A Momentary Lapse of Reason 1987
This is really a David Gilmour solo album with minimal contributions from Nick and Rick. Most of the keyboard parts had been recorded before Wright came on board (his first PF project since
The Wall - and he didn't do much on that one either), and Mason didn't feel his drumming was up to snuff, so his contribution was mostly in the area of sound effects. So I judge it as a Dave record more than anything else, and as such this is certainly the best thing Gilmour ever did on his own. Except he's not really doing it all himself, is he? The fact that Nick/Rick are on it too makes it a Floyd LP. Radio was all over this in San Diego at the time, so I have found memories of it. I realize that a lot of PF fans have no use for this disc, but I actually enjoy it more than
The Final Cut. The band also toured on the strength of this record so we got the first live Pink Floyd album since
Ummagumma the next year.
Wikipedia: "
A Momentary Lapse of Reason is the thirteenth studio album by the English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, released in the UK on 7 September 1987 by EMI and the following day in the US on Columbia. It was recorded primarily on guitarist David Gilmour's converted houseboat, Astoria.
A Momentary Lapse of Reason was the first Pink Floyd album recorded without founding member Roger Waters, who departed in 1985. The production was marred by legal fights over the rights to the Pink Floyd name, which were not resolved until several months after release. It also saw the return of keyboardist and founding member Richard Wright, who had resigned from the band under pressure from Waters during the recording of
The Wall (1979).
Unlike most earlier Pink Floyd records,
A Momentary Lapse of Reason is not a concept album. It includes writing contributions from outside songwriters, following Gilmour's decision to include material once intended for his third solo album. The album was promoted with a successful world tour and with three singles: the double A-side "Learning to Fly" / "Terminal Frost", "On the Turning Away", and "One Slip".
A Momentary Lapse of Reason received mixed reviews; some critics praised the production and instrumentation but criticized Gilmour's writing, and it was derided by Waters. It was nonetheless a commercial comeback for the band, reaching number three in the UK and US, and outsold Pink Floyd's previous album
The Final Cut (1983). The album was supported by a highly successful world tour between 1987 and 1989.
BackgroundAfter the release of Pink Floyd's 1983 album
The Final Cut, viewed by some as a de facto solo record by bassist and songwriter Roger Waters, the band members worked on solo projects. Guitarist David Gilmour expressed feelings about his strained relationship with Waters on his second solo album,
About Face (1984), and finished the accompanying tour as Waters began touring to promote his debut solo album,
The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking. Although both had enlisted a range of successful performers, including in Waters' case Eric Clapton, their solo acts attracted fewer fans than Pink Floyd; poor ticket sales forced Gilmour to cancel several concerts, and critic David Fricke felt that Waters' show was "a petulant echo, a transparent attempt to prove that Roger Waters was Pink Floyd". Waters returned to the US in March 1985 with a second tour, this time without the support of CBS Records, which had expressed its preference for a new Pink Floyd album; Waters criticized the corporation as "a machine".
After drummer Nick Mason attended one of Waters' London performances in 1985, he found he missed touring under the Pink Floyd name. His visit coincided with the release in August of his second solo album,
Profiles, on which Gilmour sang. With a shared love of aviation, Mason and Gilmour were taking flying lessons and together bought a de Havilland Dove aeroplane. Gilmour was working on other collaborations, including a performance for Bryan Ferry at 1985's Live Aid concert, and co-produced the Dream Academy's self-titled debut album.
In December 1985, Waters announced that he had left Pink Floyd, which he believed was "a spent force creatively". After the failure of his
About Face tour, Gilmour hoped to continue with the Pink Floyd name. The threat of a lawsuit from Gilmour, Mason and CBS Records was meant to compel Waters to write and produce another Pink Floyd album with his bandmates, who had barely participated in making
The Final Cut; Gilmour was especially critical of the album, labelling it "cheap filler" and "meandering rubbish".
At that time, certainly, I just thought, I can't really see how we can make the next record or if we can it's a long time in the future, and it'll probably be more for, just because of feeling of some obligation that we ought to do it, rather than for any enthusiasm.
