Customer Reviews

The Rough Guide to Pink Floyd (Rough Guide Music Guides)

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Sadly, this is just not worth reading. It may be nice to have to complete a collection. It is not as bad as the guide to the Velvet Underground but it is close. Just don't bother.

I picked this up on the cheap a few weeks ago, and to say the least, I'd be infuriated to have paid full price.

It only takes one example to prove how absolute shoddy, sloppy, and downright careless this author is with his subject matter:

"Waters, still touring DSOTM into 2008, managed just a cover of The Doors' 'Hello, I Love You' on _The Last Mimzy_ soundtrack." (this text refers to recent post-Live 8 activity).

That's *straight* from the text, page 152 to be precise.

Do yourselves a favor and avoid this tome. What looks like an actual good idea for a book, regarding how it's set up and divided among its chapters, flails and flounders about like a fish out of water, gasping for air and choking on its own not-so-hidden agenda. The author takes every opportunity to lob some of the nastiest and flat out *meanest* criticism I've ever read, and one can only think that somewhere along the line, he was advanced enough money to finance some kind of hatchet job. Harsh criticism and intelligent wit is one thing; snotty crassness, which this author delivers in spades, is something else altogether and comes from a very nasty place.

Spend your cash on any (or all) the books penned by Nick Schaffner, Mark Blake, Andy Mabbett, and Glen Povey / Ian Russell. With the sheer wealth of fantastic writing available on the Floyd, especially from these sources, there's absolutely no clear reason why anyone should pay full price for this.

Not much new here if you're a Floyd fan and you've read everything on the group

The new Blake bio on the group (called Comfortably Numb in the States) is a more worthwhile read. This really doesn't add much to what fans of the group already know

Lucky me I bought this used and very cheap. Toby Manning appears to be one of those music journalist or whatever he calls himself, who thinks if he doesn't like it, it must be awful. I am not sure he is a Floyd fan at all. I got the feeling he is a Syd Barrett fan and everything with Gilmour, he thinks, is second rate.

I was given this book as a gift, and I must say I am disappointed. While there is a lot of information here, the author mixes plenty of criticism into every article. For example, in just the section on the song Comfortably Numb, he calls the band both curmudgeonly and snobbish. I find Manning's tone pretentious and tedious after just a few minutes of reading. I get the feeling he may not really be a fan of the band, and that comes out on every page.

This book is one of the better sources for Pink Floyd information. As opposed to some books about the band, it gives a more timely and realistic view of the band in its earliest days. I highly recomment it for those interested in Pink Floyd.