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efforts of Pink Floyd's US record company, Capitol Records. Newly appointed chairman Bhaskar Menon reversed the relatively poor performance of the band's previous US releases, but, disenchanted with Capitol, the band and manager O'Rourke negotiated a new contract with Columbia Records. The Dark Side of the Moon was the last album that Pink Floyd were obliged to release before formally signing a new contract. Menon's efforts to secure a contract renewal with Pink Floyd were in vain, and the band signed for Columbia with a reported advance fee of $1M ($4,895,567 today), while in Britain and Europe they continued to be represented by Harvest Records. Pink Floyd returned to the studio in the first week of 1975. Alan Parsons had declined the band's offer to continue working with them (instead becoming successful in his own right with The Alan Parsons Project), and so the band turned to Brian Humphries, with whom they had already worked on More. The group initially found it difficult to devise any new material, especially as the success of Dark Side of the Moon had left all four physically and emotionally drained. Richard Wright later described these early sessions as "falling within a difficult period", and Waters found them "torturous". Gilmour was more interested in improving the band's existing material, and Mason's marriage was failing, bringing on in him a general malaise and sense of apathy, which interfered with his drumming. After several weeks, however, Waters began to visualise another concept. During 1974, they had sketched out three
new compositions, and had performed them at a series of concerts in Europe. These new compositions became the starting point for a new album, whose opening four-note guitar phrase, composed entirely by accident by Gilmour, reminded Waters of the lingering ghost of former band-member Syd Barrett. The songs also contained barely veiled attacks on the music business, and provided an apt summary of the rise and fall of their former bandmate; "Because I wanted to get as close as possible to what I felt ... that sort of indefinable, inevitable melancholy about the disappearance of Syd." "Raving and Drooling" and "Gotta Be Crazy" had no place in the new concept, and were set aside. While the band were working on the album, Barrett made an impromptu visit to the studio, during which, Thorgerson recalled, he "sat round and talked for a