Nick Mason, In the Studio with Redbeard (1987)
They threatened me with the fact that we had a contract with CBS Records and that part of the contract could be construed to mean that we had a product commitment with CBS and if we didn't go on producing product, they could a) sue us and b) withhold royalties if we didn't make any more records. So they said, 'that's what the record company are going to do and the rest of the band are going to sue you for all their legal expenses and any loss of earnings because you're the one that's preventing the band from making any more records.' They forced me to resign from the band because, if I hadn't, the financial repercussions would have wiped me out completely.Roger Waters,
Uncut (June 2004), explaining why he stopped his legal challenge
According to Gilmour, "I told [Waters] before he left, 'If you go, man, we're carrying on. Make no bones about it, we would carry on', and Roger replied: 'You'll never fucking do it.'" Waters had written to EMI and Columbia declaring his intention to leave the group and asking them to release him from his contractual obligations. He also dispensed with the services of Pink Floyd manager Steve O'Rourke and employed Peter Rudge to manage his affairs. This left Gilmour and Mason, in their view, free to continue with the Pink Floyd name. In 2013, Waters said he regretted the lawsuit and had not understood English jurisprudence.
In Waters' absence, Gilmour had been recruiting musicians for a new project. Months previously, keyboardist Jon Carin had jammed with Gilmour at his Hookend studio, where he composed the chord progression that became "Learning to Fly", and so was invited onto the team. Gilmour invited Bob Ezrin (co-producer of 1979's
The Wall) to help consolidate their material; Ezrin had turned down Waters' offer of a role on the development of his new solo album,
Radio K.A.O.S., saying it was "far easier for Dave and I to do our version of a Floyd record". Ezrin arrived in England in mid-1986 for what Gilmour later described as "mucking about with a lot of demos".
At this stage, there was no commitment to a new Pink Floyd release, and Gilmour maintained that the material might become his third solo album. CBS representative Stephen Ralbovsky hoped for a new Pink Floyd album, but in a meeting in November 1986, told Gilmour and Ezrin that the music "doesn't sound a fucking thing like Pink Floyd". By the end of that year, Gilmour had decided to make the material into a Pink Floyd project, and agreed to rework the material that Ralbovsky had found objectionable.
RecordingGilmour experimented with songwriters such as Eric Stewart and Roger McGough, but settled on Anthony Moore, who was credited as co-writer of "Learning to Fly" and "On the Turning Away". Whereas many prior Pink Floyd albums are concept albums, Gilmour chose a more conventional approach of a collection of songs without a thematic link. Gilmour later said that the project had been difficult without Waters.
A Momentary Lapse of Reason was recorded in several studios, mainly Gilmour's houseboat studio Astoria, moored on the Thames; according to Ezrin, "working there was just magical, so inspirational; kids sculling down the river, geese flying by...". Andy Jackson was brought in to engineer. During sessions held between November 1986 and February 1987, Gilmour's band worked on new material, which in a change from previous Pink Floyd albums was recorded with a 24-track analogue machine and overdubbed onto a 32-track Mitsubishi digital recorder. This trend of using new technologies continued with the use of MIDI synchronization, aided by an Apple Macintosh computer.
Ezrin suggested incorporating rap, an idea dismissed by Gilmour. After agreeing to rework the material that Ralbovsky had found objectionable, Gilmour employed session musicians such as Carmine Appice and Jim Keltner. Both drummers, they replaced Mason on several songs; Mason was concerned that he was too out of practice to perform on the album, and instead busied himself with its sound effects. Some drum parts were also performed by drum machines. In his memoir, Mason wrote: "In hindsight, I really should have had the self-belief to play all the drum parts. And in the early days of life after Roger, I think David and I felt that we had to get it right, or we would be slaughtered."
