Sammy Hagar has fired fresh shots at his former Van Halen bandmate, comparing drummer Alex Van Halen to Roger Waters as their feud shows no sign of easing.

The former Montrose singer last fronted Van Halen in 2005, when their union came to an end after four albums. Founding bass guitarist Michael Anthony exited as well, with Eddie’s son, Wolfgang Van Halen, stepping in when the band reunited once again with David Lee Roth in 2007.

In recent years, Hagar and Anthony have formed the backbone of the Best of All Worlds band, Hagar’s Joe Satriani–powered tribute to Eddie Van Halen. The group even helped Hagar complete a track he claims he co-wrote with Eddie in a dream more than a year after the electric guitar virtuoso’s death.

Meanwhile, Alex Van Halen has floated the idea of assembling one final Van Halen album with help from Steve Lukather, a project neither Hagar nor Roth is expected to be part of. The lingering tension between Hagar and Van Halen surfaced again in the singer’s new interview with Classic Rock.

“I’m the biggest Pink Floyd fan,” Hagar says. “I see David Gilmour say, ‘I will never play with Roger Waters again,’ and I know what he means. I feel that way about Alex Van Halen. They’re negative people.”

The Gilmour–Waters feud famously reached its breaking point in the mid-’80s, culminating in lawsuits after 1987’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason became the first Pink Floyd album without Waters.

Hagar also argued that the Best of All Worlds lineup comes closer than anyone else to recreating the Van Halen experience.

“Because frickin’ Mike Anthony’s in the band, I feel good about playing a lot of Van Halen stuff, ’cause no one will ever hear it again,” he says. “That was the biggest part of my career — everybody’s career, for God’s sake. It was the biggest band in the world.”

Alex Van Halen recently revealed that during the 12-year stretch before the band regrouped with Roth for 2012’s A Different Kind of Truth, he and Eddie considered Ozzy Osbourne as a potential frontmen for a new project. In 2017, they began talking about collaborating with Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell, though that fizzled when Cornell died a few months later.

Anthony, meanwhile, has suggested that if Alex Van Halen and Steve Lukather do move forward with a final Van Halen record, it should be instrumental if they truly want to honor Eddie Van Halen’s legacy.

There aren’t many guitarists who can say they were there when Pink Floyd formed and then went on to perform with two of their key members. Tim Renwick is the exception.

The English guitarist’s association with the Floyd stretches far back. He attended Cambridgeshire High School for Boys, where he met future Floyd members Syd Barrett and Roger Waters. Renwick was around as Barrett's mental health began to unravel in 1967 (Alice Cooper told Guitar Player about witnessing his deterioration up close). He was also friends with David Gilmour and saw him perform with his pre-Floyd group Jokers Wild. Many years later, he became the go-to guitarist for the solo tours of Gilmour and Waters.

In between, Renwick carved out his own career. In addition to performing on David Bowie’s self-titled 1969 album (famous for its hit track “Space Oddity”) and doing session work with Eric Clapton and Elton John, he was a guitarist with English outfit Sutherland Brothers & Quiver, who scored a couple of modest U.S. hits with “(I Don't Want to Love You But) You Got Me Anyway” in 1973 and “Arms of Mary” in 1976.

But it was with folk-rocker Al Stewart that Renwick firmly established his reputation. He contributed his six-string stylings to most of Stewart’s 1970s output, including his 1976 hi album Year of the Cat. The title track showcases Renwick’s hauntingly melodic guitar work as he performs the song’s acoustic and electric solos.

In the years that followed, he found himself in demand with his old Cambridgeshire mates GIlmour and Waters. In 1984, Waters invited him to join the tour for his album The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, where Renwick shared guitar duties with Eric Clapton. A few years later, in 1987, Gilmour asked him to join Pink Floyd’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason. He found the experiences couldn’t have been more different.

“Roger was always quiet when I first knew him, but by the time I actually got to play in his band, he was a bit difficult,” he reveals. “He was very determined to rule everything. He had a problem passing out responsibility to people. He had to sort of do everything for himself, which made him an uncomfortable figure to work with really.

“But when I worked with David, he was much more casual,” he continues. “He'd just let people get into the swing of things without leaning on them too heavily. So, you could express yourself a bit more around him, which was more fun, obviously. So that was the difference between them. David was a far more relaxed person to work with and brought the best out of people.”

With that said, Renwick offered some anecdotes about Pink Floyd’s three guitarists.

Syd Barrett

“I first saw them when they were starting out, and Syd Barrett was very much the leader of the band. I got to know him a bit and he was really lovely, a very wide-eyed and quite amusing young chap. I was told later that pretty much all his material from the first couple of Pink Floyd albums, was written when he was an early teenager, so it was all stuff that he had in his back pocket already as it were.

“They had early success with their singles ‘See Emily Play’ and ‘Apples and Oranges,’ but they didn't really get taken seriously, apart from in London where the psychedelic thing was happening in a much bigger way than anywhere else. And so they were struggling a bit. They'd play gigs out of town that weren't very terribly well attended.

“And Syd was living in a house with a bunch of people that were doing quite a large amount of psychedelic drugs, so he was completely going off his tree. I saw him later in London and hardly recognized him. He was just completely different and very difficult to communicate with. He would answer questions about four minutes after you'd asked them and all completely out of sync.

“And there were wild stories of him turning up at gigs, turning his back to the audience and not playing. He’d be just waving his arms around which became quite a common thing, and was quite strange.”

“Syd had been the main writer in the band, but once he left, David — who’d already been hired to help out due to Syd’s behavior — sort of took over and had a lot of space and room to fill. As Syd’s guitar playing was pretty strange and quite unusual, David basically had to take a lot of those ideas and make them much more musical, and he also brought melody to the band in a big way.

“At the same time, Roger also began to write, but it took a while for him to kind of get going on that.”

Roger Waters

“I got along with him very well when we were rehearsing for the Pros and Cons tour. It was just the two of us.

“But once we actually got involved with the band, he really became a bit too bossy. It wasn't as lighthearted as it could have been. I have to say he took everything very seriously, and tended to want everything to sound exactly the same as the record.

“And he was very vigilant in pointing things out. If you didn't quite play something exactly right or changed the feel of something, he would point that out and let you know that he wanted it to be exactly as close to the record as it possibly could be.”

“It has to be said that Roger was a bit resentful of the fact that whenever Eric Clapton got up and played a solo, the place would erupt. People would get their lighters out and there would be a tremendous outpouring of applause.

“And that annoyed Roger quite a lot because rightly or wrongly, he felt that the audience weren't actually listening to the songs. They were just watching out for what Eric was doing. So there was a certain amount of resentment there.”

David Gilmour

“Jokers Wild was a really good, and popular band, especially with the Cambridge college student set. They used to do a lot of Beach Boys numbers and stuff with three and four-part harmonies. Obviously, David’s playing was good, but the guitar wasn’t at the forefront so, there wasn’t much actual guitar playing or a great deal of soloing involved.

“But he was always a bit of a guitar hero. He was the sort of person that, if you walked into a room, everyone would stop talking. He was quite staggeringly good looking and had quite a presence to him as well.”

“A few years later, when I was in Sutherland Brothers & Quiver, David helped us out a lot. He came and did a bit of production, worked on our demos and things for songs, and we recorded at his home studio. He used to come along and jam at gigs but because we never announced it. No one ever knew who it was.”

“There's not really that much spoken about him and his philanthropy — for example, his work with Kate Bush and how very helpful he was to her. He actually fronted the money, paid for the arrangements to be done and all kinds of stuff. He obviously could see that she had a fantastic amount of talent.

“David also made sure she wasn't exposed to too much rock and roll nonsense when she was young. He kind of held her back in a way too, so she had time to sort of develop and grow up and be able to actually deal with the pressures of the business.”

“I’ve been lucky in my life with the people I’ve worked with,” says Andy Fairweather Low. “‘Blessed’ is the word I would use to best describe it.”

Prior to becoming a regular sideman for the likes of Eric Clapton and Roger Waters, and a gun-for-hire guitarist for sessions that included those for Gerry Rafferty, the Who, and David Crosby — to name but a few—the Welsh guitarist was lead vocalist with 1960s pop combo Amen Corner. During their run, he played gigs with acts of the day that included Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix.

