“It comes from all sorts of ideas,” David Gilmour said in 2014, of Pink Floyd’s then-new album The Endless River. “Some of it is improvised, quite a bit of it is just the two of us, Rick [Wright] and me, or the three of us, improvising together. Some of it is half-written ideas that one of us had come up with, rehearsed and considered as a start point for something.”
Those ideas often came about on the Astoria, Gilmour’s houseboat moored on the River Thames in West London. It was also there, in 2012, that engineer Andy Jackson, who had worked with Floyd and Gilmour since 1980, learned there was to be a new Pink Floyd album, some 20 years after they had last released fresh material, and after years of Gilmour saying “absolutely, definitely not”.
It was no secret that there was a surplus of material from the sessions that produced 1994’s The Division Bell. Due to the amount, at one point it had been envisaged as a double, with one disc of tracks with vocals and the other built from the instrumental sessions that began at Floyd’s Britannia Row studios and continued on the Astoria in early 1993. All featured Gilmour, drummer Nick Mason and keyboard player Rick Wright. The purpose of these sessions was to create ideas for songs.
“After two weeks we had taped an extraordinary collection of riffs, patterns and musical doodles,” Nick Mason wrote in his book Inside Out: A Personal History Of Pink Floyd. “Some rather similar, some nearly identifiable as old songs of ours, some clearly subliminal reinventions of well-known songs.”
From these, around 40 workable ideas emerged. As The Division Bell took shape, it became clear that there would be no time to fashion these instrumentals into an album. As a result, the recordings languished.
This story is from the June 2024 edition of Classic Rock.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the June 2024 edition of Classic Rock.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Anthrax
One of thrash metal's Big Four bring the noise - and Kreator and Testament - in November.
Beaux Gris Gris & The Apocalypse
If \"a modern-day vaudeville circus act creating music\" sounds like your thing, catch them live.
"Fancy giving it another twelve months?"
It's the question Nazareth's Pete Agnew and Dan McCafferty asked each other every July 1 since 1972. Now, with McCafferty gone, the band's glory days behind them and Agnew the last surviving original member, he's happy to still be giving it another 12.
WATCHING THE RIVER FLOW
Most thought 1994's The Division Bell was Pink Floyd's final statement. But after sifting through surplus material, 20 years later, with a little help from his friends, David Gilmour pulled The Endless River out of the hat.
GOING MY WAY
From aspiring band guy to multi-faceted solo superstar, Lenny Kravitz has worked with some of rock's greatest. On his new album, he's revisiting his youth.
BACK IN BLACK
As pack leaders of the post-millennial alt.blues scene - until fame turned their hair grey - The Black Keys have reignited their mojo on twelfth album Ohio Players.
SEBASTIAN BACH
He was the youth gone wild: played clubs and guzzled beer at 14; fronted Skid Row and got hit records, star friends, a taste for coke, and the sack; drank more beer; toured with musical theatre productions; has a solo career... \"I've had a pretty fucking extraordinary life,\" he says.
STEVE HARLEY
Classic Rock's Dave Ling looks back at the life and music of the Cockney Rebel.
Troy Redfern
He was raised on a farm; he finds the blues \"super-limiting\"; he's a big Frank Zappa fan; you can dance to his new album..
Kerry King
The Slayer guitarist on his old band, his new band, his new solo album, bumanity's failure, and the pressure of going solo.