Pink Floyd Shine On
The Definitive Oral History
Published on 9. October 2025
400 pages
978-1-917923-06-4 (ISBN)
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task of capturing the most comprehensive history of the band ever compiled, drawing on huge amounts of new, archive and unpublished interview material with Gilmour, Waters, Mason and Wright.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Shine On is comprised of a significant amount of previously unpublished material, including a rare interview with Rosemary Breen lamenting that her younger brother Roger, aka Syd Barrett, should have never become a musician as well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.
"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task of capturing the most comprehensive history of the band ever compiled, drawing on huge amounts of new, archive and unpublished interview material with Gilmour, Waters, Mason and Wright.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
Person
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