Soon after their split in late 1969, he embarked on a prolific solo career. But it’s his work with Waters and Clapton — where Low featured on both recordings and tours—that etched his guitar-playing reputation into stone.

We tapped him for memories of his time with some of rock’s biggest artists, including Clapton, Waters, Hendrix, Pete Townshend and former Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman.

Jimi Hendrix

“In November 1967, Amen Corner were on a U.K. package tour with Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, the Move, the Nice, Eire Apparent and the Outer Limits. [Northern Ireland’s Eire Apparent featured future Spooky Tooth/Wings guitarist Henry McCullough and were noted for having Hendrix produce and play on their only album].

“The shows were sometimes a bit lively and a bit out there, and the places we played were concrete town halls. In Sheffield, Jimi ended the set by smashing up the drums. Then in Newcastle, he sent his Flying V into the Marshall cab and proceeded to smash it.

“Apparently, Jimi liked our group. Kathy Etchingham, his girlfriend at the time, was asked what Jimi thought of the other acts on the bill, like Pink Floyd and the Nice. She said, ‘Well, actually Jimi didn’t really think too much about anything, but he did think that Amen Corner were all right.’

“A couple of years later, I was in New York and Jimi asked me to come down to the studio to do some backing vocals on a new version of ‘Stone Free.’ [The April 1969 sessions produced a finished track that was first released on the 1975 album Crash Landing.]

“[Engineer] Eddie Kramer was there taking care of everything, and my friend Roger Chapman was there as well. We both ended up putting backing vocals to the song. But in my humble opinion, the original ‘Stone Free’ was absolutely the best version.”

Bill Wyman

“The first time I saw Bill was with the Rolling Stones, at Sophia Gardens, Cardiff, Wales, on February 28, 1964. That was the night that changed my whole life. That’s when I knew I wanted to be a guitar player.

“But my association with Bill began during the ARMS Charity Concerts in 1983. [The star-studded shows featuring Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and many others supported Action into Research for Multiple Sclerosis and were created by ex-Faces bassist Ronnie Lane, who had MS.]. That’s when our friendship really began. Because the tour was to raise money for Ronnie Lane, Bill then came up with the idea of putting an album together to raise even more money for the cause to help people with multiple sclerosis. So he put together the Willie & the Poor Boys album, and I got involved in that.

“While we’re making it, Bill had to go off to do some work with the Stones in Paris. He asked if I would produce a pair of songs for the album featuring Jimmy Page and Paul Rodgers while he was away. So I put a band together, with Jimmy Page on guitar, Paul on vocals and me on bass, and we did ‘Slippin’ and Slidin’’ and ‘These Arms of Mine.’ They turned out really well.

“Soon afterward, Bill and I were in a taxi on the way to do a breakfast TV show when he told me, ‘They’ve agreed to do a video for “These Arms of Mine,” but they don’t want you in it.’ The double whammy was when Bill’s manager asked to have Bill credited for my bass playing because he was known as a bassist.”

Pete Townshend

“The first time I saw Pete was with the Who in 1965, and I might add, there weren’t many people there either. But god, the energy!

“I was staying at [producer] Glyn Johns’ house while he was working on the Who’s Who Are You album and Pete said, ‘Tell Andy to come in to do some backing vocals.’ So I did and ended up singing on ‘Who Are You,’ and five other songs too.

“On that album Pete was plugging his guitar directly into the board. [Townshend had a preamp that he plugged into a compressor and straight into the mixing console, and which he says he “used a lot on Who Are You.”] Plugging into the board is generally a shit sound, but when Pete plugged in and banged an A chord… My god, the attack! You could cut metal with it. Nobody plays an A chord like Pete.”

Roger Waters

“My first encounter with Roger was on that November 1967 U.K. package tour with Jimi Hendrix. We had an issue. Our manager at the time was Ron King, who was an associate of the Krays [the famed British organized-crime kingpins Ronnie and Reggie Kray]. Roger had shouted at me — mind you I was still only a teenager — for touching a Leslie speaker. Ron heard it and told Roger, ‘If you do that again, I’ll break your fucking legs!’ Ron was connected. He meant it.

“I never understood the Floyd back then at all. I kept thinking to myself, Where’s the backbeat? Their first song in their short set on that tour was ‘Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun,’ and the song absolutely baffled me. The irony is that it became my favorite song to play when I was in Roger’s band later on.

“Here’s how that happened: Eric Clapton had been in Roger’s band for his Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking album and tour. Afterward, when Roger made his Radio K.A.O.S. album, he reached out to me: ‘Roger Waters here, we’d like you to come up and see if we get on.’

“The night before I went to his studio, I had been working with Bill Wyman and had drunk at least a liter of a red wine. I woke up at 9:00 a.m., not feeling great. I rushed to the studio and Roger asked me to play on a track. And we didn’t just ‘get on’—we really got on!

“Soon afterward I went to work for Roger — for 24 years! He likes to laugh, and I like working with people who can laugh. I know what you’re thinking about Roger, but take it from me: I was there for 24 fabulous years. I wouldn’t have stayed if it wasn’t. I had a great time learning about how to put a show on, the dynamics, lighting, visuals… you name it.

“After that I did the In the Flesh tour, the Dark Side of the Moon Live tour… And we always had the best food, the best wine, the best travel, the best company. Roger gave me so much respect, loyalty, support and encouragement. He’s a true friend to this day, and a bloody force of nature.”

Eric Clapton

“My first tour with Eric Clapton was ARMS in 1984, but my first time as a member of his band was when he and his group backed George Harrison in 1990 on a tour of Japan. On the first day of rehearsals, Eric asked me to join his band permanently. From there, I ended up on the acoustic Unplugged album, and the rest is sort of my history with him.

“I’m so proud to be on From the Cradle. It’s my favorite Eric album, as he was absolutely playing at the top of his game. I’ve also been back in the band a few times since too. In fact, in 2023 I did three weeks in America with him, and we finished up at the Crossroads Guitar Festival.

“I loved every rehearsal, every recording, every live gig I did with Eric. I got paid well, I traveled well, I ate and slept well. It was wonderful to work for him. Eric liked to laugh too, and as I mentioned earlier, I like working for people who like to laugh and I never tired of listening to his playing and singing. I loved his voice. I learned so much just by watching him playing and being in his company. All he ever wanted for me was to be the best I could be. There was no competition with him. He would just say, ‘Go for it, Andy!’

“I never really wanted to take solos, as I’m more a rhythm guitar player. He’d nod to me, but I’d go, ‘No, no,’ as I believed the audience didn’t really want to hear from me. But then we were playing Hyde Park in 1996, in front of 150,000 people. By then we’d been on tour for about three months and I’d not taken any solos. Eric wandered over to me and nodded his head as if to say, Go, take a solo! And I went, ‘All right then, I will.’ He was very encouraging like that.”

Pink Floyd found it difficult to follow up their hit 1973 album, The Dark Side of the Moon. The record’s success left them wondering exactly how they could top it, or at the very least come up with something even more stunning.

As guitarist David Gilmour told NPR in October, “We were in a very strange place.”

Now we know just how strange. In a recent talk with NPR for the album’s 50th anniversary, former Floyd drummer Nick Mason explained the group’s methods during their first weeks back in Abbey Road Studios, where Dark Side was recorded.

“In fact, of course, we ended up spending an awful lot of studio time doing nothing or working on a project called Household Objects,” Mason says. The concept behind that latter project, he said, “was to make a record using household objects rather than musical instruments.

“The only thing I remember playing was, instead of using a bass drum, I had an ax and a large log of wood.”

Pink Floyd recorded just two songs before giving up.

“I think if we’d stuck with it, we’d still be in Abbey Road now trying to finish,” Mason says. “We should have carried on touring Dark Side for another year. But we didn’t. We thought we’d sort of had to get on, I suppose.”

It wasn’t all a wasted effort. One of the instruments for Household Objects was a makeshift glass harmonica, made by filling water glasses with varying amounts of liquid and stroking the wetted edges of the glasses to produce bell-like timbres. The instrument reappeared on the intro to “Shine on You Crazy Diamond,” the central track on Wish You Were Here, the album they eventually got around to making.

As Gilmour previously explained, bass guitarist Roger Waters came up with the album’s title, which was in part a criticism of his bandmates, who were, creatively speaking, not all there.

