News

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’.”

Evelyn Rose, the enigmatic one-time girlfriend of Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett, has died.

The official Syd Barrett Facebook page and The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit website report she passed away yesterday at the age of 69.

Nicknamed “Iggy the Eskimo” for her alleged Inuit heritage — she was born in Pakistan and lived in India and Aden before moving to England — Rose is the nude woman on the back cover of Barrett’s 1970 “The Madcap Laughs” album.

In the February 2011 issue of MOJO magazine, she told writer Mark Blake she’d helped Barrett paint the striped floor of his apartment the morning of the photo shoot, before photographer Mick Rock and sleeve designer Storm Thorgerson arrived.

In the article, Rose said, if you examine the photo closely, “I have paint on the soles of my feet.” She also stated when Rock and Thorgerson arrived, she left the room to dress, but stayed sans clothes at the insistence of Barrett. “That was his wicked sense of humor,” she said.

Photos: “The Madcap Laughs” back cover (Photo: Mick Rock), top; Iggy in 2011 (Photo: Chris Lanaway)

Pink Floyd drum technician Clive Brooks has died.

The news was announced by the official Nick Mason Facebook account. “With a heavy heart our Pink Floyd family say(s) farewell to dear Clive Brooks, drum technician extraordinaire, who sadly passed away,” the post reads.

Brooks, a London native, was drummer with bands Uriel, Egg and The Groundhogs in the late-’60s through mid-’70s.

He became a drum technician for Pink Floyd in the ’80s, working on the Momentary Lapse of Reason tour, and The Division Bell album and tour.

He also served as drum tech for Jeff Wayne‘s 2007 “The War of the Worlds” tour, Toto, Robbie Williams and Floyd tribute act The Australian Pink Floyd Show.

According to Wikipedia, on June 13, 1981, opening night of the last leg of “The Wall tour,” Brooks filled in for surrogate band drummer Willie Wilson who was ill.

Henry McCullough, whose utterance “I don’t know, I was really drunk at the time” can be heard on Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” (1973), has died.

He was 72 and passed away after a long illness at his home in Ballymoney, Northern Ireland.

McCullough played with Joe Cocker, Donovan, Leon Russell, Ronnie Laine, but, perhaps most famously, with Paul McCartney and Wings.

His contribution to “Dark Side” can be heard at the end of “Money,” recounting an argument he supposedly had with his wife the night before.

Sax player Raphael Ravenscroft died following a suspected heart attack suffered Sunday. He was 60.

Ravenscroft appeared on Pink Floyd‘s “The Final Cut” (1983) and Roger Waters‘s “The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking” (1984). He also played live with David Gilmour during his “About Face” tour in 1984.

His best-known contribution to recorded music is certainly his soaring sax work on Gerry Rafferty‘s “Baker Street” in 1978. A #2 hit in the United States, the song reportedly earned him only £27 for his time. And the check allegedly bounced.

In a 2011 interview, Ravenscroft said his work on that song had always irritated him, “because it’s out of tune. It’s flat. By enough of a degree that it irritates me at best.”

Ravenscroft also worked with Abba, Robert Plant, Marvin Gaye, America, Kim Carnes, Mike Oldfield and many others.

British actor Bob Hoskins has died of pneumonia. He was 71.

Though he had more than 100 film credits to his name going back to the early-’70s, Pink Floyd fans might know him best as the manager to Bob Geldof‘s character Pink in 1982’s “Pink Floyd The Wall.”

Hoskins had retired from acting in 2012 after learning he had Parkinson’s disease.