You can't go back ... You have to find a new way of working, of operating and getting on with it. We didn't make this remotely like we've made any other Floyd record. It was different systems, everything.David Gilmour
During the sessions, Gilmour was asked by the wife of Pink Floyd's former keyboardist, Richard Wright, if he could contribute. A founding member of the band, Wright had left in 1979, and there were legal obstacles to his return; after a meeting in Hampstead he was recruited as a paid musician on a weekly wage of $11,000. Gilmour said in an interview that Wright's presence "would make us stronger legally and musically". However, his contributions were minimal; most of the keyboard parts had already been recorded, and so from February 1987 Wright played some background reinforcement on a Hammond organ, and a Rhodes piano, and added vocal harmonies. He also performed a solo in "On the Turning Away", which was discarded, according to Wright, "not because they didn't like it ... they just thought it didn't fit".
Gilmour later said: "Both Nick and Rick were catatonic in terms of their playing ability at the beginning. Neither of them played on this at all really. In my view, they'd been destroyed by Roger." Gilmour's comments angered Mason, who said: "I'd deny that I was catatonic. I'd expect that from the opposition, it's less attractive from one's allies. At some point, he made some sort of apology." Mason conceded that Gilmour was nervous about how the album would be perceived.
"Learning to Fly" was inspired by Gilmour's flying lessons, which occasionally conflicted with his studio duties. The track also contains a recording of Mason's voice during takeoff. The band experimented with samples, and Ezrin recorded the sound of Gilmour's boatman Langley Iddens rowing across the Thames. Iddens' presence at the sessions became vital when Astoria began to lift in response to the rapidly rising river, which was pushing the boat against the pier on which it was moored.
"The Dogs of War" is a song about "physical and political mercenaries", according to Gilmour. It came about through a mishap in the studio when a sampling machine began playing a sample of laughter, which Gilmour thought sounded like a dog's bark. "Terminal Frost" was one of Gilmour's older demos, which he decided to leave as an instrumental. Conversely, the lyrics for "Sorrow" were written before the music. The song's opening guitar solo was recorded in the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena. A 24-track mobile studio piped Gilmour's guitar tracks through a public address system, and the resulting mix was then recorded in surround sound.
Legal disputesThe sessions were interrupted by the escalating disagreement between Waters and Pink Floyd over who had the rights to the Pink Floyd name. O'Rourke, believing that his contract with Waters had been terminated illegally, sued Waters for £25,000 of back-commission. In a late-1986 board meeting of Pink Floyd Music Ltd (Pink Floyd's clearing house for all financial transactions since 1973), Waters learnt that a bank account had been opened to deal exclusively with all monies related to "the new Pink Floyd project". He immediately applied to the High Court to prevent the Pink Floyd name from being used again, but his lawyers discovered that the partnership had never been formally confirmed. Waters returned to the High Court in an attempt to gain a veto over further use of the band's name. Gilmour's team responded by issuing a press release affirming that Pink Floyd would continue to exist; however, Gilmour told a
Sunday Times reporter: "Roger is a dog in the manger and I'm going to fight him, no one else has claimed Pink Floyd was entirely them. Anybody who does is extremely arrogant."
Waters twice visited Astoria, and with his wife had a meeting in August 1986 with Ezrin; Ezrin later suggested that he was being "checked out". As Waters was still a shareholder and director of Pink Floyd Music, he was able to block any decisions made by his former bandmates. Recording moved to Mayfair Studios in February 1987, and from February to March – under the terms of an agreement with Ezrin to record close to his home – to A&M Studios in Los Angeles: "It was fantastic because ... the lawyers couldn't call in the middle of recording unless they were calling in the middle of the night." The bitterness of the row between Waters and Pink Floyd was covered in a November 1987 issue of
Rolling Stone, which became the magazine's best-selling issue of that year. The legal disputes were resolved out of court by the end of 1987.
Packaging and titleCareful consideration was given to the album's title, with the initial three contenders being Signs of Life, Of Promises Broken and Delusions of Maturity. The final title appears as a line in the chorus of "One Slip".
For the first time since 1977's
Animals, designer Storm Thorgerson was employed to work on a Pink Floyd studio album cover. His finished design was a long river of hospital beds arranged on a beach, inspired by a phrase from "Yet Another Movie" and Gilmour's vague hint of a design that included a bed in a Mediterranean house, as well as "vestiges of relationships that have evaporated, leaving only echoes". The cover shows hundreds of hospital beds assembled in July 1987 on Saunton Sands in North Devon, where some of the scenes for
Pink Floyd – The Wall were filmed. The beds were arranged by Thorgerson's colleague Colin Elgie. A hang glider in the sky references "Learning to Fly". The photographer, Robert Dowling, won a gold award at the Association of Photographers Awards for the image, which took about two weeks to create.
