Pink Floyd with New Singer & Guitarist David Gilmour (1968)

Pink Floyd Plays With Their Brand New Singer & Guitarist David Gilmour on French TV (1968) In 1968, Pink Floyd’s relationship with increasingly drug-addled lead singer/songwriter/guitarist Syd Barrett unraveled. Though Barrett’s departure wasn’t officially announced until April, that band had already begun, by necessity, performing and recording without him late the previous year, adding guitarist David Gilmour to the lineup to supplant Syd’s erratic performances. In February of ’68 the band appeared minus Syd on a French live-music program called Baton Rouge. Sixties music blog A Dandy in Aspic describes the show as capturing during its year-long run “some of the best British Mod/Psych bands at their peak,” including The Small Faces, The Moody Blues, and the Yardbirds, with Jimmy Page. This Floyd footage, however, is especially significant for its portrait of the band finding its way through the trauma of its chief architect’s mental demise, with a seemingly awkward Gilmour taking over: “I