emotional weight can be forged from deceptively modest arrangements, the band's live spectaculars reached a pitch of technical complexity and extravagance none has matched. With insightful analysis and witty objectivity, Richard Butterworth appraises afresh Pink Floyd's official recorded canon, from 'Arnold Layne' to The Endless River and beyond to 2022 and the first all-new Floyd music for 28 years.

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Jefferson Airplane were not the sole exemplars of 1960s Californian acid rock; the Grateful Dead could equally claim the mantle of house band to the Summer of Love. Airplane's instrumentation was conventional, comprising mainly vocal harmonies, guitars, bass and drums. The band drew upon the folk traditions of The Weavers, the legendary bluesmen Gary Davis and B.B. King, improvisational masters from Miles Davis to Cream, even literary visionaries such as James Joyce and Isaac Asimov. Yet fusing together these influences in the creative furnace of San Francisco between 1966 and 1970, Jefferson Airplane's classic lineup – one ex-model, two ex-folkies, one ex-jazzer and two ex-D.C. guitarslingers – crafted music that was at once powerful, innovative and beautiful. Birthed in the dizzy hippie heartland of Haight-Ashbury, no other group were so wedded to their environment, winning international acclaim with two anthemic hit singles even as they impishly prodded the morés of middle Amerika. A musical and social force of nature, Airplane mirrored the psychedelic dream, burning higher, fiercer and brighter than any of their contemporaries. Combining a concise history of this magnificent band and their milieu with comprehensive and entertaining reviews of all their recordings, this is the most accessible book on the band yet written

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