To emphasise that Waters had left the band, the inner gatefold featured a photograph of just Gilmour and Mason shot by David Bailey. Its inclusion marked the first time since
Meddle (1971) that a group photo had been used in the artwork of a Pink Floyd album. Wright was represented only by name, on the credits. According to Mason, Wright's leaving agreement contained a clause that prevented him rejoining the band, and "consequently we had to be careful about what constituted being a member".
TourPink Floyd decided to tour for the album before it was complete. Early rehearsals were chaotic; Mason and Wright were out of practice, and, realizing he had taken on too much work, Gilmour asked Ezrin to take charge. Matters were complicated when Waters contacted several US promoters and threatened to sue if they used the Pink Floyd name. Gilmour and Mason funded the start-up costs; Mason, separated from his wife, used his Ferrari 250 GTO as collateral. Some promoters were offended by Waters' threat, and several months later 60,000 tickets went on sale in Toronto, selling out within hours.
As the new line-up (with Wright) toured throughout North America, Waters'
Radio K.A.O.S. tour was sometimes close by. Waters forbade the members of Pink Floyd to attend his concerts, which were generally in smaller venues. Waters also issued a writ for copyright fees for use of the Pink Floyd flying pig; Pink Floyd responded by attaching a huge set of male genitalia to the balloon's underside to distinguish it from Waters' design. By November 1987, Waters had given up, and on 23 December a legal settlement was reached at a meeting on Astoria.
The Momentary Lapse tour beat box office records in every US venue it booked, and was the most successful US tour that year. Tours of Australia, Japan, and Europe followed, before two more tours of the US. Almost every venue was sold out. A live album,
Delicate Sound of Thunder, was released on 22 November 1988, followed in June 1989 by a concert video. A few days later, the live album was played in orbit, on board Soyuz TM-7. The tour eventually came to an end by closing the Silver Clef Award Winners Concert, at Knebworth Park on 30 June 1990, after 200 performances, a gross audience of 4.25 million fans, and box office receipts of more than £60 million (not including merchandising)."
PersonnelTrack numbering refers to CD and digital releases of the album.
Pink FloydDavid Gilmour – vocals, guitars, keyboards, drum machine, sequencers, production
Nick Mason – electronic and acoustic drums, sound effects (tracks 1, 2, 4–6, 9), spoken vocals (on "Signs of Life", "Learning to Fly" and "Terminal Frost")
Richard Wright – piano, backing vocals ("Learning to Fly", "On the Turning Away" and "Sorrow"), Kurzweil, Hammond organ (tracks 1, 2, 5, 9, 11)
Additional musiciansBob Ezrin – keyboards, percussion, sequencers, production
Jon Carin – keyboards
Patrick Leonard – synthesizers
Bill Payne – Hammond organ
Michael Landau – guitar
Tony Levin – bass guitar, Chapman Stick on "One Slip"
Jim Keltner – drums
Carmine Appice – drums on "Dogs of War"
Steve Forman – percussion
Tom Scott – alto saxophone; soprano saxophone
John Helliwell – saxophone (credited as "John Halliwell")
Scott Page – tenor saxophone
Darlene Koldenhoven (as Darlene Koldenhaven) – backing vocals
Carmen Twillie – backing vocals
Phyllis St. James – backing vocals
Donny Gerrard – backing vocals
1. "Signs of Life" (Gilmour, Bob Ezrin) 4:24
Another sloooooow build for a track which more or less functions as the intro to the LP. Spacey effects and Gilmour's guitar tell us it's a Pink Floyd record, and it all
sounds marvelous too. There's nothing we haven't heard before, but it's nice to have something a tad more weighty than the standard Dave album or Roger concept.
