Pink Floyd- The Division Bell- David Gilmour, Nick Mason

Never intended to be the last word in the long-running Pink Floyd legacy, nevertheless March 1994’s The Division Bell became, in effect, the final offering of new music from the remaining triumvirate of singer/guitarist/composer David Gilmour, drummer Nick Mason, and keyboard player Richard Wright. The Division Bell sold over three million copies just in the Nineties, and the Pink Floyd tour mounted in support of its release grossed a reported $100,000,000 in concert ticket sales. Wow.

When Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell  was released in March 1994, the term “Brexit” had not been coined and Elizabeth II was Queen. Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking (who did a cameo on the song “Keep Talking”), Pink Floyd keyboard player Rick Wright, orchestrator/arranger Michael Kamen, and longtime Pink Floyd manager Steve O’Rourke were all very much alive. Then, too, Polly Samson was known only as a journalist, and the three now-grown children she would bear with Pink Floyd guitarist/singer/composer David Gilmour were only a vibrato in Dave’s Stratocaster when I hosted the Division Bell world premiere broadcast in March across North America on opening night from Miami Joe Robbie Stadium on the Pink Floyd tour. Listening to this classic rock interview, one of the last ever with the  gentle and fragile original Pink Floyd keyboard player Richard Wright, you would have no indication of the circumstances under which we had this conversation. In mid-March 1994 I had been driven to a decommissioned Air Force base in the California desert at dusk, where we were met at the gate by Military Police with white gloves and live ammo in their M-16 rifles. The reason that the British band Pink Floyd was rehearsing their 1994 Division Bell   North American tour at a U.S. military base was simply because nothing smaller than a C-5 military transport hangar could accommodate the massive stage, lights, and sound system. A month later I would find myself broadcasting my Dallas/ Ft.Worth afternoon radio show live from the gondola of the Pink Floyd blimp airship (below,) with Captain Hunter letting me take the controls high over North Texas (I must admit, though, that Q102 Promotions Manager Kacy Harrison flew the blimp much better than I did).

For the thirtieth anniversary of this progressive rock milestone, David Gilmour and Nick Mason join me here In the Studio, plus archival comments from the late Rick Wright, to detail the songs “Keep Talking”, “What Do You Want from Me”, Rick Wright’s last lead vocal “Wearing the Inside Out”,”Take It Back”, “Coming Back to Life”, and the epic “High Hopes” for the future of Pink Floyd, which were cut short with Rick Wright’s death in September 2008. –Redbeard