Pink Floyd biography
In September 1963 Waters and Mason moved into a flat at 39 Stanhope Gardens near Crouch End London, owned by Mike Leonard, a part-time tutor at the Regent Street Polytechnic and Hornsey College of Art. Leonard was a designer of light machines (perforated discs spun by electric motors to cast patterns of lights on the walls) and for a time played keyboard with them using the front room of his flat for rehearsals. Mason later moved out of the flat, and guitar player Bob Klose moved in. Sigma 6 went through a number of other short-lived names, including The Meggadeaths, The (Screaming) Abdabs, Leonard's Lodgers, and The Spectrum Five before settling on The Tea Set. While Metcalfe and Noble left to form their own band, Klose and Waters were joined at Stanhope Gardens by Syd Barrett in 1964. Barrett had arrived in London in the autumn of 1963 to study at the Camberwell College of Art. Waters and Barrett were childhood friends; the bassist had often visited Barrett as he played guitar at his mother's house. In his book Mason said this about Barrett, "In a period when everyone was being cool in a very adolescent, self-conscious way, Syd was unfashionably outgoing; my enduring memory of our first encounter is the fact that he bothered to come up and introduce himself to me."
After The Tea Set lost Noble and Metcalfe's vocal abilities, Klose introduced the band to Chris Dennis, a technician with the Royal Air Force. Soon after, Dennis was posted to Bahrain, thrusting Barrett into the spotlight as front-man.
They became the resident band at the Countdown Club, near Kensington High Street in London, where from late night until early morning they played three sets of 90 minutes. According to Mason, this period "... was the beginning of a realisation that songs could be extended with lengthy solos." An audition for ITV's Ready Steady Go! soon followed (they were invited by the programme's producers to return the following week), as did another club, and two rock contests. After pressure from his father, and advice from his college tutors, Bob Klose quit during the summer of 1965 and Barrett took over on lead guitar. Sometime in autumn the band were first referred to as "The Pink Floyd Sound", a name created by Barrett on the spur of the moment when he discovered that another band, also called The Tea Set, were to perform at one of their gigs. (The name is derived from the given names of two blues musicians whose Piedmont blues records Barrett had in his collection, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council). Playing mostly rhythm and blues songs they began to receive paid bookings, including one for a performance at the Marquee Club in March 1966 where they were watched by Peter Jenner. A lecturer at the London School of Economics, Jenner was impressed by the acoustic effects Barrett and Wright created and, with his business partner and friend Andrew King, became their manager. The pair had little experience of the music industry and used inherited money to set up Blackhill Enterprises, purchasing new instruments and equipment for the band including a Selmer PA system. Under their guidance the band became part of London's underground music scene, playing at venues including All Saints Hall and The Marquee. While performing at the Countdown Club the band had experimented with long instrumental excursions and they began to expand upon these with rudimentary but visually powerful light shows, projected by coloured slides and domestic lights. To celebrate the launch of the London Free School's magazine International Times, they performed in front of a 2,000-strong crowd at the opening of The Roundhouse, attended by celebrities including Alexander Trocchi, Paul McCartney, and Marianne Faithfull. Jenner and King's diverse array of social connections helped gain the band important coverage in The Financial Times and The Sunday Times.
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