The verses are sung at quite a low pitch for Gilmour’s range, and he doubles himself to lend weight to his voice. After the second verse we get the first, very spirited guitar solo. At the end of the following verse comes a middle section featuring the four backing vocalists. The effect contrasts with the monotone voice of the lead vocal, and marks a break from the regularity of the various programmed parts. A Hammond organ can be heard, no doubt played by Rick Wright, as well as guitar arpeggios, played clean. This part is followed by an instrumental break combining numerous effects such as voices with reverse reverb added, guitars and keyboard sounds drenched in reverb and delays, and, once again, the cries of seagulls produced using the wah-wah pedal (4:57)—this is the second time, the first being on “Is There Anybody Out There?” on The Wall, that Gilmour refers back to “Echoes” on Meddle. He explained the technique he used to achieve all these incredible sounds on his guitar: “I had just gotten the Steinberger and hadn’t really played it all that much at that point. But I rather liked the sound it makes naturally. And then the combination of bending up with the wang bar on whole chords while simultaneously fading in with a stereo volume pedal… that’s the sound.”152 Then, after a final verse in which he harmonizes with himself an octave higher, Gilmour performs a final absolutely superb solo lasting more than two and a half minutes, this one recorded in a simpler fashion: “Things like the solo at the end of ‘Sorrow’ were done on the boat, my guitar going through a little Gallien-Krueger amp,”133 he explained.
For Pink Floyd Addicts
The first line of “Sorrow,” The sweet smell of a great sorrow lies over the land, is borrowed from The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck. In Chapter 25, he wrote: “The decay spreads over the State, and the sweet smell is a great sorrow on the land.”
THE DIVISION BELL
ALBUM
THE DIVISION BELL
RELEASE DATE
United Kingdom: March 28 or 30 (depending on source), 1994
Label: EMI
RECORD NUMBER: 1055724382898429 (CD), 1055724382898412 (vinyl)
Number 1, on the charts for 62 weeks (United Kingdom) Number 1 (United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany)
Cluster One/What Do You Want From Me?/Poles Apart/Marooned/A Great Day For Freedom/Wearing The Inside Out/Take It Back/Coming Back To Life/Keep Talking/Lost For Words/High Hopes
The Division Bell, the Unhoped-for Revival
The “Momentary Lapse of Reason Tour,” which attracted more than four million spectators between September 1987 and June 1990, grossing some sixty million dollars, demonstrated that Pink Floyd definitely could have a future without Roger Waters. The question being asked upon their return from the mammoth tour was whether the leading group on the prog rock scene actually did have one. Their fears were fanned by the personal projects being pursued by each of the members of the group. David Gilmour in particular was moving from one collaboration to the next in the capacity of either guitarist or co-producer, notably with Kate Bush (The Sensual World, 1989), Paul McCartney (Flowers in the Dirt, 1989), Propaganda (1234, 1990), the Dream Academy (A Different Kind of Weather, 1990), Elton John (The One, 1992), and All About Eve (Touched by Jesus, 1991), and also as a composer (“Me and J.C.”) for the movie The Cement Garden, directed by Andrew Birkin (1993). Nick Mason had written the soundtrack for the movie Tank Malling (1989, directed by James Marcus) in collaboration with Rick Fenn. And Roger Waters was still making news despite no longer being a member of the group, not least performing The Wall to a crowd of 300,000 on Potsdamer Platz in Berlin on July 21, 1990, and (with valuable support from the guitar hero Jeff Beck) recording the album Amused to Death (1992), unanimously acknowledged as the pinnacle of his solo career.
A Productive Renaissance
Hopes of seeing Pink Floyd back at the center of things revived on October 11, 1992, when David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Rick Wright found themselves on the stage of the Royal Albert Hall in London once more, this time within the context of a benefit concert for AIDS research (the Chelsea Arts Ball). The idea of recording a new album under the Pink Floyd name most likely gained traction as a result of that event, the sessions for the soundtrack of the 1992 documentary La Carrera Panamericana having already, explains Nick Mason, sparked a desire on the part of the three musicians to throw themselves into the challenge of recording a new album.
