I "guess" it's possible to write more about it than there probably were total scraps of paper that Waters ever wrote the actual lyrics on :)
Well, PF was a psychedelic art band but they were right up there with the Beatles, Stones, and Who when it comes to studio ability, and I'm sure some promoters and record companies could tell that money could be made somehow.
They just didn't know how for a number of years.
The leading pop musicians at the time had gotten popular before they were the least bit associated with psychedelics, Floyd didn't have that. The machine was in place but they were not nearly on board yet.
Remember, LSD was still quite legal when these British musicians started recording. PF was kind of associated with that before they ever had a chance to get popular though.
Regardless, in the years leading up to the festivals of which Woodstock is the most well-known, PF toured the US a bit. About each year, with record company support. Festivals were not a thing yet at all, in fact there was only a very small fraction of the number of live concerts there are now. We had about one per month (we were lucky in my town even though it was not a big city) when I was a young teenager and it was always about the same 20,000 students and young adults at every one. Regardless of genre it was always fun.
I never could have gotten my parents to drop us off until after I had won free tickets by calling in to the radio station. On a land line there were so many callers trying to win, you would usually get a busy signal. Plus the Touch-Tone telephones were still just a dream, and the pulse dialing spinner had a governed return spring. It was pretty slow, so you could not make that many repeat attempts before someone else had won. Hacked into that and made it spin back as fast as the phone line would tolerate.
PF never got any serious airplay and most people had never heard of them until Dark Side came out in 1973. I had already seen them 5 times before that. Had a driver's license by then and took other kids. It was the female vocals and saxophone that finally put them on top after they had gone along with all kinds of record company plans. From that point on what had been laid-back art concerts turned into crowded pop music events.
Basically for five full years people told me I was crazy and nobody was ever going to significantly play Pink Floyd on the radio :\
PF had always gone without an opening act, playing the first set of previous material only, and coming back after a long break to perform the new stuff. The people who had seen them before knew it was like this. But that first live appearance in 1973 after Dark Side had been all over the radio was nuts. About 90% of the fans had never heard of Pink Floyd until a few months earlier.
The band came out at 8:00 as usual, non-pretentiously in their t-shirts, no announcements, IIRC they opened with something from Obscured but surely over half the people didn't even realize it was PF playing already. There was absolutely nothing familiar to them for the whole set. There was a bit of rowdiness and the band had to calm the crowd somewhat at one point.
When they came back out to do the Dark Side of the Moon, it's been different than it was the hour before.