But Wish You Were Here was also a tribute to the band’s founder, Syd Barrett, who abandoned the group as his undiagnosed mental health issues made it impossible for him to perform. His breakdown, which began while the band was on tour in the U.S. — a stint that saw them living for a short time with the Alice Cooper band — led to Gilmour joining the band as Barrett’s condition worsened.

His decline would become a central theme in Waters’ music, including Floyd’s 1970s albums The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall. But nowhere was it more explicitly about Barrett than in the central work on Wish You Were Here: “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.” The song was written expressly in tribute to Barrett, who coincidentally visited the band in the studio on the day they recorded it.

As Gilmour explained to Rick Beato, that song came about after he stumbled onto a note cluster while playing his electric guitar. The passage, consisting of G F Bb E played in sequence (often referred to as “Syd’s Theme”), became central to the song.

“I was in a rehearsal room doing all sorts of little things, and that one [came] out,” Gilmour explained. “Something in your brain goes, There’s something to that! You do it again, and after a while, other people in the room stop.

“You can see this thing on people’s faces, this awakening moment. People are going, ‘there’s a possibility here. There’s something here’. The whole of 'Shine On' grew out of that moment.”

For all Pink Floyd’s efforts, Wish You Were Here was panned by music critics, who felt it lacked the creativity of its predecessor. Melody Maker called it “unconvincing in its ponderous sincerity,” while Rolling Stone‘s reviewer criticized “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” for its “lackadaisical demeanor.”

Fifty years on, however, the album is considered a classic from a decade that — barring some dabbling with household objects — was Pink Floyd’s most productive.

Pink Floyd founding bass guitarist Roger Waters is under fire by Ozzy Osbourne’s family over comments he made about the late singer.

Osbourne, who died July 22 just weeks after delivering his final performance at Back to the Beginning, became Waters’ target during an interview with The Independent Ink earlier this year.

“Ozzy Osbourne, who just died, bless him in his… whatever that state that he was in his whole life,” Waters said. “We’ll never know. Although he was all over the TV for hundreds of years with his idiocy and nonsense.

“The music, I have no idea. I couldn’t give a fuck.”

All three members of Osbourne’s family — Ozzy’s wife Sharon and their two children, Kelly and Jack — addressed Waters’ comments on a new episode of The Osbournes Podcast.

“That leads me on to somebody who is not special, that is probably one of the most twisted, sick individuals I’ve come across in years,” Sharon says on the podcast.

“Oh, you’re talking about my mate Roger?” Jack asks.

Adds Kelly, “He’s a fucking c**t.”

“He isn’t,” Sharon replies, “because c**ts are good. He has no charisma, okay? He looks like Frankenstein.”

Jack Osbourne had previous called out Waters on social media in September.

“Hey @rogerwaters, fuck you," he wrote on X. "How pathetic and out of touch you've become. The only way you seem to get attention these days is by vomiting out bullshit in the press."

He continued, "My father always thought you were a c**t — thanks for proving him right. 🤡 #fuck-rogerwaters.”

Jack noted in the podcast that his response likely generated the most press Waters had received in years .

“That's why my dad always thought you were a c**t — because it's true! Dad would always be like, ‘I love Pink Floyd. I fucking hate Roger Waters.’ But dad would never say that publicly, because you don't do that.”

Added Sharon, “Do you know what he is? He’s like a sad, irrelevant, old, miserable human being — a miserable, ugly human being.”

“The guy is sick in the head,” she went on to say. “He is not relevant in today’s world. Nobody likes him. It’s not just us. Nobody likes this man. … unless you’re a fascist.

“I don’t know how those guys in Pink Floyd put up with them as long as they did. David [Gilmour] is the most gracious, warm person you could ever meet.”

In fact, Waters did come under fire by Gilmour’s wife, Polly Samson,

In February 2023, she attacked him in a merciless tweet which, among other choice words, labelled him as “anti-Semitic” to the “rotten core. Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy megalomaniac.”

The electric guitar legend backed up his wife adding, “Every word demonstrably true.”

Those comments were among others by Gilmour that reinforce the argument that Pink Floyd will not be reuniting any time soon.

You'd have to be crazy to think a Pink Floyd reunion was possible. David Gilmour has made it clear he has no interest in reuniting with bass guitarist Roger Waters, and has said the death of founding keyboardist Rick Wright makes the question moot.

That doesn't stop people from asking, though. The prog icons last shared a stage at Live 8 in 2005. It was a show where Gilmour saw Waters, who left the band in 1985 and promptly engaged in legal battles against the group, as merely a “guest” rather than a band member outright.

If that suggests things are frosty between Gilmour and Waters, it's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Sitting down with U.K. newspaper The Telegraph for a rare joint interview with his wife and longtime collaborator/lyricist Polly Samson, Gilmour was asked what could possibly thaw relations between the former bandmates and allow them to perform together once again.

“Nothing,” was his retort. “There is no possible way that I would do that.”

It would be particularly difficult given that Samson has herself been a vocal critic of Waters.

In February 2023, she attacked him in a merciless tweet which, among other choice words, labelled him as “anti-Semitic” to the “rotten core. Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy megalomaniac.”

Gilmour backed up his wife adding, “Every word demonstrably true.”

Waters, in turn, refuted Samson's “incendiary and wildly inaccurate comments,” which were prompted in light of an interview where he seemed to praise the Russian president's leadership and criticized then U.S. president Joe Biden.

Samson said she did it because she thought some readers were confusing Waters and Gilmour.

“The reason I did it was because Pink Floyd are quite a faceless band,” she explains to The Telegraph. “Everywhere I went, there was a chance that people thought I was married to the one who said things like that. And it wasn’t a great feeling.

“If they knew you’re married to someone from Pink Floyd, half the time people were giving me quite strange looks, and it was really uncomfortable,” she continues. “I just wanted to draw a line and make it clear that these were not views held by me or the person I was married to.”

Alongside Waters, Gilmour helped transform the band's fortunes following the departure of founding guitarist Syd Barrett. Gilmour's tenure saw him celebrated as one of rock's greatest electric guitar players, bringing him immense fame and acclaim, while it lifted the group to prominence.

Although he gives Waters credit for his contributions to the band's monumental success — particularly for his songwriting and story-telling talents on albums like Animals and The Wall — he has no wish to carry on with the group.

“I’m at peace with all of these things,” Gilmour told Guitar Player last year. “But I absolutely don’t want to go back. I don’t want to go and play stadiums. I’m free to do exactly what I want to do and how I want to do it.”

He's certainly done that. He believes his latest solo album, Luck and Strange, is his finest work in 50 years, and has already laid out a timeline for its follow-up as he looks to end his run of long gaps between solo LPs.

Elsewhere, he's theorized why vintage guitars outperform their modern counterparts — even though he admits he couldn't pick out his legendary Black Strat in a blindfold test — and named his favorite prog guitarist.

This week, 17 years ago, the guitar world lost one of its most mysterious yet influential pioneers, Syd Barrett. 

A rare musical visionary, Barrett spearheaded London’s psychedelic rock scene of the Swinging ‘60s as singer, guitarist and principal songwriter of Pink Floyd.

Following his departure from the band in 1968, he embarked upon a solo career, releasing The Madcap Laughs in 1970, followed by Barrett later the same year.

But it would be Pink Floyd’s 1967 singles – including "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play" – along with the band’s Summer of Love debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn that Barrett became more widely known for.

In this kaleidoscopic clip of Pink Floyd’s epic instrumental opus "Interstellar Overdrive", Barrett can be seen playing a Danelectro model 3021 and his famous reflective disk-covered Fender Esquire.

Combining a Binson Echorec Baby delay machine with an improvised slide (thought to be either a ruler or Zippo lighter) Barrett stirs up the kind of tripped-out textures that made Pink Floyd a hit in London’s UFO Club.

Though the band went on to achieve monumental success during the '70s and beyond following Barrett’s departure, his influence endured – not just within the Pink Floyd camp but throughout the music world at large.

Indeed, many guitarists and songwriters – including Graham Coxon and John Frusciante – have cited Syd Barrett as a major inspiration.

Over the years, Barrett has remained a cult figure of psychedelic rock – an enigma whose reclusive life only fueled the interest of curious fans.

Aiming to address some “unanswered questions” about the troubled artist is a brand-new documentary titled Have You Got It Yet? The Story of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd that begins screening in theaters across North America later this month.

