Saucerful of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey

Listening to Pink Floyd’s music can be as enthralling as staring at a black-light poster, but that doesn’t mean their story is somnambulant. Stemming from the dark side of rock fame, the British band’s 26-year saga is a tale of one renowned drug casualty (founder Syd Barrett), a death obsession (singer-songwriter Roger Waters), and interband psychodramas. Saucerful of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey, a well-researched and straightforward account, includes interviews with nearly everyone who matters and provides a careful chronicle of Barrett’s sad mental meltdown. Floyd freaks should enjoy Schaffner’s details on the labored creations of ever-popular monoliths like Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall (not to mention the making of the band’s wonderfully elaborate album covers). But you don’t have to be a fan to appreciate the real story here: From trippy ’60s naïveté to ’70s excess to ’80s business-as-usual stadium tours, Pink Floyd’s story is an unwitting metaphor (unwitting even to Schaffner, it seems) of rock’s move into corporate big business. In the end, they too became just another brick in the wall. B