Pink Floyd: A Bridge Over Troubled Waters

No band has ever been simultaneously as popular and as hated as Pink Floyd. Their latest album, A Momentary Lapse of Reason, has spawned three American tours, on which they're easily outselling Springsteen and Michael Jackson, yet to many they are still the symbolic dinosaur of a musical era that should never have happened.

In a career characterised by extremes of scale and excess, they've become the most successful band ever that didn't like success. Their first international hit, Dark Side Of The Moon, is the longest-charting album of all time – over 14 years in the top 200 without missing a week – but their bleak, suspicious worldview also produced The Wall, one of the gloomiest concept albums ever recorded.

Now, after an incredibly bitter split, Pink Floyd have come back bigger than ever. In their first British interview in 13 years, the band stretch out on NME's couch and spill the beans on life behind the mystique and the festering fights that tore apart one of rock's most phenomenal success stories.