MusicIt is an instrumental piece, although on the album version, the electronically processed voice of drummer Nick Mason can be heard for a few seconds reciting two verses of an unknown poem. The screen film used to accompany the song during concert performances featured Langley Iddins, caretaker of David Gilmour's Astoria houseboat-studio, rowing through Grantchester Meadows.
The piece is Pink Floyd's first instrumental piece (excluding the live-only "The Last Few Bricks") since 1973's "Any Colour You Like", from
The Dark Side of the Moon. Its roots go back to the 1970s.
Part Two of Signs of Life was actually done in 1977, I think. The guitar and the whistling answers was actually a demo that I did in '77 or '78. We had to replace the actual guitar, but the backing chords are from an ancient thing I did. Most of the rest of it was written within the past two years.David Gilmour,
http://www.pink-floyd.org/artint/crm021988.htmThe song segues directly into "Learning to Fly". "Signs of Life" ends on an E minor chord, while "Learning to Fly" opens with the parallel chord of G major.
A live recording has been released as part of the concert film
Delicate Sound of Thunder. The accompanying live album did not include the track until the 2019 remix, which contains the entire live setlist.
The piece is shortened on all official releases of
Delicate Sound of Thunder. On the 2019 album and video version, parts of Mason's spoken vocal were re-inserted into the track even if live recordings from the tour show that it was not part of the original concerts." - Wiki
2. "Learning to Fly" (Gilmour, Anthony Moore, Ezrin, Jon Carin) 4:52
Now I heard this all the time on the radio in the late '80s. Dave's analogy of learning how to fly a plane with getting PF off of the ground works perfectly. The song rocks along nicely and Gilmour's voice fits the mood.
Wiki: "Learning to Fly" is a song by the English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, written by David Gilmour, Anthony Moore, Bob Ezrin, and Jon Carin. It was the first single from the band's thirteenth studio album
A Momentary Lapse of Reason. It reached number 70 on the U.S.
Billboard Hot 100 chart and number 1 on the
Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart in September, 1987, remaining three consecutive weeks at the top position in the autumn of the same year. Meanwhile, the song failed to chart on the official U.K. top 40 singles charts. On the other hand, in Spain, the song peaked at number 1 on the
Los 40 Principales chart.
BackgroundThe song was primarily written by David Gilmour, who developed the music from a 1986 demo by Jon Carin. The notable rhythm pattern at the beginning of the song was already present in the demo, and Carin stated that it was influenced by Steve Jansen or Yukihiro Takahashi.
The lyrics describe Gilmour's thoughts on flying, for which he has a passion (being a licensed pilot with multiple ratings), though it has also been interpreted as a metaphor for beginning something new, experiencing a radical change in life, or, more specifically, Gilmour's feelings about striking out as the new leader of Pink Floyd after the departure of Roger Waters. Gilmour confirmed the latter interpretation on the
Pink Floyd 25th Anniversary Special in May 1992. Also an avid pilot, drummer Nick Mason's voice can be heard at around the middle of the song. "Learning to Fly" was included on Pink Floyd's greatest hits collection
Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd.
The track was regularly performed live on the band's two post-Roger Waters tours, with touring guitarist Tim Renwick playing the song's guitar solos (although David Gilmour played the solos on the studio version of the track). A live version is included on
Delicate Sound of Thunder and
Pulse. At the end of the final solo in both versions, a guitar lick from the second verse of "Young Lust" ("Oooh, baby set me free") is played.
Music videoThe music video was directed by Storm Thorgerson, a longtime collaborator of Pink Floyd who had designed many of their album covers, and filmed on West Wind Ridge, a mountain in Kananaskis Country near Canmore, located some 50 to 75 km west of the city of Calgary, Alberta during rehearsals for the band's
A Momentary Lapse of Reason Tour. The video combined performances of the band with an Indigenous male, played by Canadian actor Lawrence Bayne, working in a field who then runs and jumps off a cliff to turn into a red-tailed hawk. The footage of the stage show shows the band performing "Learning to Fly" but features the more colourful light-show used for live performances of "One of These Days". The red/orange airplane is a Beech Model 17 Staggerwing.
The original video also depicts a factory worker who turns into an aeroplane pilot as well as a child who breaks free from his mother and dives off a cliff into a deep river, swimming away.
