Pink Floyd Shine On :The Definitive Oral History
Pink Floyd Shine On :The Definitive Oral History
hardback
Published:
9 October, 2025
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Description
A Mojo Book of the Year 2025
“Informative, funny, bitchy and sad. I love it” David Quantick
“Michelangelo's David of the genre” Record Collector
“A compelling retelling of the story” Mojo
The definitive oral history of Pink Floyd as told by friends, associates, family members and the band themselves through exclusive, never before published interviews.
Bestselling music author Mark Blake has been an associate and collaborator of Pink Floyd for over thirty years. Shine On takes on the behemoth task of capturing the most comprehensive history of the band ever compiled, drawing on huge amounts of new, archive and unpublished interview material with Gilmour, Waters, Mason and Wright. No other writer has interviewed the members of Pink Floyd as often nor as thoroughly, which is candidly apparent in this textured, gripping and consistently surprising biography. For the first time, the band's story is told as an oral history with each chapter presented through the words the band, their friends, contemporaries and supporting musicians. The accessible structure and high level of detail means that the narrative is both approachable to casual readers and magnetic to the committed.
Shine On is comprised of a significant amount of previously unpublished material, including a rare interview with Rosemary Breen lamenting that her younger brother Roger, aka Syd Barrett, should have never become a musician as well as exclusive new interviews with the band and their associates, reflecting on their enduring legacy and rather more complicated recent twists and turns in the bands story.
Shine On is a skilful retelling of one of the most turbulent and enduring groups in rock music history, a complex history that only someone as skilled and insightful as Blake can navigate.
More Details
| Type | Book |
|---|---|
| ISBN13 | 9781917923057 |
| ISBN10 | 1917923058 |
| Number Of Pages | 418 |
| Item Weight | 1000 g |
| Publisher / Reseller | Putman Publishing |
| Format | hardback |
Media Reviews
“Mark Blake, have a cigar! This is a sensational book!” -- Shaun Keaveny * BBC Radio 2 *
“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 *
“Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here album has just had its 50th birthday, and if you want a candid insight into its creation – and everything else Floyd – then you can’t go wrong with Mark Blake’s new book, Pink Floyd Shine On.Stating a biography to be “definitive” tends to be a grand claim, but Shine On lives up to its subtitle” * Buzz Magazine *
“A brisk account of the career of the beat curious Cambridge eccentrics who added whimsy, experimentation and theatrical excess to rock 'n' roll 8/10” * Uncut *
“Mark Blake has done it again - another essential Pink Floyd book, full of new information, and a great companion to Pigs Might Fly” -- Brain Damage * Pink Floyd News Resource *
“Righteous and exhaustive account of one of the biggest bands of all time. If oral histories are generally more about sculpting than writing, then Pink Floyd Shine On is the Michelangelo's David of the genre 5/5” * Record Collector *
“The whole brilliant, sorry saga rendered through an echo-chamber of voices… the breadth of the interviews is impressive, the power struggles endless, and the anecdotes frequently telling 4/5” * Mojo *
“Informative, funny, bitchy and sad. I love it” -- David Quantick
“A delve into the cracks between the well trodden paving slabs of the Floyd saga. A granular level of detail (and) a poignant sense of history becoming myth. A brand new retelling” * Prog Magazine *
GoodReads Reviews
Author's Bio
Mark Blake is the world's authority on Pink Floyd having closely worked with the band for the past 35 years. He is the author of the bestselling Pink Floyd biography Pigs Might Fly (2007) and more recently Magnifico! The A-Z of Queen and Dreams: The Many Lives of Fleetwood Mac. Mark lives in London and contributes regularly to Mojo magazine