Directed by Roddy Bogawa and the late Storm Thorgerson, Have You Got It Yet? features fresh interviews with family, friends and lovers of Barrett, plus input from his Pink Floyd bandmates Roger Waters, David Gilmour, and Nick Mason.

“You know you couldn’t over emphasize his importance, because he was, he was that, the creative genius,” said drummer Mason, whose own band – Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets – continues to celebrate the songs of Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd.

I’m rarely surprised by the response when interviewers, including those for Guitar Player, ask musicians, “Did you have any idea your record would be a hit?” The answer is almost always “no.” It’s the rare artist who knows when he or she has on a hit on their hands. It’s a question David Gilmour has been asked many times about The Dark Side of the Moon, and while his answer has always been a definitive “no,” he could be excused for saying “yes.”

After all, Pink Floyd worked the album on the road through the first five months of 1972 before entering Abbey Road Studios to record it, then continued to tour their magnum opus while putting the finishing touches to tape.

From all reports, the fans were ecstatic about what they heard at those shows, even if the work’s concepts eluded them.

50 years on from its release (and around 45 million copies later) The Dark Side of the Moon continues to thrill as generations of fans discover, and rediscover, this seemingly timeless record.

Discovering how another person experiences and interprets music – or anything, really – is an opportunity to shape or reshape our own perceptions, and in doing so broaden our minds and gain new insights that possibly give us a fresh spin on art, politics, life... pretty much anything you can think of.

So join us for a track-by-track tour of the Dark Side, as we take a look at some of the concepts, gear and stories behind Pink Floyd’s best-selling LP...

“Speak to Me”

Credited to drummer Nick Mason, this sound collage lasts slightly longer than a minute and is an unsettling introduction to the album, fading in slowly and prompting listeners to turn up the volume, only to find the track surging to menacing sound levels in its final 10 seconds.

The cut is an overture of sorts, foreshadowing the various sounds – clinking coins, ticking clocks and haunting voices – yet to come over the album’s two sides, all of it over a steady tom-tom (according to David Gilmour) standing in for a heartbeat. Together, they evoke the emotions explored on the album, including fear, anxiety and pressure, as well as birth, time and death.

The organ-like tone that groans in toward the end is a piano chord played by Rick Wright, recorded backward.

“Breathe (In the Air)”

Featuring music by David Gilmour and lyrics by Roger Waters, “Breathe (In the Air)” releases the tension of “Speak to Me” with a languid soundscape over which Gilmour sings and plays his pedal steel, as well as a rhythm guitar through a Univox Uni-Vibe.

Gilmour’s majestically minimal guitar work reveals his gift for choosing the right notes and tones to evoke just what the song requires.

As his pedal steel establishes a sort of free-floating idyll, Waters’ busy bass lines suggest the perpetual movement of time and humanity that scrapes against our inner peace.

“On the Run”

In early shows, this sequenced synthesizer track was a jam known as “The Travel Sequence,” performed with keyboards and guitars.

Thematically, it’s about the pressures Pink Floyd faced from constant touring and, specifically, air travel, as well as the fear of death that went with it.

In the studio, the tune became something entirely different when Waters programmed an eight-note line into the sequencer of an EMS Synthi AKS synthesizer. Gilmour says he created the sound and worked the controls. “He made that little sequence up,” the guitarist said, “but I had got the actual original sound, and I actually was the one doing the controlling on the take that we used.”

The group then added Mason’s hi-hats and sound effects, including a backward guitar and an airplane engine.

“Time”

Opening with a cacophonous recording of ticking and chiming clocks that engineer Alan Parsons compiled for a quadraphonic test record, “Time” is a study in musical contrasts. The atmospheric intro, featuring Mason’s tuned Rototoms and Gilmour’s heavily reverberated “spaghetti western” guitar stylings, sets the stage for high drama.

Waters’ aggressive vocals punctuate the spiky verses – on which GIlmour turns in some fine funk-infused licks – while Gilmour and Wright lend their dulcet voices to the shimmering sustained choruses, which includes backing vocals fed through a pitch shifter, according to Martin Popoff’s research, although they sound heavily flanged.

Gilmour’s biting guitar solo was performed using the F# minor pentatonic scale and recorded at high volume through his Hiwatt amp. It’s an excellent example of his flair for exploiting the fretboard’s range with a combination of fast lines and slow sustained notes to full expressive effect.

“The Great Gig in the Sky”

Wright’s creation, this tune was originally an instrumental work and featured readings from the Bible and the British satirist Malcolm Muggeridge.

Most of the music was recorded on June 25, 1972. Roughly six months later, on January 21, 1973, the spoken-word bits were replaced by the wordless gospel stylings of 25-year-old session singer Clare Torry during a three-hour session.

Torry said the band seemed so indifferent to her efforts that she wasn’t sure her vocals made the cut until she saw her name in the album credits while visiting a record shop.

“Money”

The opening track on the original vinyl album’s second side, “Money” was mostly recorded on June 7, 1972.

Waters developed the unusual (for rock) 7/8 bass riff in the studio, then created the coins-and-cash-register audio collage in his wife’s pottery studio, using a Revox A77 tape deck, before remaking it at Abbey Road with assistance from his bandmates and Alan Parsons.

The resulting audio loop he devised served as a metronome for the song, over which the band performs at its funkiest. Gilmour strums a psychedelic stuttering tremolo guitar, Wright plays his Wurlitzer electric piano through a wah pedal, and Gilmour’s old chum Dick Parry blows a mean sax solo.

But the song’s 7/8 time signature goes out the window once Gilmour launches into a trio of furious blues-based guitar solos midway through the track. He performs the first two on his Black Strat, while the third is played using his 24-fret Bill Lewis electric, after which the band swings back into 7/8 time for the final verse before riding the fade out in 4/4.

Oddly – for Pink Floyd – “Money” was released as a single in the U.S. and reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100.

“Us and Them”

Tracked on the first day of Dark Side’s studio recording sessions, June 1, 1972, “Us and Them” began as an instrumental composition that Wright wrote for the band’s contribution to the soundtrack of the 1970 film Zabriskie Point.

Although the song was rejected, it found a new life when combined with Waters’ lyrics juxtaposing distinctions of rank, race and class to illustrate life’s inequities.

The stereo-panning echoes on Gilmour’s vocals, which occur on the beat, required some ingenuity to create at the time. Parsons says that he achieved them using a 3M eight-track tape recorder: Gilmour’s vocal was sent to one pair of tracks and bounced along to the next pair and so on, to achieve four distinct echoes that could be panned within the stereo spectrum to give the sense that the echoes were traveling from speaker to speaker.

“Any Colour You Like”

This instrumental is essentially a reprise of “Breathe” – it’s even called “Breathe (Second Reprise)” in some tab books – as it uses roughly the same chord pattern as that song’s verses, transposed from Em to Dm.

Gilmour has said he based his guitar tone on Eric Clapton’s guitar in the Cream song “Badge,” using either a Uni-Vibe or a Leslie rotary speaker to achieve his liquid tone.

As for the title, Waters – the only Floyd member not credited on the song – explains that it comes from hawkers who would visit his Cambridge neighborhood selling china sets from the backs of trucks. “If they had sets of china, and they were all the same colour, they would say, ‘You can ’ave ’em, 10 bob to you, love. Any colour you like, they’re all blue.’ And that was just part of that patter. So, metaphorically, ‘Any Colour You Like’ is interesting, in that sense, because it denotes offering a choice where there is none.”

“Brain Damage”

Originally written, but not recorded, for Pink Floyd’s 1971 album, Meddle, “Brain Damage” was alternately titled “The Dark Side of the Moon” and “The Lunatic Song.”

Waters wrote it for Floyd founder Syd Barrett, making it both an anchor for the Dark Side of the Moon album and a forerunner to Floyd’s 1975 tribute to Barrett, Wish You Were Here.

Gilmour plays a Beatles-esque fingerpicked pattern on his guitar through either a Uni-Vibe or a Leslie. According to Waters, the lyric “The lunatic is on the grass” was inspired by the square in Cambridge between the River Cam and King’s College Chapel and is meant to connote the idea that those who don’t follow society’s rules are dangerous, when in fact the real insanity is refusing to let people enjoy the beauty of the grass.