Confident, since the phenomenal success of A Momentary Lapse of Reason and the ensuing tour, David Gilmour, Rick Wright, and Nick Mason made the decision to start recording some new pieces with a view to releasing another album, and work began at Britannia Row Studios in January 1993. The album would take shape over the course of the entire year in various studios, including Gilmour’s floating studio the Astoria. The three members of the group would initially select twenty-seven pieces from the sixty or more ideas that had accumulated during these months of work, before whittling them down to eleven. Five of these were composed by David Gilmour alone (“Poles Apart,” “A Great Day for Freedom,” “Coming Back to Life,” “Lost for Words,” and “High Hopes”), four by Gilmour and Rick Wright (“Cluster One,” “What Do You Want from Me?” “Marooned,” and “Keep Talking”), one by Gilmour and Bob Ezrin (“Take It Back”), and one by Rick Wright alone (“Wearing the Inside Out”). Rick Wright once again played a major role in the creative development of the album, and was credited as composer (and singer) for the first time since Wish You Were Here. “On this one I have been involved right from the beginning,” he told the music channel MTV. “Writing and singing, and it’s a completely different situation this time, and I’m not on a wage. I’m in partnership with them, and very happy about that. We are actually the three of us making a Pink Floyd album.”91
As far as the lyrics are concerned, Anthony Moore (who had already collaborated with the group on A Momentary Lapse of Reason) wrote the words for “Wearing the Inside Out.” David Gilmour wrote the lyrics for all the other numbers either alone (“Coming Back to Life”), with Polly Samson (“What Do You Want from Me?” “A Great Day for Freedom,” “Keep Talking,” and “High Hopes”), or with both Nick Laird-Clowes (lyricist and singer-guitarist of the Dream Academy) and Polly Samson (“Poles Apart” and “Take It Back”).
When David Met Polly
At this time, Polly Samson was the guitarist’s girlfriend. (The couple would tie the knot on July 29, 1994, during the Division Bell tour.) Polly, whose mother was a writer of Chinese descent who served in Mao Zedong’s Red Army, and whose father was a journalist for the Morning Star, worked in publishing. As a result of which she met the poet and playwright Heathcote Williams and had a son, Charlie, with him. After splitting up with Williams and living for a while in utter poverty, Polly then met the Pink Floyd guitarist. Initially providing moral and emotional support, she would gradually become more involved in the development of the album, encouraged by David Gilmour himself. “She inspired David and gave him a sense of confidence and challenged him,” explains the producer Bob Ezrin. “Whatever David was thinking at the time she helped him find a way of saying it.”1 Polly Samson was thus no stranger to the theme that runs through The Division Bell. “All, pretty much all the songs are connected to the theme of communication in some way or another,”153 Gilmour would reveal to the famous interviewer Redbeard. This is borne out by the album’s title. The division bell in question is the bell in the Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament) in London that is rung to inform the honorable members that they have only ten minutes in which to return to Parliament to vote on a bill. In a sense it announces the moment of truth.
