Pink Floyd (formed
in 1965 in Cambridge, England) is a British progressive rock
band, noted for their progressive compositions, thoughtful
lyrics, sonic experimentation, album art and live shows. Pink
Floyd is one of rock's most successful acts, having sold 73.5
million albums in the US alone. The group is also believed to
have sold an estimated 175 to 200 million albums worldwide.
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Pink Floyd enjoyed moderate
success in the late-1960s as a psychedelic band led by
Syd Barrett. After Barrett's erratic behavior caused his
colleagues to add guitarist David Gilmour (who
eventually replaced Barrett), the band went on to record
several elaborate concept albums, achieving worldwide
success with 1973's Dark Side of the Moon, one
of the best-selling and most enduringly popular albums
in rock history. |
Classic Pink
Floyd line-up; early 70s
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Live
performances
Pink Floyd is renowned for their
lavish stage shows, combining over-the-top visual experiences
with their music to create a show in which the performers
themselves are almost secondary. In their early days, Pink
Floyd were among the first bands to use a dedicated traveling
light show in conjunction with their performances, projecting
slides, film clips, pyrotechnics (exploding flashpots and the
exploding gong and fireworks) and psychedelic patterns onto a
large circular screen (dubbed "Mr. Screen"). Their early
combination of music and visuals set the standard for
subsequent rock tours on both sides of the Atlantic. Later
shows featured oversized balloons (notably a giant pig balloon
which floated over the audience during performances of
Pigs from the Animals album), a plane
crashing into the stage at the end of "On the Run", a giant
flowering disco ball a projection screen which could be
retracted and tilted, more than 100 multi-colored robotic
'dancing' spot lights, and multi-colored lasers.
The
lavish stage shows were also the basis for Douglas Adams'
fictional rock group "Disaster Area" (creators of the loudest
noise in the universe, and making use of solar flares in their
stage show) in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
series. Douglas Adams was a personal friend of David Gilmour
and made a one-off guest appearance, on guitar, on the
Division Bell tour (October 28, 1994), purportedly as
a present for Adams' 42nd birthday.
Split
and reunion
In 1985, bassist Roger Waters
declared Pink Floyd defunct, but the remaining band members
recorded and twice toured under the Pink Floyd name without
him. Waters rejoined the band at the London Live 8 concert on
July 2, 2005, playing to Pink Floyd's biggest audience
ever.
Syd Barrett led years:
1965-1968
Pink Floyd evolved
from an earlier band, formed in 1964, which was at various
times called Sigma 6, The Meggadeaths, The Screaming Abdabs,
and The Abdabs. When this band split up, some of its members -
guitarist Bob Klose, bass player Roger Waters, drummer Nick
Mason, and future keyboardist Rick Wright, who at this point
played primarily wind instruments - formed a new band called
Tea Set. A short time after their formation, they were joined
by guitarist Syd Barrett, who became the band's primary
vocalist as well.
When Tea Set found itself on the
same bill as another band with the same name, Barrett came up
with an alternate name on the spur of the moment, choosing
The Pink Floyd Sound (after two blues
musicians, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council). For a time after
this they oscillated between 'Tea Set' and 'The Pink Floyd
Sound', with the latter name eventually winning out. The word
Sound was dropped fairly quickly, but the definite
article was still used occasionally for several years
afterward, up to about the time of the More
soundtrack.
In the early days, the band covered rhythm
and blues staples such as "Louie, Louie", but gained notoriety
for their psychedelic interpretations, with extended
improvised sections and 'spaced out' solos.
The
heavily jazz-oriented Klose left the band to become a
photographer shortly before Pink Floyd started recording,
leaving an otherwise stable lineup. Barrett started writing
his own songs, influenced by American surf music and British
psychedelic rock with his own brand of whimsical humor. Pink
Floyd became a favorite in the underground movement, playing
at such prominent venues as the UFO club, the Marquee Club and
the Roundhouse.
As their popularity increased, the
band formed Blackhill Enterprises in October 1966, a six-way
business partnership with their managers, Peter Jenner and
Andrew King issuing the singles "Arnold Layne" in March 1967
and "See Emily Play" in June 1967. "Arnold Layne" reached
number 20 in the UK singles chart, and "See Emily Play"
reached number 6, granting the band their first TV appearance
on Top of the Pops in July 1967.
