There is no singular face of London, and the best part of going on a dedicated private tour is that you will often see a very different side of the capital than if you seek out its most famous landmarks and tourist traps.
Even if you focus purely on music groups that have made London so vibrant and full of life over the years, the gritty riverside image of London presented by The Clash is very different to the technicolour vibrancy of The Beatles’ forays into the capital, which itself is at odds with the almost alien London depicted by David Bowie and his cast of personae.
One of the best intersections of the various artistic, cultural and social sides of London can perhaps be found with the progressive rock band Pink Floyd, a group that began at a Regent Street polytechnic school and ended on the banks of the Endless River Thames.
Here are some of the most important sights you need to visit on a Pink Floyd-inspired tour.
University Of Westminster, Regent Street
Part of the University of Westminster since 1992, 309 Regent Street was home to the Royal Polytechnic Institution, the first of its kind to open in London. Its tearoom was also where Pink Floyd started to coalesce in 1962.
Roger Waters met Nick Mason there, and they started to play in a loosely formed student band called Sigma 6 alongside Richard Wright.
Following several lineup changes and a huge number of names such as the Screaming Abdabs, the Meggadeaths and the Tea Set, the final quartet of Mr Waters, Mr Mason, Mr Wright, and the younger guitarist Syd Barrett would come together as the Pink Floyd Sound in 1965.
A plaque now stands on the wall of the building that allowed all of this to happen.
The UFO Club
Analogous to The Roxy of the 1970s and the Blitz of the early 1980s, the UFO Club on Tottenham Court Road was a short-lived but incredibly influential venue that shaped the counter-culture movement in London and made Pink Floyd an underground sensation.
Pink Floyd’s unique mix of R&B standards and rather surreal and abrasive psychedelic rock meant that some venues adored them and others hated them so much that they refused to pay them.
The UFO Club had Pink Floyd as the house band and allowed them to play around with their elaborate makeshift light shows, particularly with the increasingly flamboyant performances of frontman Syd Barrett.
Unfortunately, Pink Floyd’s stint at the UFO was short-lived due to their extremely fast rise to prominence, and the UFO Club itself became a victim of its own success.
Much like The Roxy, a salacious article harmed its reputation, it constantly lost money, and an ill-fated move to the bigger Roundhouse (which Pink Floyd also played a lot) led to its closure after just nine months.
Sound Techniques
Based in an old dairy factory and now a block of flats, Sound Techniques was initially the home of the British folk-rock movement, where Nick Drake recorded Pink Moon and his other two highly influential albums.
Before this, Pink Floyd recorded their first few songs, including Arnold Layne and See Emily Play, in Sound Techniques before being signed to EMI and using their famous Abbey Road studios for their debut album, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn.
Chelsea Cloisters
Pink Floyd’s initial fame and attention would be thanks to their enigmatic frontman, Syd Barrett, but by 1967, his mental health had started to break down, which whilst it helped his reputation as a troubled, tormented genius, had started to cost the band tour dates and risked their future as a band.
They brought in David Gilmour to act as an additional guitarist on stage, but when attempts to make Mr Barrett a Brian Wilson-style songwriter failed, Syd was kicked out of the band.
His last main residence in London from 1973 to when he moved back home to Cambridge was Chelsea Cloisters, an affluent set of apartments where he lived largely in isolation following the release of the double album Syd Barrett until his royalty money ran out by the end of the decade.
Battersea Power Station
Before it became a major shopping and fine dining location, Battersea Power Station was a largely abandoned industrial building that would eventually become the central focus of the cover to the Pink Floyd albumAnimals.
The old industrial building with a floating inflatable pig between the two chimneys made Battersea Power Station a cultural landmark and contributed in no small part to the building not being demolished but instead repurposed asa mixed-use leisure venue.