Is this theme of relationships between human beings an answer to, or an echo of, some twenty years later, The Dark Side of the Moon, which dealt with some of the same issues? What seems certain is that Gilmour, Wright, and Mason were making a spectacular leap into the past musically, a return, in a certain sense, to the years in which the Pink Floyd legend was created, the period of More (for its acoustic ballads), but above all Meddle, The Dar
k Side of the Moon, and Wish You Were Here (for their “cosmic” moods). This was probably under the influence of Rick Wright, who had been absent from the previous album: “We made certain decisions,” he explains, “for example Momentary Lapse of Reason, I was involved with it virtually near the last quarter of making the album, and just putting in a couple of Hammond tracks down or whatever. This, Nick, myself, and Dave were involved right from the beginning, in Britannia Row Studios just playing together. And out of that, the tracks came and decisions like: Nick will play all the drums, I will play all the keyboards (and Jon Carin came in as a programmer and played some of the keyboards); but it was to get the band feeling back.”153 This would not, however, prevent Wright from claiming after the release of the album that, finding his status uncertain, he had wanted to quit the project mid production. He would also reveal afterward that he was somewhat disappointed with the results, judging the album’s thematic material to have been insufficiently exploited. As for Roger Waters, the bassist’s resentment toward his former colleagues would by no means diminish over the years. In 2004, he told John Harris he could not believe that Gilmour had left the lyric writing to his wife: “I mean, give me a fucking break! Come on. And what a nerve to call that Pink Floyd. It was an awful record.”30
The Album: A Commercial Success but a Critical Failure
To launch their fourteenth and penultimate studio album, Pink Floyd held a press conference at Abbey Road Studios in London on November 30, 1993. It was on this occasion that Rick Wright’s return as a full member of the band was officially announced. The Division Bell was released in the United Kingdom and continental Europe on March 28 (30 according to some sources), 1994, and on April 4 in North America. Given that it achieved number 1 in the band’s home country, in the United States, Canada, Australia, and more or less all over Europe (including Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands…), it would be no exaggeration to describe the album as a triumph. A triumph that was to be confirmed over time by a stream of record industry certifications including double platinum in France and the United Kingdom (600,000 copies sold), triple Platinum in the United States (three million copies), and triple gold in Germany (750,000 copies). The critics, on the other hand, were generally acerbic to say the least. “Neither dazzling nor radical,” wrote Stephen Dalton in Vox in May 1994, adding that “in this uncertain world of ours, the weather seldom changes on Planet Floyd.”154 Tommy Udo of NME described the record as “very, very boring.”155 And Tom Graves, writing in Rolling Stone, went so far as to wonder whether The Division Bell was “still really Pink Floyd?”156
Two days after the European release of the album, Pink Floyd embarked on a long tour under the aegis of the Canadian promoter Michael Cohl. Performing with them were instrumentalists Guy Pratt, Tim Renwick, Gary Wallis, and Dick Parry, and backing vocalists Sam Brown, Claudia Fontaine, and Durga McBroom. The tour kicked off at Miami Gardens in Florida on March 30 and concluded seven months later with fourteen shows at Earls Court in London (finishing on October 29). After this, fans would have to wait more than ten years to enjoy another live set by the group, which Pink Floyd eventually played at Live 8 in July 2006—this time with the participation of… Roger Waters (his first live performance with the Floyd in twenty-four years)!
The Sleeve
It is to Douglas Adams, a friend of David Gilmour and famous science fiction author and scriptwriter (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, 1979) that Pink Floyd owed the title of their fourteenth studio album: The Division Bell (taken from the lyrics to “High Hopes,” the last track on the album). This was immediately accepted by EMI and the three members of the Floyd. Storm Thorgerson got straight to work on the visuals. Because the main theme of the album is communication, or rather the difficulty of communicating, he immediately thought of those images that could be interpreted as representing different things depending on the viewing angle, for example a woman who appeared as either young or old, or the profiles of two faces that could be visually interpreted as forming the outline of a vase. “You couldn’t see both simultaneously,” he writes in his book. “One preference would exclude the other possibility, at least temporarily.”65 Thorgerson developed this approach further and had a sudden brainstorm after listening to the song “Keep Talking”: two faces (or masks) depicted in profile talking to each other; two faces that, when viewed carefully, can also form a third. This is the concept he eventually ran with: “The single eyes of the two faces looking at each other become the two eyes of a single face looking at you, the viewer,” he explains. “It was intended that the viewer should not see both at the same time. One saw the single face, or the two profiles. If one saw both it was alternating, like an optical illusion, which was even better because it meant that the viewer was interacting, or communicating, with the image directly, viscerally.”65
Although the three members of Pink Floyd were not immediately wowed by Storm Thorgerson’s concept, this changed after the portraitist Keith Breeden modified the illustrations, taking his inspiration from the Easter Island statues (giant Aku Aku totems). Four three-meter-high three-dimensional versions (two stone and two metal) were then fabricated and transported to Ely, in the Cambridgeshire countryside, ready for the shoot. It is Ely Cathedral that can be seen in the background of the photograph. “I visited the location for the photo shoot one chilly day in February,” reveals Nick Mason. “It was a stunning scene, with the heads parked out in the fens. One of our biggest problems was trying to hide them from the press, who would have loved to pre-empt the album’s release. Army surplus stores were raided and large quantities of camouflage netting were acquired to be draped over the heads in a rather half-hearted attempt to disguise them.”5
The four points of light that can be made out between the mouths of the statues could perhaps have been intended to symbolize the four members of Pink Floyd. Was this a case of Thorgerson being mischievous? Or the sign of a general desire for reconciliation?