Released in August
1967, the band's debut album The Piper at the Gates of
Dawn (originally called "Projection") is considered to be
a prime example of English psychedelic music. The album's
tracks, predominantly written by Barrett, showcase poetic
lyrics and an eclectic mixture of music, from the avant garde
free form piece "Interstellar Overdrive" to whimsical songs,
such as "The Scarecrow", inspired by the Fenlands, the rural
region north of Cambridge, Barrett, Gilmour and Waters's home
town. The album was a hit in the UK where it peaked at #6, but
failed to get much attention in North America, reaching #131
in the US. During this period, the band toured with Jimi
Hendrix, gaining them further popularity.
Barrett's decline
As the
band became more and more popular, the stresses of life on the
road and a significant intake of psychedelic drugs took its
toll on Barrett. In January 1968, guitarist David Gilmour
joined the band to carry out the playing and singing duties of
Syd, whose mental health had been deteriorating for several
months. Nevertheless, it was intended that Barret would remain
as the band's figurehead and main songwriter. With Barrett's
behavior becoming less and less predictable, and his use of
LSD almost constant, he became very unstable, often staring
into space while the rest of the band performed. The band's
live shows became increasingly ramshackle until, eventually,
the other band members simply stopped taking him to the
concerts.
Once Barrett's departure was formalized in
April 1968, producers Jenner and King decided to remain with
him, and the six-way Blackhill partnership was dissolved. The
band adopted Steve O'Rourke as their manager, and he remained
with Pink Floyd until his death in
2003.
Finding their feet:
1969-1970
A Saucerful of
Secrets
Whilst Barrett had written the bulk of
the first record, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,
only one Barrett composition, the Piper outtake "Jugband
Blues", appeared on the second Floyd album. A Saucerful of
Secrets was released in June 1968, reaching #9 in the UK
and becoming the only Pink Floyd album not to chart in the
U.S. The album contained hints of things to come, the
center-piece being the 12-minute title track. Future Floyd
albums would expand upon the lengthy compositions, offering
more focused songwriting with each subsequent release.
More
Pink Floyd were
recruited by director Barbet Schroeder to produce a soundtrack
for his film, "More", which premiered in May 1969. The music
was released as a Floyd album in its own right, Music From
the Film More, in July 1969 . Pink Floyd would use this
and future soundtrack recording sessions to produce work that
may not have fit into their idea of what would appear on a
proper Pink Floyd LP, many of the numbers on Music From
The Film More being acoustic folk songs. The rest of the
album consisted of incidental music with a few rockers such as
"The Nile Song" thrown in.
Ummagumma
The next
record, the double album Ummagumma, was a mix of live
recordings and unchecked studio experimentation by the band
members, with each recording half a side of a vinyl as a solo
project (Mason's wife makes an uncredited contribution as a
flautist). The album was Pink Floyd's most popular release
yet, hitting UK #5 and making the U.S. charts at
#70.
Atom Heart
Mother
1970's Atom Heart Mother was a
collaboration with avant-garde composer Ron Geesin. One side
of the album consisted of the title piece, a 23-minute long
rock-orchestral suite. The second side featured one song from
each of the band's then-current vocalists (Roger Waters' "If",
David Gilmour's "Fat Old Sun" and Rick Wright's "Summer 68").
Another lengthy piece, "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast", was a
sound collage of a man cooking and eating breakfast and his
thoughts on the matter, linked with instrumentals. The album
had the best chart performance for the band so far, reaching
#1 in the U.K. and #55 in the U.S., although the album has
since been described by Gilmour as the sound of a band
"blundering about in the dark." The album was a transitional
piece for the group, hinting at future musical territory. The
popularity of the album allowed Pink Floyd to embark on their
first U.S. tour.
The band also developed and pioneered
the use of a device called the azimuth co-ordinator, a
joystick used to pan sound around their quadrophonic PA
system.
Breakthrough era:
1971-1975
Meddle
The
band's sound was considerably more focused on Meddle
(1971), with the 23-minute epic "Echoes" taking up the entire
second side of the LP. Meddle was considered by David
Gilmour to be his first "real" Pink Floyd album, as it had the
sound and style of the succeeding breakthrough-era Pink Floyd
albums and stripped away the orchestra that was prominent in
Atom Heart Mother.
Meddle also
included the atmospheric "One of These Days", a concert
classic, with Nick Mason's menacing one-line vocal, "One of
these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces," and a
melody that at one point segues into a throbbing synthetic
pulse quoting the theme tune of the cult classic science
fiction television show Doctor Who.
