<DIV>Mark Blake draws on his own interviews with band members as well as the group&#8217;s friends, road crew, musical contemporaries, former housemates, and university colleagues to produce a riveting history of one of the biggest rock bands of all time. We follow Pink Floyd from the early psychedelic nights at UFO, to the stadium-rock and concept-album zenith of the seventies, to the acrimonious schisms of the late &#8217;80s and &#8217;90s. Along the way there are fascinating new revelations about Syd Barrett&#8217;s chaotic life at the time of <I>Piper at the Gates of Dawn</I>, the band&#8217;s painstaking and Byzantine recording sessions at Abbey Road, and the fractious negotiations to bring about their fragile, tantalizing reunion in Hyde Park. <P>Meticulous, exacting, and ambitious as any Pink Floyd album, <I>Comfortably Numb</I> is the definitive account of this most adventurous&#8212;and most English&#8212;rock band.</DIV>