The video went to No. 9 on MTV's
Video Countdown in November 1987 and was the No. 60 video of MTV's
Top 100 Videos of 1987. The video won the band its only MTV Video Music Award for "Best Concept Video" in 1988."
3. "The Dogs of War" (Gilmour, Moore) 6:10
A most Waters-like theme really, almost harkening back to
Animals with its imagery. I dunno, I guess I'd rather listen to stuff like this than anything Floyd-related since the seventies.
"It was released as a promotional single from the album. Live versions have an extended intro, an extended middle solo for the saxophone, a guitar and sax duel and a longer outro as compared to the album version. The track was a minor rock radio hit in the US and reached #16 on MTV's
Video Countdown in May 1988.
CompositionMusically, the song follows a twelve-bar blues structure in C minor, only with significantly different chord changes. A standard blues song in C minor would progress as C minor, F minor, C minor, G (major or minor), F minor, and back to C minor. "The Dogs of War", instead, progresses in this way: C minor, Eb minor, C minor, Ab seventh, F minor, and back to C minor. All minor chords include the seventh.
Singer David Gilmour often approaches the C minor chord by singing on the diminished fifth, G flat, before descending to the fourth, minor third, and root. This melody is also compatible with the next chord, Eb minor, in which G flat is the minor third. It also appears in the Ab seventh chord, as the dominant seventh.
The majority of the song is in a slow 12/8 time. After a bluesy guitar solo, the song switches to a fast 4/4 tempo for the saxophone solo. This is not unlike what happens in "Money", a minor-key blues-based song from
The Dark Side of the Moon, in which a saxophone solos over the song's predominant 7/4 tempo before switching to a faster 4/4 tempo for the guitar solo. "The Dogs of War" also imitates "Money" in its ending sequence, with a "call and response" between Gilmour's voice and his guitar.
VideoThe video for the track composed of the backdrop film directed by Storm Thorgerson which depicted German Shepherds with yellow eyes running through a war zone plus a live recording and concert footage filmed during the band's three night run at The Omni in Atlanta, Georgia in November 1987 directed by Lawrence Jordan (who has directed concert films for Rush, Mariah Carey and Billy Joel). Videos for "On the Turning Away" and "One Slip" were also filmed from this concert where the video for "The Dogs of War" was filmed.
"The Dogs of War" describes politicians orchestrating wars, suggesting the major influence behind war is money." - Wikipedia
4. "One Slip" (Gilmour, Phil Manzanera) 5:05
A tune Dave wrote with Phil Manzanera about sex offers another interesting take on the latter-day Floyd sound. I really like side one of this disc, and it's easily my fave Floyd-related music of the decade. The early menace of the group is gone (a sound Roger tries to maintain in his music), but David's commercial instincts are also attractive methinks.
Wiki - "
CompositionThe album gets its title from a line of this song's lyrics. The song was co-written by David Gilmour and Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera, who later co-produced Gilmour's
On an Island album and played rhythm guitar on the subsequent tour.
ReleaseIt was first released as the B-side to "Learning to Fly". It was then re-released as the third single from the album in the UK where it was a minor hit and was the fourth single from the album in the US where it did well on the Billboard
Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.
"One Slip (2019 remix)" from the box set,
The Later Years 1987–2019 was released as a single on 24 October 2019 on Spotify and 25 October 2019 on YouTube and iTunes. The song contains newly recorded drums by Nick Mason and organ parts by Richard Wright lifted from 1987-89 live performances, replacing the song's original drum and keyboard parts.
LiveThe track was the final song from the album played live when it was the first encore on the
Momentary Lapse of Reason tour from 1987–89. The band resurrected the track on one show on their 1994
The Division Bell tour when the band performed it in Oakland, California.
VideoThe video for the track is footage of a vintage 1930s plane flying interspersed with concert clips filmed during the band's three night run at The Omni in Atlanta, Georgia. The live footage was shot in November 1987 and was directed by Lawrence Jordan (who has directed concert films for Rush, Mariah Carey and Billy Joel). Videos for "On the Turning Away" and "The Dogs of War" were also filmed from this concert."