The Recording
The first stage in the development of the group’s fourteenth studio album goes back to the very beginning of 1993, when a highly motivated David Gilmour, Rick Wright, and Nick Mason got together at the Britannia Row Studios for the start of the preproduction phase. Bob Ezrin was again co-producer (with Gilmour). After the first day’s work, the band members were reassured: they still enjoyed playing together and had not been abandoned by their muse. They then invited Guy Pratt, the talented bassist who had been playing with the Floyd since the last tour, to join them. From that moment on, Pink Floyd was up and running. “We started off by going into Nick’s studio, Britannia Row Studios in London in January 93 [at this time Nick was the last of the four band members to own shares in the studio, before selling them in the mid-nineties to Kate Koumi], with myself, Nick, and Rick, and Guy, the bass player from our last tour,” explained David Gilmour to a Polish newspaper in 1994. “And we just jammed away at anything for two weeks, just playing anything that we had in our heads or that we made up on the spot.”93 Now that the differences between the musicians had been put aside and the ego problems forgotten, with no one and nothing to disrupt the newfound unity, not even the interminable conflict with Roger Waters, which was now resolved, a pleasant atmosphere prevailed. Two major pieces on the album emerged from this preparatory stage: “Cluster One” and “Marooned.”
The three members of Pink Floyd had rediscovered their self-confidence. David Gilmour, who took on the role of de facto leader of the group, was relaxed, no longer weighed down by the immense pressure he had been under during A Momentary Lapse of Reason. Nick Mason was determined to play all the drum parts himself, unlike on the last album, and was literally galvanized by such a serene and productive atmosphere. Finally, Rick Wright, now a full member of the band once more, was encouraged, somewhat in spite of himself, to compose material for the album. Nick Mason would explain that David Gilmour, frustrated at not obtaining any material from Wright, left a tape recorder running in secret, as a result of which three son
gs emerged from the keyboard player’s improvisations, demonstrating how important Wright had been to the group right from the outset.
After this two-week preproduction phase, the sessions moved to another venue, as Gilmour reveals: “And then we took all that over to Astoria and started listening to all the tapes and working stuff out. We found that we had 65 pieces of music… which we worked on all of to a certain extent, and then we started adding these things. We had a couple of sessions which we called ‘the big listen’ where we listened to all these 65, and all the people involved with it voted on each track […].”91 Nick Mason, in his book, adds that some pieces were “rather similar, some nearly identifiable as old songs of ours, some clearly subliminal reinventions of well-known songs.”5 “And so we then arranged these 65 pieces of music in order of popularity amongst the band,” explains Gilmour, “and then we dumped 40 of them, and worked on the top 25, which in fact became the top 27 because a couple more got added in.”91 The sequence of rejected material was set aside and nicknamed “The Big Spliff” by Andy Jackson. For the time being, everyone felt there was enough material for a second album, but that project was put off until later. After substantial reworking, this material would eventually result in Pink Floyd’s final album, The Endless River, in 2014.
After having worked on the Astoria from February to May, and before taking their summer vacation, the group got together with their tour musicians Guy Pratt, Gary Wallis, Tim Renwick, and Jon Carin (but not the backing singers) at London’s Olympic Studios, a place the band knew very well, to shape nine of the best songs out of those selected. The idea was to find out what potential these pieces had before working on them in earnest. Reassured, in September they then recorded the base tracks for each of them with the same team—on the Astoria again—before completing and finalizing them as a threesome in two weeks. The final stages of production took place in a hurry, requiring the use of two other London studios: Metropolis and Creek Recording Studios. Bob Ezrin provided extremely valuable support in the selection of the different drum takes, and once again Michael Kamen was commissioned to do the various orchestral arrangements. In this he was helped by Edward Shearmur, his principal assistant, who went on to have a brilliant career as a composer of movie scores.
Pink Floyd All the Songs Page 71