“Eclipse”

Segueing from the previous track, “Eclipse” transitions to a dramatic 6/8 time signature led by Wright’s Leslie organ and Gilmour’s arpeggiating guitar lines, played at a higher register than in “Brain Damage.”

Running just slightly over two minutes in length, “Eclipse” feels less like a song of its own than a coda to its predecessor.

Lyrically, the song speaks to the themes of light and dark that run throughout the album, concluding with the line that “everything under the sun is in tune, but the sun is eclipsed by the moon.”

Speaking of the song’s lyrics, Waters said, “I think it’s a very simple statement saying that all the good things life can offer are there for us to grasp, but that the influence of some dark force in our natures prevents us from seizing them.”

Order The Dark Side Of The Moon 50th Anniversary Deluxe Remaster here.

David Gilmour never imagined in 1973 that he would still be talking about Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon well into the 21st century. “Longevity in pop music, in terms of me as a 20-whatever – I was a 27-year-old when we did Dark Side of the Moon – was measured in maybe five, possibly 10 years,” he reflected in a rare 2011 interview. “As soon as Roger [Waters] came in with the idea of its central themes of how the pressures of modern life can affect your sanity, it started taking a shape from there on I would say... But that feeling that that we were on to a real magical ‘something’ came a bit later down the line, I think.”

And it’s persisted ever since. The Dark Side of the Moon resided in the U.S. Billboard chart for 723 weeks, from 1973 to 1988, longer than any other album in history. And with an estimated 45 million copies sold, it’s Pink Floyd’s most commercially successful effort and one of the best-selling albums. But what has made it such an enduring success?

“My view,” said Floyd drummer Nick Mason in his autobiography, Inside Out, “is that there was no single reason, but a number of factors working together and multiplying the effect.” Most notably, he writes, “The musical quality spearheaded by David’s guitar and voice and Rick [Wright]’s keyboards established a fundamental Pink Floyd sound.”

Indeed, with The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd finally found their unique voice. It was their eureka moment. Since 1968, they had been slowly rebuilding a career left in tatters following the departure of their errant leader Syd Barrett. At the time, Pink Floyd were primarily a live experience, and the band had a long-standing history of testing and refining newly written material on the road prior to recording it.

The problem, however, lay in the group’s live repertoire – or rather the lack of it. They’d been on a virtually non-stop tour since 1967, playing every pub, club, university and town hall that would have them, and slotting in recording sessions when they could. In those days, Gilmour recalls, “tours got booked in, and back then they weren’t promotional vehicles.”

While the band were not exactly idle when it came to recording, turning out the regulation one album per year, most of the songs on their studio recordings didn’t lend themselves to the live environment. As a result, they were still filling up their set with their ’60s “hits”: “A Saucerful of Secrets,” “Astronomy Dominé,” “Careful With That Axe, Eugene” and “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.”

Panicked into writing new material for an already announced U.K. tour commencing in January 1972, the band began discussing ideas for something new toward the end of 1971 at a meeting in the usual venue of Mason’s kitchen. This was then followed by a period of writing at a rehearsal space in Broadhurst Gardens, in West London.

Waters, the main driver behind the project, began furiously writing lyrics. It was he who came up with the idea of addressing things that drive people mad, as well as a way to link in some unfinished and unused studio pieces. The album would focus on the enormous pressures the band itself was experiencing on the road: the strains of travel, the problems of living abroad for great stretches of time, and coping with money. It would also explore violence, social problems and the comforts of religion.

This last theme was no doubt prompted by their recent tours through middle America. Lyrically, the songs were Waters’ most profound and focused efforts to date, and for the first time he dominated the creative input, conveying a vision all his own.

But Gilmour says Waters’ growing lyric-writing talents had a downside. “My problem with Dark Side – and I’ve said it before and I’ll no doubt say it again – was that I thought that Roger’s emergence on that album as a great lyric writer was such that he came to overshadow the music in places, and there were moments when we didn’t concentrate as hard on the music side of it as we should have done – which is what I voiced to all the band after the making of Dark Side. That was absorbed into an effort to try to make the balance between music and the words a better one on Wish You Were Here.”

Regardless, both onstage and on record, the music on The Dark Side of the Moon would propel Pink Floyd into the superstar league. For Waters, it boosted his confidence as a writer – his skills clearly outstripped anything the others could achieve – and he became the self-appointed lyricist of the band.

The tour was also the first time Pink Floyd had taken an entire album on the road, and although they were used to previewing material before recording it, The Dark Side of the Moon was a piece that was vastly improved and refined as a result of the decision to tour with it first. Live, the songs were performed in the same order as they would appear on the finished album, although the early shows were without synthesizers.

Despite first-night hitches at the Brighton Dome show on January 20, 1972 – caused by an electrical fault that knocked out the tape playback at the start of “Money” – and a total power failure in Manchester, the tour was acclaimed, even if its message was not fully comprehended by the public.

Proving the value of roadwork, Waters came up with the lyrics for the concluding “Brain Damage”/”Eclipse” sequence in time for the show in Leicester on February 10, eight dates into the tour. “The piece felt unfinished to me when we were doing it on the road,” he later said. “I came in one day and said, ‘Here, I’ve just written the ending and this is it.’”

The pivotal performance on the tour was undoubtedly at the Rainbow in London in mid February, where the world’s press sat in attendance to witness The Dark Side of the Moon in all its well-rehearsed glory. In a series of presentations, and despite some rather stilted performances, Pink Floyd’s work was heralded as a triumph of the imagination.

For the first time, they received critical acclaim throughout the national press. Programs distributed at the show also included the by now complete lyrics for the work (but not the song titles) under the heading An Assorted Piece for Lunatics. “It was a hell of a good way to develop a record,” Mason recalled. “You really get familiar with it; you learn the pieces you like and what you don’t like.”

Yet even then, the Dark Side of the Moon album was not top priority for Pink Floyd. French film director Barbet Schroeder invited them to write music for La Vallée, his film about a young woman’s spiritual awakening in Papua New Guinea. In two one-week sessions – one before and one after a tour of Japan that March – the band composed and recorded the entire work at Strawberry Studios in the Chateau d’Hérouville near Paris (known as the Honky Chateau, thanks to Elton John). It was released as an album in June with the name Obscured by Clouds.

Finally, with that project complete, Pink Floyd returned to Abbey Road Studios at the end of May to get down to the serious business of recording The Dark Side of the Moon.

Throughout the course of his long career, Jeff Beck collaborated with a vast array of artists.

Diverse, dynamic and in-demand, the number of fellow musicians he teamed up with is astounding.

The following list of classic moments captured on tape could easily be expanded without compromising on quality.

From Jon Bon Jovi and Roger Waters to Ozzy Osbourne and Kate Bush, here are 10 of Beck’s greatest studio collaborations…

1. “Blaze of Glory” by Jon Bon Jovi from ‘Young Guns II’ (1990)

“Blaze of Glory” was written by Jon Bon Jovi in response to a request from actor Emilio Estevez who had originally hoped to use the Bon Jovi classic “Wanted Dead Or Alive” for the Young Guns II soundtrack.

The similarity in feel between the two songs is no accident, but the crucial added ingredient to the mix is Beck’s blistering, iconic solo.

Utilizing his matchless whammy bar technique and volume swells, he opens up the solo with lines that mimic the sound of slide guitar. But it soon becomes clear there is so much more going on as Beck builds in intensity, taking the song to another level while unleashing the kind of fretboard pyrotechnics only he could deliver.

One of Beck’s most celebrated collaborations, it is unsurprising that countless YouTube videos explore exactly how Beck played the piece.

As is often the case, seeing how it’s done may remove some of the mystery, but the genius is in the conception as much as the execution. No one approached a song with the left-field slant that Beck brought to everything he worked on.

2. "Look Out Mabel" by Big Town Playboys from ‘Roll the Dice’ (2004)

Beck was always a huge fan of rock and roll and rockabilly. In fact, he devoted an entire album to Cliff Gallup’s pioneering guitar work with Gene Vincent in the form of 1993’s Crazy Legs.

In order to authentically recreate the tones of Gallup, Beck turned to a DeArmond Model 2000/Dynasonic-loaded 1956 Gretsch Duo Jet, eschewing the Strat with which he’d become synonymous.

