Published by La Mascara, October 1998

Available to buy through this special link.

The range of non-English language books on Pink Floyd is quite a bouyant one, and here's a French title to tickle your fancy. And for those of you who struggle with the language, the visual side of things might attract...

Published towards the end of 1998, this large format (around A4/letter size), eighty page tome has a similar look to Miles' classic book. The rear of the book welcomes you to "the history of the big 'space rock' machine" - which is a shame as this is exactly what the band have been at pains to point out for many years, is NOT what they are about! The book takes things right up until the release of Richard Wright's album Broken China in 1996. Written by an Italian, and translated into French, colour and black & white photos predominate making it very accessible to non-French speakers.

As an added incentive(?) there is a free poster with this new (reprinted in 2003) edition, featuring the cover picture without the box-out extra shots. I'm sure that this will interest some people...

As is typical for books from the home of the Eiffel Tower, there are a selection of nice, unusual photos, many of which have not been seen elsewhere. It seems that French picture archives are a goldmine of live and studio shots - the reasons for this over other countries archives is not clear. Anyway, it always makes exploring French Floyd books such fun!

In this instance, the sixties shots are. on the whole, common ones, but there are some new seventies pictures, including Wall show pictures, and a nice, full page Gilmour from what looks like Crystal Palace, May 1971. There's also quite a few from the 1984 Gilmour and Waters tours, again not seen elsewhere, mixed in with the more common "press release" style pictures. Finally, a selection of fairly dull stock shots from 1987, 1988, and 1994.

The text uses a lot of interview comments throughout to advance the story, and also features a selection of song lyrics towards the back of the book. The lyrics include some little errors though and some strange songs are selected (for example, One Slip and Not Now John).

There's a full discography with track listings at the end of the book, which includes many of the collaboration projects, and even some bootlegs! These were presumably from the author's collection... some unusual titles included and some "classic" boots are missing from the list. Diverting but not overly useful or essential.

Like a French version of Miles, but a lot less date driven, the book is a worthwhile addition to the collection particularly for the pictures - not so much for the text and data included.

The book is currently available from Amazon by following this special link.