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Pink Floyd · S1 E3
Hills Road
Cambridge in the early 1960s. Syd and Roger know each other from school and the local music scene. Rick Wright studies architecture in London. Nick Mason is at the Poly with Waters. The four future members of Pink Floyd are circling the same orbit
September 1962, Regent Street Polytechnic, Central London. Three architecture students who will never build a single building walk into the same corridor in the same week.
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High Hopes, Pink Floyd (1994)
From The Division Bell, the last Pink Floyd studio album featuring Rick Wright. Gilmour's slide guitar carries the melody on a single sustained note of longing, while the lyrics trace an arc from childhood wonder to adult resignation. Listen for how the song builds from its quiet opening to a thundering climax, mirroring the way time accelerates as you leave youth behind.
“We bonded over music immediately. None of us were particularly interested in architecture.”
— Nick Mason, from Mason, Nick. "Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd." Chronicle Books, 2004
Regent Street Polytechnic
309 Regent Street, London W1. The architecture school where Waters, Mason, and Wright met in 1962, now part of the University of Westminster.
TAP TO REVEAL: Which founding member of Pink Floyd was the only one who could read music?
The Fourth Corner
In 1964, Syd Barrett arrives in London from Cambridge to study painting at Camberwell College of Arts. He already knows Waters from the Cambridge scene, and within weeks of arriving he is sitting in on rehearsals. Syd brings something nobody else in the room has: songs.
Wot's... Uh the Deal, Pink Floyd
From Obscured by Clouds (1972), the soundtrack to Barbet Schroeder's film La Vallee. A gentle acoustic meditation on time passing and choices made, sung by Gilmour with a warmth that is rare in the Floyd catalogue. This is the sound of young men at a crossroads, choosing music over architecture and never looking back.
The musicians have found each other, but they are not yet a band. They cycle through half a dozen terrible names, play R&B covers at student dances, and wait for the spark that will turn a hobby into a revolution.
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