The Big Town Playboys helped Beck recreate the timeless genius of Gallup and Vincent on the album, and he later reunited with the group for 2004’s Roll the Dice.

Amongst a slew of great guests on the record, this particular track saw Beck team up with fellow ‘50s rock and roll devotee Robert Plant.

The song they took on was a cover of a single originally released in 1958 by G.L. Crockett on the Checker label. Long revered as a lost classic of the genre, it was the perfect vehicle for Beck to flex his rockabilly chops.

For a full 24 bars, Beck slips and slides into flurries of pull-offs and glissandos to deliver a knockout solo that bridges the gap between vintage rockabilly and modern rock.

3. “Hello Jeff” by Stanley Clarke from ‘Journey to Love’ (1975)

Beck collaborated with Stanley Clarke many times throughout his career, both in the studio and on stage. In 1975, Beck released his best-selling solo album, Blow by Blow, and recorded this track with Clarke the same year.

Clarke’s genius and vision along with his ability to redraw the parameters of what the bass guitar could do paralleled Beck’s own astoundingly innovative approach to the electric guitar.

The fusion of two intensely creative mavericks was bound to deliver something unique and “Hello Jeff” did not disappoint.

The opening theme rapidly gives way to Clarke’s instantly recognizable bass before Beck re-enters to play a relatively simple hook, lulling the listener into a false sense of calm. The guitarist then unleashes a cascade of blazing licks – each one a masterclass in delivering the unexpected.

Every time you think you know how a line is going to end, Beck confounds your wildest expectations by finding the outside notes that somehow just work.

Even when referencing the standard licks in every guitarist’s trick bag, he manages to extract something astonishing from the fretboard.

4. “I Just Want To Make Love To You” by Paul Rodgers from ‘Muddy Water Blues: A Tribute to Muddy Waters’ (1993)

Given Beck’s dynamically expressive approach it is perhaps a shame that he didn’t play more of the straight-ahead gutbucket blues he rips out on this track from Paul Rodgers’ 1993 all-star project.

The tone on the opening few riffs instantly focuses the listener’s attention. The raw, nasty, down-and-dirty edge Beck brings creates a perfect counterpoint for Rodgers’ muscular blues-wailing vocal.

From there, things only get more intense as singer and guitarist push each other to deliver some of the deepest blues recorded by either.

For the solo, Beck opens with a curveball of deep, growling bass licks – instantly wrongfooting the listener as he builds on a handful of perfectly chosen notes delivered with extraordinary finesse. Halfway through, Rodgers joins Beck as they ratchet up the urgency to breaking point.

The mark of a true artist is knowing when not to play – when to sit on a note and extract the maximum juice. And Beck’s solo on this track is the epitome of such an approach.

Here, Beck has nothing to prove – no need to shred a million notes a minute. For him, it’s all about the intensity of emotion.

5. “Amused to Death” by Roger Waters from ‘Amused to Death’ (1992)

According to Waters, Amused To Death completed a conceptual trilogy alongside Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall.

The bleak, mournful tone of the title track provided Beck with the perfect sonic soundscape to paint an extraordinarily soulful solo.

Having had David Gilmour – a master of the understated – by his side for the first of the two albums in the putative trilogy, Waters knew he’d need to bring a seriously heavy hitter to the show for the final piece of the puzzle.

And with Beck on board, Waters found perhaps the only guitarist who could effectively convey the message at the heart of his dystopian lament.

For over nine minutes, Beck picks precisely the right moments to interject with the subtlest of fills, each one finding a way to counterbalance the vocal line that preceded it.

Dispatched by Beck with apparent ease, the guitar work here is sparse; choice vignettes of meticulous precision that expand the reach and depth of the song with every note.

Manipulating harmonics with his whammy bar, Beck produces sounds that most guitarists would not suspect lurk within their own instruments.

6. “You’re the One” by Kate Bush from ‘The Red Shoes’ (1993)

On reflection, the pairing of Beck and Kate Bush seems like a no-brainer; Beck specializes in producing unearthly guitar tones and intensities of emotion that no other can equal, and the same could be said of Kate Bush’s unique voice.

She can move in an instant from the deepest of growls to the most sublime falsettos. Likewise, Beck possessed the ability to turn on a dime and take the listener to places never imagined.

A lament for loss, “You’re the One” was written by Bush at a time she later revealed had been particularly tough on a personal level. She needed someone who could turn that pain into joy.

Enter Jeff Beck.

Played over the gospel-flavored keyboard of Procul Harum’s Gary Brooker, Beck’s guitar solo finds endless ways to twist, turn and manipulate the melody into a statement of salvation and hope. It rises, phoenix-like, from a world gone wrong.

As Bush’s vocal sears with raw pain, Beck’s guitar solo brings a gentle, restorative calm.

As was so often the case, it is his ability to speak volumes with a handful of notes that brings the song home on an optimistic note.

7. “A Thousand Shades” by Ozzy Osbourne from ‘Patient Number 9’ (2022)

Beck’s most recent work on this list, his playing here is as fresh and unexpectedly disarming as anything he ever recorded.

Ozzy has worked with some true legends of guitar – all of whom would happily defer to Beck as the master.

Taken at a slower pace than many of Osbourne’s songs, there is a hint of Beatles-esque melancholia about this track (unsurprising given Ozzy’s oft-stated love of the Fab Four.)

Beck’s guitar asserts itself from the moment it appears, instantly transforming a standard mid-paced rocker into something transcendental.

The solo finds ways to continue ascending with quirky phrasing and virtuosic whammy bar moves. This utterly unique take on melodic invention enables Beck to find nuances in the song that Osbourne surely could not have conceived of.

Beck and Ozzy were both well into their 70s when this track was recorded; proof, if ever it were needed, that rock music is the elixir of youth. There is no trace of the miles on the clock in Osbourne’s voice or the insane energy that Beck imparts with every flurry of notes and unerringly precise flick of his vibrato arm.

8. “People Get Ready (feat. Rod Stewart)” from Jeff Beck’s ‘Flash’ (1985)

Rod Stewart and Beck's musical connection goes way back, with Stewart delivering vocals for the guitarist’s first two albums, Truth and Beck-Ola in 1968 and 1969, respectively.

During the ‘70s, Stewart became a household name as he shot to fame as a solo artist. And while the singer had expressed some unhappiness concerning the Jeff Beck Group early on, he later became much more positive about his time with the band.

Beck had spoken fondly of Stewart and his vocal prowess, thus the stage was set for some kind of musical rapprochement.

Having featured on Stewart’s 1984 LP Camouflage, Beck asked him to return the favor by appearing on his Flash album released the following year.

For Stewart’s collaboration, Beck had earmarked the gospel-like “People Get Ready” – a Billboard hit for the Impressions in 1965.

Written by Curtis Mayfield (no slouch on the guitar himself!) Beck took this stirring melody and rendered its every minute inflection with an almost absurdly light touch.

Beck was able to convey every nuance of Mayfield’s vocal before Stewart even got to sing a note. But when Stewart does enter the fray, he delivers one of the strongest performances in his catalog, and the half-step key change towards the end sets the seal on a truly uplifting tune.

9. “Love Is the Light” by Beverley Craven from ‘Love Scenes’ (1993)

Perhaps the most unlikely collaboration of Beck’s long career is this track with the somewhat maudlin, U.K.-based singer-songwriter, Beverley Craven.

Seemingly, the two artists have nothing whatsoever in common and it is appears unlikely their paths would ever have crossed – much less that Beck would play on one of her songs.

However, there was a connection.

Love Scenes, Craven’s second studio album, was produced by Paul Samwell-Smith, Beck’s former Yardbirds bandmate from way back in the ‘60s. He managed to rope Beck in to play on three tracks, the best of which, “Love Is the Light,” sees the guitarist deliver a solo that turns a fairly anonymous MOR piano ballad into a serious musical statement.

From the first note Beck plays, the outrageously supple fluidity of his technique elevates the song to a whole new level.

Beck’s guitar stands out clearly from the backing – indeed, it is perhaps one of the most exposed-sounding lead breaks in his collaborative catalog. Furthermore, it is arguably the most transformative a contribution he has made to a recording that would otherwise appear unremarkable.

