The Pre-Syd Lineup: How Waters, Mason, Wright, and Klose Met at Regent Street Polytechnic

Before Syd Barrett turned Pink Floyd into a psychedelic lightning rod, the band was a jazzy R&B outfit called the Tea Set. The core members—Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright—met as architecture students at Regent Street Polytechnic in London in the early 1960s. Waters and Mason shared a flat; Wright was already playing piano. They needed a guitarist and recruited Bob Klose, a talented blues player from Cambridge who happened to be a friend of Waters.

The band briefly added singer Chris Dennis, but when he left for the RAF, they needed a new frontman. Waters knew Syd Barrett from Cambridge, where they’d both played in rival bands. In 1964, Barrett enrolled at Camberwell Art School, just a short bus ride from the Poly. He started sitting in with the Tea Set, and his wild energy and original songs soon pushed Klose out—Klose preferred clean blues to Syd’s fuzz and feedback. By 1965, Barrett was the full-time guitarist, and the classic lineup was in place.