Bob Klose: The Original Fifth Member of Pink Floyd Who Walked Away Before Fame

Before Syd Barrett, before Roger Waters even fully stepped into bass, Pink Floyd was a five-piece with a different lead guitarist: Rado “Bob” Klose. He played on the band’s earliest known recordings in 1965 and was considered the strongest musician in the room at the time—technically disciplined, into blues and R&B, and not at all into the free-form psychedelia that would define the band’s sound. Klose had the riffs, but he didn’t have the patience for chaos.

He left in mid-1965, just months before the band started gigging under the name Pink Floyd and gaining notoriety in the London underground scene. The reasons were practical: Klose’s father pushed him to focus on his architecture degree at Regent Street Polytechnic, and Klose genuinely preferred a more traditional rock direction. He saw Barrett’s experimental, off-kilter style as sloppy and unprofessional. Rather than fight it, Klose walked away, handed his guitar to Syd, and essentially gave Barrett the platform that would define the next two years.

Klose never looked back. He switched to photography, became a successful architectural photographer, and only rarely acknowledged his role in the band’s history. Decades later, he appeared on a few Floyd-related projects—playing guitar on a track from The Division Bell era and sitting in for a one-off live show—but he never regretted leaving. In a 2013 interview, he said simply, “I wasn’t brave enough for rock and roll.” He was brave enough to know when his own path was a different one.