5. "On the Turning Away" (Gilmour, Moore) 5:42
Probably Dave's best vocal on the album, and yet another one I heard a lot over the years. I know efforts like this LP and Yes'
90125 get a lot of flak from some fans criticizing the top-40 sound, but I see this music as necessary updates on the classic sound. The old records are always there if that's what you'd prefer to hear. There's room in my life for both. Nice guitar solo at the end as well.
"The song was a staple of live shows from the 1987–89 world tours in support of
A Momentary Lapse of Reason and was one of the songs in rotation during the 1994 tour in support of
The Division Bell. The song was resurrected by David Gilmour on his 2006
On an Island Tour for one night only. Live recordings exist on
Delicate Sound of Thunder (1988) and
Live in Gdańsk (2008).
Music and lyricsThe song has often been described as a protest song and is one of the more political tracks Pink Floyd released after the departure of Roger Waters. The main concept came from Anthony Moore, but David Gilmour has stated that he re-wrote the last verse of both "On the Turning Away" and "Learning to Fly". Musically, it has been called a power ballad. Bassist Guy Pratt has said about its musical structure (referring to the fact that he had to guide Phil Manzanera and Steve DiStanislao through a completely unplanned performance of it in 2006): "The song only has five chords in it, but they don't necessarily show up where you think they will."
It has also been noted for being one of Pink Floyd's rhythmically most complex songs, constantly alternating between various time signatures. Some reviewers have described it as Celtic sounding.
ReleaseReleased as the second single from the album, it reached number one on the Billboard
Album Rock Tracks chart in early 1988. In the United Kingdom, the song charted at number 55 on the UK Singles Chart." - Wikipedia
6. "Yet Another Movie" (Gilmour, Patrick Leonard) 6:14
Rather mid-tempo number which doesn't really go anywhere, yet doesn't offend either. A man is not treating a woman well, and this is the last co-written tune on the disc. All the rest are completely Gilmour. More great guitar playing though, I can't deny that.
Wiki - "It began as an instrumental piece to which words were later added and features soundbites from the films
One-Eyed Jacks and
Casablanca.
LiveThe piece was performed at every show in Pink Floyd's 1987–1989 tours as the fourth piece in the first set of the show (falling between "Learning to Fly" and "Round and Around") and was featured on the live album
Delicate Sound of Thunder. The lap steel guitar that appears at the end of the studio version of "Yet Another Movie" was replaced by a normal guitar solo played at a lower octave on the live performances of the track. On
Delicate Sound of Thunder and the 2011 remaster of
A Momentary Lapse of Reason, the band separated "Yet Another Movie" from "Round and Around" into different tracks."
7. "Round and Around" (instrumental) (Gilmour) 1:13
Short piece used as a link between the two tracks which precede and follow.
"It shares the sixth track with "Yet Another Movie", Index #2 and is a short, repetitive instrumental in 5/8 time.
Later releaseIt was released as a separate track on the 2011 remastered CD and on the live album
Delicate Sound of Thunder. - Wiki
8. "A New Machine (Part 1)" (Gilmour) 1:46
Now this sounds more like what would be on a Dave solo record. I like a good melody, failing that I'll take a good riff or rhythm, in the absence of both of those things I'll be satisfied with the proper ambience. I hear none of the above here.
Wiki: "
Lyrics and musicThey serve as bookends to the instrumental track "Terminal Frost", and feature David Gilmour's voice, electrically distorted, through a vocoder and a rising synth note. The narrator seems to express weariness with a lifetime spent in one body, waiting for the moment of death, but seeks consolation in the fact that this "waiting" will eventually end.
"A New Machine has a sound I've never heard anyone do. The noise gates, the Vocoders, opened up something new which to me seemed like a wonderful sound effect that no one had done before; it's innovation of a sort."— David Gilmour
The two songs were the first Pink Floyd songs to be credited solely to David Gilmour since "Childhood's End", from their 1972 album
Obscured by Clouds."
