There are a huge amount of perks that come with being a rock star, and it’s these perks which often make us sit and fantasise about what life would be like to be in one of the biggest rock bands of all time. Granted, the pressure would be tough to deal with, but the sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, endless supplies of money and adoring fans that come with being in a band like Pink Floyd certainly is somewhat tempting.
Pink Floyd got off to a rocky start. There are some fans who believe that when Syd Barrett was in the band, they were making some of their best music; however, members of the band at the time would likely disagree. You have to remember that when Pink Floyd started making music, they were doing so during the early days of psychedelic rock, and that meant the genre didn’t have a specific shape or sound just yet.
Jimi Hendrix was always vocally critical of the music Pink Floyd were making, but this was less of a jab at the band and more at the state of psychedelic rock at the time. “Here’s one thing I hate, man,” he said, “When these cats say, ‘Look at the band. They’re playing psychedelic music!’ All they’re doing is flashing lights on them and playing ‘Johnny B Goode’ with the wrong chords. It’s terrible.”
Roger Waters would likely agree with Hendrix during this period. While he didn’t hate the music his band was making, he felt as though there wasn’t a whole load of direction there. “I don’t want to go back to those times at all,” said Waters when talking about the band’s album Piper at the Gates of Dawn, “There wasn’t anything ‘grand’ about it. We were laughable. We were useless. We couldn’t play at all, so we had to do something stupid and ‘experimental’.”
Of course, the band did eventually find their sound. Once David Gilmour came on board and they started focusing on putting together longer and more complex concept albums, they came into their own and started to resemble the kind of band that people would eventually obsess over. With this new sound came a great deal of fame, which also brought with it the spoils of being in a rock band.
It was these spoils that one fan tried to exploit one day when he was admitted to the hospital and became worried about paying the bills that would be necessary. In a bid to get the hospital to hold off from charging him and instead send the bill to the famous guitarist from the exceptional psychedelic rock band, a man named Phillip Michael Schaeffer said that he was David Gilmour and was touring with Pink Floyd in Canada at the time.
At first, people in the hospital went along, as they were more than happy to help Schaeffer, especially given that he was claiming to be a member of a lot of people’s favourite band. Some patients in the hospital even asked for autographs from him during this period. It wasn’t until a few members of staff started to grow suspicious that Shaeffer was finally found out.
Jeanine Nistler, a spokesperson for the hospital, commented on the incident. “There was some discussion among security staff leading people to believe that he really wasn’t David Gilmour,” she said, “So our security supervisor pulled up the security camera shots of when this man entered the hospital and compared them to pictures on the internet of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour and determined he was not David Gilmour.”
Schaeffer was arrested for what was essentially attempted fraud (although it’s not clear what he was actually charged with). He wound up facing fines of $100,000.