10. “Can’t Start Over Again” by Dion from ‘Blues With Friends’ (2020)

On an album crammed full of astounding guitar players, including Billy Gibbons, Joe Bonamassa, Sonny Landreth and Brian Setzer, it is Beck who steals the show on Dion’s blues collaborations collection.

Dion himself attested to the importance of Beck’s contribution. “I’ll be honest, when Jeff Beck said yes, I think I knew anybody else would say yes to playing on the album,” he stated. “Like, okay, it’s bona fide, certified, y’know? That was important because Jeff is such a huge talent, and his presence has such a weight.”

Ironically, given the overall blues feel of the album, Beck’s contribution was to a song that had something of a Hank Williams feel about it. His guitar mimics the sound of a pedal steel at times and exudes intense emotion.

What he plays on the intro is amazing enough, but the solo appears extraordinary as Beck mixes chords, harmonics and microscopically accurate microtonal bends.

“Anything he plays is just mesmerizing,” agreed Dion. “He’s one of the greatest guitarists on the planet. We have a lot of great roots in common – he loves rock and roll. I saw him do a version of ‘People Get Ready’ at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame where he did about six choruses of solos and each one was amazing.

“He’s the only guitarist who can make me cry.”

On this day in 1996, Pink Floyd were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan.

“Pink Floyd are the ultimate rock and roll anomaly,” said Corgan during his speech. “They sold massive amounts of records, have always been a popular live band, and they were never a singles-driven band – a lesson forever needed to be learned in this particular business.”

“Everyone is different, everyone has a different approach to the music,” said co-founder Richard Wright (1943-2008) as he collected his award. “But we’ve all touched people, I hope, with our music. And that’s all we want to do.”

During his acceptance speech, keys player Wright expressed his gratitude for co-founder Syd Barrett (1946-2006) who led Pink Floyd following their inception in the mid-‘60s before a severe decline in the guitarist/singer’s mental health forced a parting of ways in 1968.

That evening, members of the band along with Corgan performed a poignant rendition of the David Gilmour/Roger Waters-penned Pink Floyd classic “Wish You Were Here.”

While absence is the theme of the Wish You Were Here album, the title track’s lyrics are open to personal interpretation (“It’s a big hit at funerals” Gilmour told filmmaker John Edgington.)

However, in the 2012 documentary Pink Floyd: The Story of Wish You Were Here, Gilmour maintains that he “can't sing it without thinking about Syd."

In the wake of the dizzying global success of 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon album, Pink Floyd began recording its follow-up, Wish You Were Here, in 1975 amidst confusion and bewilderment.

“We were clueless for a long time,” Gilmour told Paul Rappaport. “We were faffing about blindly trying to find a way forward. That sort of ‘blindly wandering about not knowing what the fuck we were doing’ was what helped to create what came: with [the Barrett tribute] “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” and the whole of that Wish You Were Here album.”

The opening guitar part on “Wish You Were Here” was recorded using a 1971 Martin D-28-12 Gilmour bought second-hand. Strumming this newly acquired acoustic guitar in the control room of Abbey Road’s Studio 3 he suddenly hit on the now iconic riff.

Speaking of the AM radio-style effect used on the recording, Gilmour revealed their vision was to create the sound of a guitar playing on the radio while the listener joined in with a second acoustic.

This lead part was played on Gilmour’s once-treasured 1969 Martin D-35 – an instrument he identified during a 2003 Guitar Player interview as being the guitar with the most songs attached to it.

Nevertheless, during his epic 2019 charity auction at Christie’s in New York, Gilmour’s D-35 and D-28-12 were sold for a massive $1,095,000 and $531,000, respectively.

Following the sales, Gilmour collaborated with Martin on a pair of signature flat-tops inspired by these legendary acoustics, the Martin D-35 David Gilmour and Martin D-35 David Gilmour Twelve String.

The résumé of Andy Fairweather Low reads like a checklist of music stars.

Among those hundreds of musicians with whom the Welsh guitarist has played are the likes of Eric Clapton, Bill Wyman, George Harrison, Roger Waters, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Buddy Guy, Bob Dylan, B.B. King, Joe Satriani, Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown and Kate Bush.

His illustrious career began in the late ‘60s as a founding member and frontman of chart-topping rockers Amen Corner.

By the mid-’70s, Fairweather Low had struck out on a solo career, releasing his debut LP, Spider Jiving, in 1974.

Aided by Glyn Johns, he released his highly acclaimed sophomore album, La Booga Rooga, in 1975, followed by Be Bop 'N' Holla in 1976.

Fairweather Low’s significant vocal contributions to the Who’s 1978 top ten album Who Are You and rhythm guitar work on the band’s 1982 LP It's Hard led to him becoming one of the most in-demand session players in the business.

With the phone ringing off the hook, the maestro managed to squeeze out another solo album in 1980 – Mega Shebang. But it would be 26 years later when the long-awaited follow-up appeared – the Johns-produced Sweet Soulful Music.

Zone-O-Tone by Andy Fairweather Low & the Lowriders arrived in 2013 and the band enjoyed a slot supporting Eric Clapton (with whom he has worked since the early ‘90s) on tour that year.

Maintaining his loyal fanbase, Fairweather Low managed to tour yearly ever since, until lockdown put the kibosh on gigging.

Like so many musicians during this difficult period, the guitarist was effectively forced off the road. But what better way to spend that time than writing and recording a new album?

“I’d always been writing and scribbling away,” says Fairweather Low. “I do my demos at home on a Boss 1180, and I love my demos. They’re not sort of high-tech quality sound, but they’ve got a thing about them.”

Settling into Wales’s storied Rockfield Studios, the Low Riders’ Paul Beavis was drafted in to lay down drum tracks. Fairweather Low played all other instruments.

“The only thing I can’t stand is the drum machine that I use,” he explains. “So this time, I thought, I’ll tell you what, I’ll go to Rockfield, and I’ll do my demos but at a better level – a better technical level – and with a proper drummer.

“I asked Paul Beavis, the Low Riders’ drummer, if he’d come and sort of duplicate the drum patterns that I had, and he said yes, and off we went.”

Entering the hallowed grounds of Rockfield was like a homecoming for Fairweather Low whose history with the studio goes back decades.

“In 1965, I was there. And the staircase that I put my foot on is still there,” he recalls. “I put my foot on it again and it was a bizarre feeling, but it was also the perfect thing.”

Although the guitarist hadn’t planned on making an album, the stars suddenly aligned when Rockfield co-founder, Kingsley Ward, suggested he pay them a visit.

“Two years of Covid, and I didn’t know what to do,” continues Fairweather Low. “And then Kingsley suggested that I come down. And I thought, you know what? I think I’ll take Kingsley up on his offer. And I did.

“‘You don’t have to pay, you know, you can have it for nothing, just come down and do something, it will be good to see you’, Kingsley said. And it was like going home. It’s become like part of a family really, part of the Rockfield family. It did complete a circle. It was just meant to be.”

The result is Flang Dang – an album described in a recent review by our U.K. sibling magazine, Guitarist, as “a notable return to form” and “a joyful party.”

Slated for release on February 24, 2023, via Last Music Company, the album’s eleven tracks cross genres while maintaining Fairweather Low’s eminently soulful touch.

“There are a lot of soulful and gospel-tinged songs, there’s a bit of blues, there’s a bit of ska, there’s a bit of country, there’s a bit of everything,” he points out. “It’s everything I’ve ever listened to.

“My perspective on music since Sweet Soulful Music has not really changed. It’s always the same approach. It was my demos then, it’s my demos now. And I have days when I’m sort of spiritual and I have days when I’m not.

“It’s a constant conversation. So, I’m not tied down to anything.”

Ahead of Flang Dang’s release, Fairweather Low has unveiled the groove-laden "Somebody Wants My Soul."

Listen out for the vibey, fuzzed-out guitar solo from 2:20.

“When I hear this track, I hear Rockfield,” he told us. “I hear the room. Love the groove. Love the guitar sound.

“What’s not to l like? I’m souled!”

Pre-order Andy Fairweather Low's new album, Flang Dang, here.

Syd Barrett picked up the guitar during the skiffle boom before falling under the spell of the blues. 

In the mid-1960s, he named his combo the Pink Floyd after American bluesmen Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.

The group might have continued in that vein if Barrett hadn’t begun dropping acid regularly, opening his mind to a host of new avenues of musical exploration.