A glimpse into
their humorous side was shown on "Seamus" (earlier,
"Mademoiselle Nobs"), a pseudo-blues number featuring lead
vocals by a Russian wolfhound called Seamus, belonging to
Steve Marriott. Waters' jazzy "San Tropez" was brought to the
band practically completed, requiring minimal help in
arrangement from the other band members. Pink Floyd was
rewarded with a #3 chart peak in the UK for Meddle;
it made #70 in U.S.
Obscured By
Clouds
Obscured By Clouds was
released in 1972 as the soundtrack to the film La
Vallee, another art house film by Barbet Schroeder. This
was the band's first U.S. Top 50 album (where it hit #46),
hitting #6 at in the U.K.
Dark Side of the
Moon
Despite Pink Floyd never having been a
hit-single-driven group (at the time they had stopped issuing
singles after 1968's "Point Me At The Sky"), their massively
successful 1973 album, Dark Side of the Moon,
featured a U.S. Top 20 single ("Money"). Although the album
hit #2 in U.K., it managed to become the band's first #1 on
U.S. charts, a huge improvement over the last albums. The
critically-acclaimed album stayed on the Billboard Top 200 for
an unprecedent 741 weeks (including 591 consecutive weeks from
1973 to 1988), the world record, and making it one of the
top-selling albums of all time. It also remained 301 weeks on
U.K. charts, despite never hitting #1 there. Dark Side of the
Moon went on to sell over 35 million copies worldwide and
still sells around 250,000 copies a year, more than any other
album of the 70s.
Dark Side of the Moon, the
first of Pink Floyd's five concept albums, described the
different pressures applying in everyday life. The concept
(conceived in Nick Mason's kitchen) proved a powerful catalyst
for the band and together they drew up a list of themes: "On
The Run" was dedicated to travel; "Time" depicted the
encroachment of old age; "The Great Gig In The Sky"
(originally named "Mortality Sequence" and "Religious Theme"
during development) dealt with death; "Money" satirically
spoke of the corrupting influence of money that often comes
with fame and power; "Us And Them" entailed violence, and
futility of war (a theme to which Waters would return,
throughout his career) and "Brain Damage" touched on themes of
insanity and neurosis. This was the first Pink Floyd LP to
feature lyrics exclusively written by Roger Waters. It was
also the first Floyd LP to have lyrics printed inside the
sleeve.
Thanks to the use of new 16-track recording
equipment at Abbey Road Studios and the investment of an
enormous amount of time by engineer Alan Parsons, the album
set new standards for sound fidelity.
It was during
this period that the band released the first of their films,
"Live at Pompeii". Film Director Adrian Maben's film featured
footage of the band's 1971 performance at an amphitheater in
Pompeii with no audience present (only the film crew and stage
staff), interspersed with interviews and behind-the-scenes
footage of the band in the studio recording Dark Side Of
The Moon.
Dark Side of the Moon and the
three following albums (Wish You Were Here,
Animals and The Wall) are widely regarded as
the peak of Pink Floyd's career.
Wish You
Were Here
Wish You Were Here,
released in 1975, carries an abstract theme of absence:
absence of any humanity within the music industry and, most
poignantly, the absence of Syd Barrett. This theme is carried
by the music as well as the artwork packaged with the album.
Originally, the album was sold with a black cellophane
wrapping, hiding any indication of what could be beneath. In
addition to the classic acoustic title track, Wish You
Were Here, the album includes the majestic, mostly
instrumental nine-part "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", a tribute
to Barrett in which the lyrics deal explicitly with the
aftermath of his breakdown. The album also includes the songs
"Welcome to the Machine" and "Have a Cigar" (Roy Harper sang
the latter), both of which harshly criticize the music
industry. Pink Floyd achieved their first transatlantic #1
album with Wish You Were Here, reaching the top spot
in both U.K. and U.S. The album eventually sold over 10
million copies worldwide.
Knebworth
'75
Dark Side of the Moon had made Pink Floyd
a major international act. In 1975, the band launched a
massive tour after the release of Wish You Were Here, which
eventually sold out stadiums. The last gig of the tour was as
the headliner of 1975 Knebworth Festival, which also featured
The Steve Miller Band, Captain Beefheart and Roy Harper (who
joined Pink Floyd on the stage to sing 'Have a Cigar'). It was
the second Knebworth Festival, which featured artists such as
the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Genesis and Frank Zappa
between 1974 and 1979.
The concert featured a large
circular screen, lighting towers and great special effects for
the time. Despite some technical problems, the band managed to
perform a remarkable concert, before an audience of 125,000,
their biggest until Live 8. It was the last time the band
performed 'Echoes' and the entire Dark Side of the Moon with
Roger Waters.
