Pigs Might Fly: The Inside Story Of Pink Floyd
by Mark Blake

Read the lines, they’re scribbly black and everything shines

With an end seemingly drawn under the band by 2005’s Live8 reunion and Syd Barrett’s death a year later, esteemed music journalist Mark Blake has picked the perfect time to provide us with this weightiest and most comprehensive of tomes, which separates the myth from reality and gives us the definitive Pink Floyd read. While Pigs Might Fly might lack the personal humour and anecdotal nature of Nick Mason’s Inside Out: A Personal History Of Pink Floyd, there’s more than enough vibrancy to bring out the book’s most redeeming feature: its sheer volume of information. Over 400 pages are dedicated to interviews with friends, family and colleagues, both new and old, with Blake using his extensive contacts and work in the industry to draw on nearly half a decade of magazine articles, radio interviews and Floyd literature. Not a stone goes unturned, unheard or unread. This is, without question, the most complete and extensive work on the history of Pink Floyd yet, book-ended in equal measure by events of recent years. If the Floyd are now to be forever consigned to history, this could well prove to be the most concise of epitaphs for this most remarkable of bands.

ISBN 1845132610

Reviewed by Sam Coare
<< Back to Issue 343