I update rather infrequently here, and it’s not like I do this for my massive readership (because I really would be a delusional megalomaniac if that was the case). I do it because occasionally, just once in a while, something comes along that I just feel the need to write about. And last night rumours started circulating that perked my interest, and I haven’t been able to shake them; the return of Pink Floyd.
Sort of.
The unofficial announcement comes from the twitter feed of Polly Samson, the wife of one David Gilmour. She claimed that a new Pink Floyd album, titled The Endless River, will be out in October. Now, Samson’s twitter feed is unverified, so we can’t DEFINITELY say it’s her. However, she does appear to have some family-looking pictures of Mr Gilmour with a rather hideous beard, and has re-tweeted adopted son and sometime war memorial destroyer Charlie Gilmour. And long time Floyd backing vocalist Durga McBroom (which, as a name, always made me smile as a kid) confirmed that she had worked on some Floyd material as recently as last December...
The recording did start during The Division Bell sessions (and yes, it was the side project originally titled The Big Spliff that Nick Mason spoke about), which is why there are Richard Wright tracks on it. But David and Nick have gone in and done a lot more since then. It was originally to be a completely instrumental recording, but I came in last December and sang on a few tracks. David then expanded on my backing vocals and has done a lead on at least one of them.
Basically, what’s being touted here is an album made up of outtakes from the sessions of their last album, 1994’s The Division Bell. That might not sound too promising, but there’s been plenty of examples of that practice being successful in the past; Michael Jackson’s current posthumous release Xscape is miles better than the last couple of albums he actually made himself, Van Halen’s comeback with David Lee Roth in 2012 was the same kind of affair and was the best thing either of them had done for years. George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass is by far the best Beatles solo album, and yet it was made up almost entirely of songs that he wrote for The Beatles that didn’t get used because of the wealth of Lennon/McCartney material.
Slight difference, of course, is that all of Van Halen’s albums with David Lee Roth, and all of The Beatles’ latter albums, and most of the albums Michael Jackson made when he recorded the songs used on Xscape were…erm…better than The Division Bell. Don’t get me wrong; it’s OK. It’s better than their previous effort, A Momentary Lapse of Reason, but nowhere in the league of what the Floyd were capable of in the past. So…material not good enough for an album that was just OK? Not exactly promising.
Another thing to bear in mind here is that, given the timescale, it’s not really going to be all of Pink Floyd. Roger Waters, the creative force behind the band’s greatest years, left in 1983. Rather bitterly. So, any material recorded in 1994 will obviously not include him, and the likelihood is he won’t have returned to the fold to finish this material, because…oh, let’s not get into it. But, needless to say, it won’t have happened. Furthermore, keyboard player Rick Wright died in 2008. So, any re-recording or updates won’t include him either. Which leaves Gilmour and Nick Mason. Given Gilmour’s dominance of Floyd’s later years, it’s starting to sound more like a David Gilmour solo album.
So - the likelihood? Well, a 20th anniversary box set edition of The Division Bell came out a few weeks ago. Which struck me as odd from the get go, because I wouldn’t have considered the album critically or commercially successful enough to warrant anniversary box set treatment. But, it is plausible that when going through the tapes, Gilmour and Mason found this material and started working on it. Although, I am surprised that Gilmour is wanting to work on another Floyd project after years of refusing to do so.
As for promotion, I can’t see a tour. Once again, Gilmour’s reluctance to reform and tour Pink Floyd in the past is a signifier here. Plus, he had to be goaded into playing for 20 minutes at Live 8 in 2005 (which, to be frank, was a nice close to the Floyd legacy anyway). In addition, I can’t see a tour going down as well with fans as you may think either. With Wright now gone and, with this being a Gilmour-led project, likely no Waters, it would essentially be a Gilmour solo tour with Mason on drums. And though that’s as many original members as The Who tour with, it was also the same number of original members of Pink Floyd on stage as Gilmour’s last solo tour in 2006.
But, I guess time will tell. Post-Bowie, there have been a bunch of unexpected album drops, so who really knows? Guess all will be revealed soon.
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