Roger Waters-led era:
1976-1984
Animals
By
January 1977, and the release of Animals (UK #2, U.S.
#3), the band's music came under increasing criticism from
some quarters in the new punk rock sphere as being too flabby
and pretentious, having lost its way from the simplicity of
early rock and roll. However, Animals was
considerably more guitar-driven than the previous albums, due
to either the influence of the punk-rock movement or the fact
that the album was recorded at Pink Floyd's new (and somewhat
incomplete) Britannia Row Studios. Animals again
contained lengthy songs tied to a theme, this time taken in
part from George Orwell's Animal Farm, using pigs,
dogs and sheep as metaphors for members of contemporary
society. Animals was the first Pink Floyd album not
to feature any compositions from Rick Wright.
For the
cover artwork, a giant inflatable pig was commissioned and
floated over Battersea Power Station. This became one of the
enduring symbols of Pink Floyd and inflatable pigs were a
staple of Pink Floyd's live shows from then on.
In The Flesh
The 1977
Pink Floyd - In The Flesh tour was the last time Pink
Floyd performed a major tour with Roger Waters. The tour
featured the famous inflatable puppets, notably a 40 foot pig
balloon, and a 'Nuclear family' with Mother, Father and two
and a half children, later the band added a Cadillac, a
television and a fridge. It also had a pyrotechnic 'waterfall'
and featured one of the biggest and most elaborate stages to
date.
Pink Floyd's market strategy for the Animals
tour was very aggressive, filling pages of The New York Times
and Billboard magazine. To promote their four-night run at
Madison Square Garden in New York City, there was a Pink Floyd
parade on 6th Avenue featuring pigs and sheep.
In the
first half of the show, Pink Floyd played 'Animals', with
'Wish You Were Here' in the second. Although the 'Animals'
album had not been as successful as the two previous ones, the
band managed to sell out arenas and stadiums in America and
Europe, setting scale and attendance records. In Chicago, the
band played to an estimated audience of 95,000 and set an
attendance record, in Cleveland, of over 80,000 people. They
helped set another attendance record on the final night of the
tour, in Montreal, where a festival that also featured
Emerson, Lake and Palmer drew another 80,000-strong audience.
That night, Roger Waters spat in the face of a disruptive fan;
The Wall grew out of Waters' thoughts about this
incident, particularly his growing awareness that stardom had
alienated him from his audience.
The
Wall
1979's epic rock opera, The
Wall, conceived mainly by Waters, developed themes of
loneliness and failure of communication, inspired by Waters'
feelings of having constructed a metaphoric wall between
himself and his audience. This album gave Pink Floyd renewed
acclaim and their only chart-topping single with "Another
Brick in the Wall (Part 2)". The Wall also included
the future concert staples Comfortably Numb and
Run Like Hell, with the former in particular becoming
a cornerstone of album-oriented rock and classic-rock radio
playlists as well as one of the group's best-known songs. The
album was co-produced by Bob Ezrin, a friend of Waters who
shared songwriting credits on "The Trial" and from whom the
band distanced themselves, after Ezrin talked about the album
to a journalist relative.
Despite never hitting #1 in
U.K. (it made it to #3), The Wall spent an astounding
15 weeks atop the U.S. charts during 1980. It sold well over
20 million copies worldwide and is often regarded as the
best-selling double album ever. It has been certified 23x
platinum by RIAA, for sales of 11.5 million copies in U.S.
alone. The huge commercial success of The Wall made Pink Floyd
the only artist since the Beatles to have the best-selling
albums of two years (1973 and 1980) in less than a decade.
The Wall Live
Pink Floyd
mounted their most elaborate stage show in conjunction with
the tour of The Wall. A band of session musicians
played the first song, wearing rubber face masks
(demonstrating that the individual members of the band were
practically anonymous to the public), then backed up the band
for the remainder of the show. Giant inflatable characters
designed by Gerald Scarfe, including fully mobile giant
puppets of a teacher and Pink's wife, with menacing spotlights
for eyes, took the traditional inflatables to a whole new
level.
During the first half of the show, a huge wall
was built, brick by enormous brick, between the audience and
the band. There were 340 white bricks forming a 160 foot wall
which stood 35 feet tall. The final brick was placed as Roger
Waters sang "goodbye" at the end of the song "Goodbye Cruel
World". For the second half of the show, the band were largely
invisible, except for a hole in the wall that simulated a
hotel room setting, where Roger Waters "acted out" the story
of Pink, and an appearance by David Gilmour on top of the wall
to perform the climactic guitar solo in "Comfortably Numb".
Other parts of the story were told by Gerald Scarfe animations
projected onto the wall itself (these animations were later
integrated into the film version Pink Floyd: The
Wall). At the finale of the concert, the
specially-constructed wall was demolished amidst sound effects
and a spectacular light show.
It was the most ambitious
theatrical show seen so far, much more expensive and complex
than contemporaneous efforts by artists such as David Bowie,
Alice Cooper and KISS. The costs of the tour were estimated to
have reached US$ 1.5 million even before the first
performance. The New York Times stated in its March 2 1980
edition that "The 'Wall' show remains a milestone in rock
history though and there's no point in denying it. Never again
will one be able to accept the technical clumsiness, distorted
sound and meagre visuals of most arena rock concerts as
inevitable" and concluded that "the 'Wall' show "will be the
touchstone against which all future rock spectacles must be
measured".
The Wall concert was only performed a
handful of times each in four cities: Los Angeles, Uniondale
(Long Island), Dortmund, and London (at Earl's Court). The
primary 'tour' occurred in 1980, but the band performed two
more shows at Earl's Court in 1981 for filming, with the
intention of being integrated into the upcoming movie. The
resulting footage, however, was deemed substandard, and
scrapped; years later, Roger Waters said that he had tried to
locate this footage for historical purposes, but was
unsuccessful, and he now considers it to be lost forever.
There are, however, several unofficial videos of the entire
live show in circulation.
Gilmour and Mason attempted
to convince Waters to expand the show for a more lucrative
large-scale, stadium tour, but because of the nature of the
material (one of the primary themes is the distance between an
artist and his audience) Waters balked at this. In fact,
Waters has reportedly been offered a guaranteed US$ 1 million
for each additional stadium concert, but declined the offer,
insisting that such a tour would be
hypocritical.
Waters later re-created the Wall show in
1990, amid the ruins of the Berlin Wall, joined by a number of
guest artists (including Bryan Adams, Scorpions, Van Morrison,
The Band, Tim Curry, Cyndi Lauper, Sinéad O'Connor, Marianne
Faithfull, Joni Mitchell, and Thomas Dolby). This concert was
even bigger than the previous ones. Roger Waters built a 591
foot long and 80 foot high wall. The theatrical features of
The Wall concert were increased to gather the attention of a
sold-out audience of 200,000 people and of other estimated 500
million, in 35 countries, to whom the show would be broadcast.
After the concert began, the gates were opened and an
estimated 300,000 to 500,000 people were able to watch the
concert.
Even more so than during the Animals
sessions, Waters was increasingly asserting his artistic
influence and leadership over the band, prompting frequent
conflicts with the other members, and the eventual firing of
Wright from the band. Wright returned, on a fixed wage, for
the album's live concerts. Ironically, Wright was the only
member of Pink Floyd to make any money from the Wall
shows, the rest having to cover the extensive costs.
Film
A film (essentially a
music video for the entire album) entitled "Pink Floyd: The
Wall" was released in 1982. The film, written by Waters and
directed by Alan Parker, starred Boomtown Rats founder Bob
Geldof and featured striking animation by noted British
cartoonist Gerald Scarfe. It grossed over US$ 22 million at
the North American box office. A song which first appeared in
the movie, When the Tigers Broke Free, was released
as a single on a limited basis. This song was finally made
widely availble on the complilation album Echoes and
recent re-releases of The Final Cut.
The Final Cut
1983 saw the
release of The Final Cut. Even darker in tone than
The Wall, this album re-examined many previous
themes, while also addressing then-current events, including
Waters' anger at Britain's participation in the Falklands War
("The Fletcher Memorial Home") and his cynicism toward, and
fear of, nuclear war ("Two Suns in the Sunset"). Michael Kamen
and Andy Bown contributed keyboard work due to Wright's
absence.
Though technically released as a Pink Floyd
album, the interior sleeve specified "A requiem for the post
war dream by Roger Waters, performed by Pink Floyd": the
project was clearly dominated by Waters and became a prototype
in sound and form for later Waters solo projects (Roger Waters
has since said that he offered to release the record as a solo
album, but the rest of the band rejected this idea). Gilmour
also reportedly asked Waters to hold back the release of the
album by a year so he could contribute material, but was
rejected by Waters.
Only moderately successful by Floyd
standards (UK #1, U.S. #6), the album yielded one minor rock
radio hit, "Not Now John". The arguing between Waters and
Gilmour by this stage was rumored to be so bad that they were
never seen in the recording studio simultaneously. Gilmour
even had his name removed from the production credits in
protest over some of Waters' decisions. There was no
tour.
David Gilmour-led era:
1987-1995
After The Final Cut, the
band members went their separate ways, each releasing solo
albums to varying degrees of success. Waters announced in
December of 1985 that he was departing Pink Floyd describing
the band as "a spent force creatively". However, in 1986
Gilmour and Mason began recording a new Pink Floyd album. (At
the same time, Roger Waters was also working on his second
solo album entitled Radio K.A.O.S.). A bitter legal
dispute ensued with Waters claiming that the name "Pink Floyd"
should have been put to rest, but Gilmour and Mason upheld
their conviction that they had the legal right to continue as
"Pink Floyd". High Court proceedings went in favor of Gilmour
and Mason, much to the chagrin of Waters, and the two camps
continued working.
Momentary Lapse of
Reason
Gilmour and Mason returned to the
studio, along with producer Bob Ezrin in 1986. Richard Wright
also rejoined Gilmour and Mason during the final recording
sessions of A Momentary Lapse of Reason (UK #3/U.S.
#3) album, though he did not officially rejoin the band until
the end of the subsequent tour. Gilmour later admitted that
Mason had hardly played on the album. Because of Mason's
limited contribution, many critics say that A Momentary
Lapse of Reason should really be regarded as a Gilmour
solo effort, in the way that The Final Cut can be
seen as a Waters solo album. Having usually worked in tandem
with Waters in drafting lyrics, Gilmour received further
criticism for bringing writers from outside the band to assist
him.
After the release of A Momentary Lapse of
Reason in 1987, Pink Floyd embarked on what was initially
meant to be an 11-week tour to promote the album. The two
remaining members of the band, David Gilmour and Nick Mason,
along with Richard Wright, who was not an official member of
the band at the time, had just won a legal battle against
Roger Waters and the future of the group was uncertain.
Following the band's tradition, the tour was huge: 45 trucks
were needed to carry the equipment necessary to build the
biggest outdoor stage to date, 85 feet high and 98 feet
wide.
The tour proved to be much more successful than
the album. Initially scheduled just to promote the album, it
lasted until almost two years later, in 1989, after playing
around 200 concerts, including 3 dates at Madison Square
Garden and 2 nights at Wembley Stadium, to about 5.5 million
people in total. The numbers of the tour speak for themselves:
it made Pink Floyd the second highest grossing act of 1987 and
the highest grossing of 1988 in the U.S. Financially, Pìnk
Floyd was the biggest act of these two years combined, as it
grossed almost US$ 60 million from touring, about the same as
U2 and Michael Jackson, their closest rivals, put together.
Worldwide, the band grossed around US$ 135 million. A further
concert was held in 1990, at the Knebworth Festival in 1990, a
charity event which also featured other Silver Clef Award
winners. Pink Floyd was the last act to play, to an audience
of 125,000. The £60,000 firework display that ended the
concert was entirely financed by the band.
They
released a double live album taken from their 1988 Long Island
shows, entitled Delicate Sound of Thunder. They later
recorded some instrumentals for a classic-car racing film
La Carrera Panamericana, set in Mexico and featuring
Gilmour and Mason as participating drivers. At one part of the
race Gilmour and Steve O'Rourke (his map-reader in the race)
crashed. O'Rourke suffered a broken leg, but Gilmour walked
away with just some bruises. The instrumentals are notable for
being the first Floyd material co-written by Wright since
1975.
The Division
Bell
The band's next recording was the 1994
release The Division Bell (UK #1/U.S. #1), which was
much more of a group effort than A Momentary Lapse of
Reason had been, with Wright now reinstated as a full and
contributing band member. The album was generally received
more favorably by critics and fans alike than Lapse
had been, sounding more like the timeless Pink Floyd of old.
Saxophonist Dick Parry, a contributor to the mid-70s Floyd
albums, also returned to the fold.
The ensuing
"Division Bell Tour" was promoted by legendary Canadian
concert impresario Michael Cohl and became the
highest-grossing tour in rock history to that date, with the
band playing the entirety of Dark Side of the Moon in
some shows, the first time they had done so since 1975. The
concerts featured a very large stage, a large round screen,
incredible special effects, quadrophonic sound and powerful
lasers. All in all, the tour required 700 tons of steel
carried by 53 articulated trucks and an initial investment of
US$ 4 million. It paid off. The tour was the first to gross
over US$ 100 million in the U.S. with only 59 concerts and is
still one of the top-grossing tours in the country. Worldwide,
it played to 5.5 million people and grossed over US$ 250
million. More than 10 years later, and despite the ticket
price inflation, the Rolling Stones remain the only act which
managed to outgross Pink Floyd in worldwide terms.
