Pink Floyd ( B17 )

The Division Bell

For several years Pink Floyd had busied themselves with personal pursuits, such as filming and competing in the La Carrera Panamericana and recording a soundtrack for a film based on the event. In January 1993, they began working on a new album, returning to Britannia Row Studios, where for several days, Gilmour, Mason and Wright worked collaboratively, improvising material. After about two weeks, the band had enough ideas to begin creating songs. Ezrin returned to co-produce the album and production moved to the Astoria, where from February to May 1993, they worked on about 25 ideas.

Contractually, Wright was not a member of the band, and said "It came close to a point where I wasn't going to do the album." However, he earned five co-writing credits on the album, his first on a Pink Floyd album since 1975's Wish You Were Here. Another songwriter credited on the album was Gilmour's future wife, Polly Samson. She helped him write several tracks, including, "High Hopes", a collaborative arrangement which, though initially tense, "pulled the whole album together," according to Ezrin. They hired Michael Kamen to arrange the album's orchestral parts; Dick Parry and Chris Thomas also returned. Writer Douglas Adams provided the album title and Thorgerson the cover artwork. Thorgerson drew inspiration for the album cover from the Moai monoliths of Easter Island; two opposing faces forming an implied third face about which he commented: "the absent face—the ghost of Pink Floyd's past, Syd and Roger". Eager to avoid competing against other album releases, as had happened with A Momentary Lapse, Pink Floyd set a deadline of April 1994, at which point they would resume touring. The album reached number 1 in both the UK and the US. It spent 51 weeks on the UK chart.

Pink Floyd spent more than two weeks rehearsing in a hangar at Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino, California, before opening on 29 March 1994, in Miami, with an almost identical road crew to that used for their Momentary Lapse of Reason tour. They played a variety of Pink Floyd favourites, and later changed their setlist to include The Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety. The tour, Pink Floyd's last, ended on 29 October 1994.

continuare