News

Bhaskar Menon, largely credited with making Pink Floyd a household name in the United States, died March 4 at his home in Beverly Hill, Calif. He was 86.

Menon, a native of Thiruvanthapuram, India, was founding chairman and CEO at EMI Music Worldwide, and served as president and CEO of Capitol Records in Los Angeles at the time Floyd released “The Dark Side of the Moon” in 1973.

“The story in America was a disaster, in that we really hadn’t sold records,” Floyd drummer Nick Mason says. “So they brought in a man called Bhaskar Menon who was absolutely terrific. He decided he was going to make this work, and make the American company sell (‘The Dark Side of the Moon’). And he did.”

Under Menon’s direction, “Dark Side” reached #1 on the Billboard chart and become one of the greatest selling albums of all time. In doing so he helped turn around Capitol’s finances, which were in shambles after the break-up of its biggest-selling act, The Beatles.

While helping steering “Dark Side” to success was perhaps his biggest achievement during the seven years he spent at Capitol, Menon also oversaw successful releases from other bands such as Wings, Steve Miller Band, Grand Funk Railroad, Linda Ronstadt, Helen Reddy and Natalie Cole.

Menon left Capitol in 1978 and the music business altogether in the early-’90s to found International Media Investments, an investment and consulting firm for media businesses.

Film director Alan Parker (center) died today after a lengthy illness. He was 76.

With more than two dozen films to his credit, Pink Floyd fans knew him best for directing 1982’s “Pink Floyd The Wall.”

Parker was nominated for Oscars twice — for “Midnight Express” (1978) and “Mississippi Burning” (1988) — and directed a number of musical films in addition to “The Wall,” including “The Commitments” (1991), “Evita” (1996) and “Fame” (1982).

“When I go to film festivals and they show my films, they always include ‘The Wall,’ and it’s always packed out,” he said in 2016. “So, it always appears wimpy to say I hated making it. I have mellowed a bit and say it was a ‘tortured but highly creative time’ – not to be repeated.”

Parker was one of an artistic trio that formed the film’s creative nucleus, which included animator Gerald Scarfe and Floyd’s Roger Waters.

British World War II-era vocalist Vera Lynn died this morning. She was 103.

Lynn was name-checked in Roger Waters‘s “Vera,” which appeared on Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” (1979).

The song opens with the lyric, “Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn?” The song also references one of her most famous songs: “We’ll Meet Again.”

Her recording of “The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot” plays during the opening of the film “Pink Floyd The Wall” (1982).

The New York Times reports that filmmaker Peter Whitehead died on June 10. He was 82.

Whitehead directed the 1967 film “Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London,” a portrait of the city’s swinging ’60s scene that featured a young Pink Floyd.

Music from the film, “Interstellar Overdrive” and “Nick’s Boogie,” were released in 1995 as the EP “Pink Floyd London ’66/’67.”

Whitehead also directed “Charlie Is My Darling,” a 1966 film documenting The Rolling Stones‘ tour of Ireland.

(Photo: Tim Kantor/The New York Times)

Vocalist Claudia Fontaine died yesterday. She was 57.

An accomplished vocalist who began working in her teens, she provided backing vocals for Pink Floyd on the 1994 tour of “The Division Bell,” which would become the “Pulse” (1995) album.

A member of Afrodiziak in the ’80s (pictured, with Fontaine on the left), Fontaine also worked with Elvis Costello & the Attractions, The Specials, The Jam, Howard Jones , Squeeze, Joe Cocker and many others.

British physicist Stephen Hawking has died. He was 76.

In addition to being one of the world’s brightest and best-known scientists, Pink Floyd fans know him as a voice on the band’s “The Division Bell” (1994) album.

Hawking lived with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a neurodegenerative disease also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and communicated using a speech synthesizer. It’s his synthesizer heard on the song “Keep Talking.”

The spoken passage came from a 1994 British Telecommunications television ad that caught the attention of Floyd’s David Gilmour. He described the passage to The Guardian in 2014 as “the most powerful piece of television advertising that I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Hawking is also heard on Floyd’s “The Endless River” (2014) on the song “Talkin’ Hawkin’.”