Pink Floyd & Cambridge Part 2.

Following on from yesterday’s blip……
The next (and last) time that I saw Pink Floyd live was on Sunday 28th June 1970 at the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music which was held at Shepton Mallett. A crowd of 150,000 had turned up, far in excess of the numbers expected and the site was overwhelmed. I had travelled from Birmingham during the night before on the back of a friend’s motorbike and, inevitably, we had broken down twice. Arriving at mid-day, we soon realised that it was pointless to queue for a ticket when most people were simply walking through the large holes in the fences. The Floyd had been due to appear at 8 pm on Saturday night but with bands arriving late because of the congested roads, everything ran behind schedule and they finally appeared on stage at 3 a.m. on Sunday morning. However, I’m not sure how much of their set I actually heard because I fell asleep before waking up at about 6 am to the dulcit tones of the American band, Canned Heat! A guy in the crowd called Michael Eavis saw an opportunity in all of this chaos, and later in the summer he organised the first ever Glastonbury Festival.

Back to  Cambridge and its Floyd connections. Barrett, Waters and Gilmour were already acquainted before Waters left to study at the Regent Street Polytechnic, London in 1962 where he met drummer Nick Mason and keyboard player Rick Wright. A couple of years later, Barrett also moved to London to study at Camberwell Art College. By 1965, they had formed a group and returned to Cambridge to play at the Homerton College Summer Dance in May 1965. In February 1967, they recorded their first album to critical acclaim and Syd’s ‘See Emily Play’ was a hit single. However, Syd was finding it difficult to cope for a number of reasons (drugs and perhaps underlying mental health issues are often quoted) and in January 1968, the band decided to go forward with Dave Gilmour, who had been called into the band, now replacing him permanently. The Floyd would, of course, become one of the most successful bands in musical history.

The photo of No 6 St. Margaret’s Square Cambridge was taken this morning. Syd lived here as a relative recluse between 1981 and his early death at the age of 60 with pancreatic cancer in 2006. A sad end to a life of so much unfulfilled potential.

Floyd fans could, with a bit of internet based research, follow a trail around the City visiting band members original homes or the places where the Cambridge members first played together or individually such as the Scout Hut on Perne Road or the United Reformed Church in Hartington Grove!
Finally here is a link about the sale of Syd’s house in 2006 from BBC ‘Look East’. It is clearly a VHS home copy uploaded to Youtube but worth a look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIodDvrRGys