Pink Floyd's The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (Thirty Three and a Third series)

Rating:
Summary: The photo on the back
Review: I enjoyed reading Kim Dyson's review of my book and I appreciate the attention to detail in mentioning the photo on the rear cover. There's one point I'd like to clarify: it wasn't taken with a similar sort of lense to the cover of "Piper", it was taken with the exact same lense by Vic Singh, who shot the original Pink Floyd sleeve image. Thought you might like to know!
I tried to submit this without filling in the star rating box and the form would not go through, so inevitably I had to give it five!!

Rating:
Summary: Sensible about Syd
Review: Nearly everything that gets written about early Floyd these days focuses on Syd too much. Sure, he was the driving force behind the band in many ways, but there's only so much you can say about drugs and insanity before it just becomes pure speculation and it gets boring. Thankfully John Cavanagh has avoided all of that in this new book about "The Piper at the gates of Dawn." What Cavanagh has done is to interview a lot of the people who surrounded Floyd in their earliest days. Friends of the band, studio engineers, managemenet, etc. Cavanagh has managed to get some very interesting material and comments from most of these people, and what I liked most about this book is the obvious affection that everyone still has for the band and for this album. That comes through strongly here. Cavanagh brings it all together with a good strong narrative and takes you through the album on pretty much a track by track basis. There was a good amount of new information and insight in this book. Cavanagh even tracks down the photographer who took the photograph on the album sleeve, and amusingly there is a photo of the author on the back of this book, using the same type of lens. I know that not all Floyd fans are fans of this album, but it's a good introduction to how the band came into being, and why this album is still so specia.