Remember When: A Pink Floyd Trio Rang ‘The Division Bell’

Roger Waters may have wanted Pink Floyd to end with his departure from the group in the mid-1980s. David Gilmour had other ideas. He and the two other remaining members of the group managed to come back together one more time as a working collective on the 1994 album The Division Bell.

The album found the band recalling some old glories in terms of their sound, while also occasionally breaking new ground. Here’s how Pink Floyd became a trio for one more go-round.

Long Division

You might wonder why we’re talking up The Division Bell as the album where Pink Floyd moved on from Roger Waters, when the band had technically released A Momentary Lapse of Reason seven years earlier. Why wouldn’t that be the comeback, especially since it did quite good business and spurred David Gilmour, Rick Wright, and Nick Mason to return to the road?

The issue with A Momentary Lapse of Reason was it was a Pink Floyd album in name only. David Gilmour essentially worked with a bunch of different collaborators on the album after writing all the music himself. He rightly realized it was an opportunity to keep the Pink Floyd brand alive, so he called in drummer Mason (on a good chunk of the album) and keyboardist Wright (on just a few tracks).

Wright had been fired from the band during the making of The Wall in the late ’70s, but his return helped to make it more of an official Pink Floyd reunion. It became even more official when the trio (and a handful of supporting musicians) successfully toured the world behind the album. But would they actually record in earnest as a unit once again?

The Bell Tolls

In 1993, Gilmour, Mason, and Wright convened to start working on some new music for a new album. Some of the old animosity bubbled again due to some disagreements about song selection. Wright, who would write for a Floyd album for the first time since Wish You Were Here in 1975, butted heads with Gilmour about which tracks deserved inclusion.

Floyd also worked with a few other collaborators from the band’s heyday. Bob Ezrin, who had helped to produce The Wall, added his production input to The Division Bell. Storm Thorgerson, who had been the visual mastermind behind many of the band’s projects, designed the memorable cover, which looked like a Stonehenge figure split in half.

Outside lyricists were brought in to help realize the band’s vision. They included Anthony Moore, who had co-written the hit “Learning to Fly” on A Momentary Lapse of Reason, and Nick Laird-Clowes, from the ’80s pop band The Dream Academy. Gilmour also relied on his wife Polly Samson to help flesh out the words on many of the tracks.

The Legacy of The Division Bell

There’s no doubt The Division Bell captured the classic sound of ’70s vintage Pink Floyd with all of its woozy, ethereal textures. Wright’s presence had a lot to do with that, as he played off Gilmour’s lyrical guitars just as well as he did in the old days.

The old method of having individual songs rising to the surface out of long instrumental passages also was employed often on the record. Do all those individual songs soar? Not quite, although “Take It Back” freshens up the band’s playbook quite effectively and delivers a pointed message about environmental damage.

As it turned out, this would also be the last album proper from Pink Floyd as a trio. Wright passed away in 2008, three years after the trio performed one more time with Waters at the Live 8 benefit show. In 2014, a collection called The Endless River was released, but it’s mostly just leftover music from the sessions for The Division Bell. Thus, you can call this LP a comeback and swan song all at once.

Photo by Mick Hutson/Redferns