The
group reunited in 1994 for another world tour. The
Division Bell tour was much shorter, lasting less
than a year, but was even more elaborate. Three stages
leapfrogged around North America and Europe, each 180 feet
long and featuring a 130 foot arch modelled on the Hollywood
Bowl, incorporating 700 tons of steel. This required 53
articulated trucks and a crew of 161 people. The round screen,
the dancing lights and lasers, and the quadrophonic sound were
Pink Floyd's most technologically advanced yet. The show cost
US$ 4 million, plus US$ 25 million of running costs, to stage.
This tour played to 5.5 million people in 68 cities;
each concert gathered an average 45,000 audience. At the end
of the year, the Division Bell tour was announced as
the biggest tour ever, with worldwide gross of over £150
million (about US$ 250 million). In the U.S. alone, it grossed
US$ 103.5 million from 59 concerts. However, this record was
short-lived; less than a year later, The Rolling Stones'
Voodoo Lounge tour finished with a worldwide gross of
over US$ 300 million. The Stones remain the only act ever to
achieve a higher worldwide gross from a tour.
Solo work and more
1995-2004
Pink Floyd has not released any new
studio material or toured since 1994's The Division
Bell, nor is there a sign of any forthcoming, however the
band released a live album entitled P*U*L*S*E in
1995. P*U*L*S*E hit #1 in U.S. and featured songs recorded
during one of the record-breaking 14 presentations at Earl's
Court, in London, which ended "The Division Bell" tour, and
includes an entire performance of "Dark Side of the Moon" as
well as other favourites from albums like "The Wall" and "Wish
You Were Here".
In 1996, the band performed Wish You
Were Here with Billy Corgan (of The Smashing Pumpkins fame) at
their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. A live recording
of The Wall was released in 2000 compiled from their
1980/1981 London concerts, entitled Is There Anybody Out
There? The Wall Live 1980-81. It hit #1 on Billboard
Internet Album Sales chart, but managed to only hit #19 on
U.S. charts.
A two-disc set of their best-known tracks
entitled Echoes was released in 2001. This
compilation caused some controversy due to the songs segueing
into one other non-chronologically, thereby presenting the
material out of the context of the original albums. Some of
the tracks ("Echoes", "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", "Marooned"
and "High Hopes") have had substantial parts removed from
them. Despite the controversy, the album sold over 200,000
copies in its first week and guaranteed a #2 on U.S.
charts.
David Gilmour released a solo concert DVD
called David Gilmour in Concert in November 2002
which was compiled from shows on 2001-06-22, and 2002-01-17,
at The Royal Festival Hall in London. Richard Wright, Robert
Wyatt, and Bob Geldof (Pink in The Wall film) make
guest appearances.
In 2002 Q magazine named
Pink Floyd as one of the "50 Bands To See Before You Die". Two
years later, the same magazine would place Pink Floyd as the
biggest band of all time, above the Beatles, the Rolling
Stones and Led Zeppelin, according to a complex system for
comparing bands which included album sales, charts performance
and concerts attendance.
In 2003, a 30th-Anniversary
SACD reissue of Dark Side of the Moon, featuring high
resolution surround sound was released with new artwork on the
front cover and went on to sell over 800,000 copies. Longtime
manager Steve O'Rourke died later that year on October 30,
2003. The three remaining band members performed "Fat Old Sun"
and "The Great Gig in the Sky" at his funeral at Chichester
Cathedral, contrary to reports in the media claiming they
played "Wish You Were Here".
In 2004 a remastered
re-release of The Final Cut was released with the
single "When the Tigers Broke Free" added.
Mason's
book, Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd,
was published in 2004 in Europe and 2005 in the US. To promote
it, Mason made public appearances in a few European and
American cities, giving interviews and meeting fans at book
signings. The book gives Mason's personal view of the band's
experiences.
In 2004, it was announced that contracts
had been signed for a Broadway musical version of The
Wall, with extra music to be written by Waters. The
Broadway version will feature all of the music written by
Waters. It is not known whether the songs co-written by
Gilmour ("Young Lust", "Comfortably Numb", and "Run Like
Hell") will feature. The show was scheduled to be completed by
mid 2005.