By April 1966, months before Hendrix arrived in London, Pink Floyd were performing an extended jam called “Interstellar Overdrive,” on which Barrett created searing swells of echo by sliding his Zippo lighter over the strings of a Danelectro or Fender Esquire electric guitar, which he plugged into a Binson Echorec.

The group's wild improvisations made them the flagship for London’s psychedelic rock scene, but their momentum was short-lived.

Following a disastrous tour of America in 1968, Barrett eventually drifted away from the band, an early acid casualty.

Working solo, in 1970 he released The Madcap Laughs and Barrett, a pair of largely acoustic guitar albums filled with whimsical and charmingly eccentric tunes that proved influential to future psychedelic purveyors.

Sadly, his continued mental deterioration led him to retire from music and become a recluse.

“All I ever wanted to do as a kid was play guitar properly and jump around,” he told Rolling Stone in 1971, “but too many people got in the way.”

Last month, Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast where he told the tragic story of Barrett.

“Syd went crazy in 1967,” remembers Waters. “By ’69, we weren’t seeing him anymore; he’d disappeared completely.”

Barrett’s singular brand of quintessentially English eccentricity fed directly into his songs. Writing outré lyrics with odd meters, his compositions were integral to the identity of Pink Floyd. 

Naturally, Barrett's condition called into question the future of the entire band.

“How could we possibly survive?” says Waters. “If the guy who writes the songs in the band goes crazy, you’re fucked, basically.

“Unless somebody else starts to write. Luckily, I did.”

Watch this insightful interview clip here…

Browse the Syd Barrett catalog here.

Browse the Pink Floyd catalog here.

Progressive rock’s most expressive lead guitarist, David Jon Gilmour was born in Cambridge, England, on March 6, 1946. Joining Pink Floyd in 1968, Gilmour would go on to lead the band to international success as one of the highest-selling groups in music history.

Here are five reasons Gilmour is a guitar legend…

1. Early Starter

As a youngster, he became interested in music after hearing early rock and roll hits by Bill Haley, Elvis Presley and the Everly Brothers. At age 13, he borrowed his neighbor’s guitar and never returned it, teaching himself to play using The Folksinger’s Guitar Guide, a lesson book and record by Pete Seeger. While in grammar school, he befriended future Pink Floyd founders Syd Barrett and Roger Waters.

2. Prog Rock Pioneer

In December 1967, Gilmour was invited to join Pink Floyd as guitarist and co-vocalist to help cover for the increasingly erratic Barrett, who would leave the following year. The band became one of prog-rock’s most influential and successful acts through albums like The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall. Following Waters’ departure in 1985, Gilmour led the band through three more studio albums before they broke up in 2014.

3. Signature Style

During this time, Gilmour became known for his distinctive lead guitar style, characterized by bluesy phrasing and expressive note bends. His main electric guitar was his legendary Black Strat, which he purchased at Manny’s in New York City in 1970 and modified frequently. His tone also relied on effects like the Binson Echorec delay, the Colorsound Power Boost, and rotary speakers by Leslie, Yamaha and Maestro.

4. Collaboration

In addition to releasing four acclaimed solo albums, including 2015’s Rattle That Lock, Gilmour helped Kate Bush get her career started and has worked with artists including Roy Harper, Jimmy Page and Paul McCartney.

5. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Gilmour was inducted with Pink Floyd into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, and in 2003 was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).

Browse David Gilmour releases here.

This historic performance was filmed 50 years ago in the ancient Roman amphitheater of Pompeii, Italy. Built around 70 BC it’s hard to imagine one of today’s venues surviving well over 2,000 years (or indeed what kind of performances might take place in the fifth millennium!) Regardless, this timeless rendition of “Echoes” still sounds powerful today.

Performed in front of an audience of absolutely nobody (aside from crew), the bulk of the Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii concert footage was shot in October 1971. Released the same month, side two of Pink Floyd’s sixth studio album, Meddle¸ comprises solely of “Echoes” in its hypnotic twenty-three-and-a-half minutes entirety.

In addition to the Roman amphitheater’s naturally reverberant acoustics echoes were produced using Italian-made Binson Echorec 2 units. (As they say: When in Rome, do as the Romans do!) 

A favorite of Pink Floyd since the Syd Barrett era, Echorecs utilize a revolving magnetic drum rather than tape to produce delay effects.

Listen out for David Gilmour’s brilliant electric guitar solo that kicks in around 4:27. Here he makes great use of a Fuzz Face fitted with silicon BC108 transistors. These fuzzes produce a characteristically smooth yet gritty distortion sound. 

Though Gilmour previously enjoyed using a Fuzz Face fitted with the original-style germanium NKT275 transistors he switched to silicon in 1971. With more high-end gain silicon fuzzes tend to bite through a band mix more easily, hence germanium fuzzes are often described as ‘warmer’ sounding.

During the solo, Gilmour’s famous late ‘60s Fender Stratocaster known as the ‘Black Strat’ is clearly visible, albeit in a more original form. Over the years, Gilmour continuously modified this guitar. 

While the instrument retained a black (over Sunburst) finish the neck was changed on several occasions, the body was routed for a Kahler vibrato and XLR output, and the original pickups were replaced.

Originally released in 1972, Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii has seen numerous rereleases over the years. In 2017, David Gilmour released his Live at Pompeii album and film having revisited the location to perform the previous year – this time with an audience present.

Click here to buy Pink Floyd – Live at Pompeii (Director's Cut).

This week in 1967, Pink Floyd released their landmark debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Other monumental debuts that year include The Doors’ and The Grateful Dead’s eponymous long-players, along with Janis Joplin’s Big Brother & the Holding Company and Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced albums.

Politically and culturally, it was the dawn of a new era, with music taking center stage in the countercultural movement on both sides of the pond. And while psychedelic rock fueled the soundtrack to the Summer of Love, not everybody was on board.

In this 1967 clip from the BBC show The Look of The Week, presenter Hans Keller introduces Pink Floyd as “a bit boring” before grilling Syd Barrett and Roger Waters about their band’s use of loud guitar amps. “I want to ask one fundamental question: Why has it all got to be so terribly loud?” he enquires, bristling with irritation.

"For me, frankly, it’s too loud. I just can’t bear it. I happen to have grown up in the string quartet which is a bit softer,” says Keller, at which point Barrett and Waters share a knowing look.

“That’s the way we like it. And we didn’t grow up with a string quartet,” counters Waters. “I guess that could be one of the reasons why it is loud. It doesn’t sound terribly loud to us.”

“Yes. Actually, not everybody who hasn’t grown up in a string quartet turns into a loud pop group. So, your reason is not altogether convincing,” argues Keller.

Keller’s summary of Pink Floyd ends with more of a psychoanalytical diagnosis than an introduction to one of the world’s most influential rock bands. “My verdict is that it is a little bit of a regression to childhood,” he concludes. “But, after all, why not?”

Why not, indeed?

Get The Piper at the Gates of Dawn here.

For our new "50 Years of Prog" issue, Guitar Player sat down with – among others – the legendary David Gilmour.

Between an appearance at last year's Peter Green tribute concert, a new piece of music called “Yes, I Have Ghosts,” and a new Martin signature acoustic guitar, Gilmour has kept quite busy in recent times, and had plenty to talk about. However, we couldn't resist asking him: “Pink Floyd so far is a three-act play. Will there ever be a fourth act?”

To that, he replied: "No. I’m done with it. I’ve had a life in Pink Floyd for quite a lot of years, and quite a few of those years at the beginning, with Roger. And those years in what is now considered to be our heyday were 95 percent musically fulfilling and joyous and full of fun and laughter. And I certainly don’t want to let the other five percent color my view of what was a long and fantastic time together. 

"But it has run its course, we are done, and it would be fakery to go back and do it again."

Gilmour went on to invoke the band's co-founder and keyboardist, Richard Wright, who died of lung cancer in 2008.

"To do it without Rick would just be wrong," he said. "I’m all for Roger doing whatever he wants to do and enjoying himself and getting the joy he must have had out of those Wall shows. I’m at peace with all of these things. But I absolutely don’t want to go back. I don’t want to go and play stadiums. I’m free to do exactly what I want to do and how I want to do it."

To buy the "50 Years of Prog" issue of Guitar Player, with the full Gilmour interview, head on over to Magazines Direct.