Pink Floyd: Shine On – The Definitive Oral History
(New Modern, 2025)
‘I love this book. The narrative device that Mark Blake has employed works so well that it’s like watching a great documentary in your head.’ Lee Harris, guitarist Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets
‘Bitchily entertaining.’ Irish Independent
‘Mark Blake has done it again – another essential Pink Floyd book!’ Brain Damage, Pink Floyd News Resource
‘If oral histories are generally more about sculpting than writing, then Pink Floyd Shine On is the Michelangelo’s David of the genre.’ Record Collector
‘The whole brilliant, sorry saga rendered through an echo-chamber of voices… the breadth of the interviews is impressive and the anecdotes frequently telling.’ Mojo
‘Informative, funny, bitchy and sad. I love it.’ Comedy writer David Quantick
When I was writing Us And Them, my book about Hipgnosis, the sleeve designers, I kept coming across interviews I’d done and forgotten about with people involved in Pink Floyd’s story (including a 2014 conversation with drummer Nick Mason talking about getting his hair washed backstage at Top Of The Pops).
The seed was sewn. What about telling Pink Floyd’s story in their own words, and getting guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and bandleader David Gilmour to talk to me for it. Some years later and here it is…
Foreword to Pink Floyd: Shine On
It’s almost summer 2025 and I should have finished writing this book by now. Instead, I’m walking through a gentrified part of London on one of the warmest days of the year. Everybody is overheating and everyone is in a hurry.
Delivery drivers on push bikes jump traffic lights and slalom across the lanes, while pedestrians clutching plastic water bottles race to safety. As I walk past an Edwardian-era cinema and away from the main road, the landscape changes and there’s suddenly less people, less clamour.
A couple of minutes later, I arrive at a cobbled street, lined with Victorian-era coach houses – all gleaming white sash windows and pastel-shaded front doors. One of the residents is peering under the bonnet of a vintage sports car so brightly polished that you can see your reflection in it as you pass.
I arrive at my destination, ring the bell and wait. Pink Floyd’s guitarist David Gilmour opens the door, defying the tropical temperature in a pitch-black T-shirt and matching Levi’s. Up the stairs we go, to a living room devoid of rock-star paraphernalia and dominated by two sumptuous sofas and a Bösendorfer piano.
Gilmour cracks a smile and then, like a conjurer pulling a rabbit from a hat, produces a copy of a book I wrote about his group seventeen years ago. Some of the pages have their corners turned down; on others, I glimpse incriminating squiggles of ink. How is this going to end?
Gilmour puts on his spectacles, kicks off his shoes, wiggles his bare toes and opens the book.
Where to begin, though…