The 30th-Anniversary SACD reissue of Wish
You Were Here is due early in 2006, also to feature
high-resolution surround sound. Waters, Gilmour and Wright are
reported to all be working on solo albums, with Waters' and
Gilmour's due to be released in 2006.
Live
8, 2005-present
On July 2, 2005 Pink Floyd
performed at the London Live 8 concert with Roger Waters
rejoining David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright. It was
the quartet's first performance together in over 24 years —
the band's last show with Waters was at Earls Court in London
on June 17, 1981.
Gilmour announced the Live 8 reunion on June
12, 2005:
Like most people I want to do everything I can
to persuade the G8 leaders to make huge commitments to the
relief of poverty and increased aid to the third world. It's
crazy that America gives such a paltry percentage of its GNP
to the starving nations. Any squabbles Roger and the band
have had in the past are so petty in this context, and if
re-forming for this concert will help focus attention then
it's got to be worthwhile. The band's set
consisted of "Speak To Me/Breathe/Breathe Reprise",
"Money", "Wish You Were Here" and
"Comfortably Numb". As on the original recordings,
Gilmour sang the lead vocals on "Breathe" and "Money", and
shared them with Waters on Comfortably Numb. "Wish You Were
Here" was the exception to this with Gilmour singing his usual
verse, with Waters picking it up halfway through. During the
guitar introduction of "Wish You Were Here", Waters said:
It's actually quite emotional standing up here
with these three guys after all these years. Standing to be
counted with the rest of you. Anyway, we're doing this for
everyone who's not here, but particularly, of course, for
Syd. They were augmented by guitarist Tim Renwick
(guitarist on Roger Waters' 1984 solo tour, who has since
become Pink Floyd's backing guitarist on stage),
keyboardist/guitarist Jon Carin (Pink Floyd's backing
keyboardist from 1987 onward who has since performed on the
1999-2000 North American leg of Waters' "In The Flesh" solo
tour), saxophonist Dick Parry during "Money" (who played on
the original recordings of "Money", "Us And Them", and "Shine
on You Crazy Diamond"), and backing singer Carol Kenyon during
"Comfortably Numb". On the screen behind them, film of the
iconic pig from the Animals album was shown flying
over Battersea Power Station.
Many fans expressed the
hope that the Live 8 appearance would lead to a reunion tour
and a record-breaking US$ 250 million deal for a world tour is
said to have being offered to the band. At first, however, the
band has made it very clear that there are no such plans at
that time. In the weeks after the show, the rifts that
separated the members during the breakup seemed to have
largely healed. David Gilmour confirmed that he and Waters
were on "pretty amicable terms" and that they communicated via
e-mail after the concert. Nick Mason said that the band would
be willing to perform for a concert "that would support
Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts."
Waters has offered
what some see as conflicting comments on the issue, first
saying, "Never say never [...] I mean, under sort of similar
circumstances, or in some way, we might do things again" when
questioned on the prospects of another performance. However in
an interview in Rolling Stone, Waters appeared less
optimistic: "I decided that if anything came up in rehearsals
[for Live 8] — any difference of opinion — I would just roll
over. And I did...I didn't mind rolling over for one day, but
I couldn't roll over for a whole fucking tour". However, in an
October, 2005 interview with Word Magazine, Waters stated he
"really loved" playing with the band again and he held out
some possibility of the band re-forming again. "I hope we do
it again. If some other opportunity arose, I could even
imagine us doing Dark Side of the Moon again - you know, if
there was a special occasion. It would be good to hear it
again". Also, Waters stated on a BBC2 Radio interview in
September the possibility of a reunion album with Gilmour,
Mason and Wright.
In the week after Live 8, there was a
revival of interest in Pink Floyd. According to record store
chain HMV, sales of Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd went up, in
the following week, by 1343%, while Amazon.co.uk reported
increases in sales of The Wall at 3600%, Wish You Were Here at
2000%, Dark Side of the Moon at 1400% and Animals at 1000%.
David Gilmour subsequently declared that he would donate all
profits from this post Live 8 boom in sales to charity, and
urged that all the other performing artists and their record
companies should do the same.
On 16 November 2005 Pink
Floyd were inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame, by Pete
Townshend. Gilmour and Mason attended in person, explaining
that Wright was in hospital following eye surgery, and Waters
appeared on a video screen, from Rome. It was stated that the
chance of a reunion album is practically nil, and that any
future concerts would be in the same vein as Live 8.
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