9. "Terminal Frost" (instrumental) (Gilmour) 6:17
I'm gonna say the best thing on side two thus far. He's carrying on the waiting-around-to-die-stuff which the "New Machine" songs bookend. The music is nice though and if you didn't know the nature of the piece, you'd think it was something else that inspired it.
"
RecordingThe saxophones are played by Tom Scott and John Helliwell, the latter best known for his work with Supertramp. The track is bookended by "A New Machine (Part 1)" and "A New Machine (Part 2)" which creates a mini-suite on the album. The sequence of "A New Machine (Part 1) - Terminal Frost - A New Machine (Part 2)" were the only tracks from the album which were not performed at every show of the 1987-89 tours, frequently being dropped. David Gilmour has said that "Terminal Frost" is the oldest piece on the album, having been written many years before." - Wiki
10. "A New Machine (Part 2)" (Gilmour) 0:38
Continuation of Part 1. Filler basically.
11. "Sorrow" (Gilmour) 8:47
Promises broken and old memories permeate this ending song which is the longest thing here. I wish it moved me more or made more of an impression but that could be my fault more than the music. Some fans enjoy side two more than the first one. I can't even remember this cut when I'm not playing it.
Wikipedia: "
Lyrics and musicThe piece was written and composed by singer and guitarist David Gilmour. He has stated that although lyrics are not his strong point, the song is one of his strongest lyrical efforts, even though the opening lines were appropriated from John Steinbeck's
The Grapes of Wrath.
Sorrow was a poem I'd written as a lyric before I wrote music to it, which is rare for me.— David Gilmour
Drummer Nick Mason has since stated that the song was almost entirely written by Gilmour over the space of a weekend on his houseboat Astoria. When Mason returned from the weekend, only "some spit and polish", according to Mason, was needed. Gilmour has also mentioned that the solo at the end of "Sorrow" was done on the boat, his guitar going through a small Gallien-Krueger amplifier. As on many tracks from the album, Gilmour played a Steinberger GL "headless" guitar on this song. The guitar intro was recorded inside Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena and piped through Pink Floyd's large sound system, yielding an extremely deep, cavernous sound. The drum machine on the song was programmed by David Gilmour — no real drums were used.
Live VersionsLive versions of the song are featured on 1988's
Delicate Sound of Thunder album and 1995's
Pulse album, with running times of 9:27 and 10:49 respectively, mostly taken up by extended guitar solos by Gilmour and an additional outro. A slightly shortened version of the song appears on Pink Floyd's greatest hits collection,
Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd, which is edited so that the song "Sheep" (also edited) segues into "Sorrow". David Gilmour played the song at the
Strat Pack guitar concert, an event which commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Fender Stratocaster. Gilmour played the song on the second set of his
Rattle That Lock Tour 2015/16. The song was also performed in 1990 during the band's set at Knebworth for the
Silver Clef Award Winners Concert. For many years, an official release of this performance was unavailable, but the 2019 boxset
The Later Years included it as part of the complete set list on both Blu-Ray/DVD and CD.
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A Momentary Lapse of Reason was released in the UK and US on 7 September 1987. It went straight to number three in both countries, held from the top spot in the US by Michael Jackson's
Bad and Whitesnake's self-titled album. It spent 34 weeks on the
UK Albums Chart. It was certified silver and gold in the UK on 1 October 1987, and gold and platinum in the US on 9 November. It went double platinum on 18 January the following year, triple platinum on 10 March 1992, and quadruple platinum on 16 August 2001, greatly outselling
The Final Cut.
Gilmour presented
A Momentary Lapse as a return to an older Pink Floyd sound, citing his belief that under Waters' tenure, lyrics had become more important than music. He said that their albums
The Dark Side of the Moon and
Wish You Were Here were successful "not just because of Roger's contributions, but also because there was a better balance between the music and the lyrics [than on later albums]". Waters said of the album: "I think it's very facile, but a quite clever forgery ... The songs are poor in general; the lyrics I can't quite believe. Gilmour's lyrics are very third-rate." Wright later said Waters' criticisms were "fair".
In
Q, Phil Sutcliffe wrote that it "does sound like a Pink Floyd album" and highlighted the two-part "A New Machine" as "a chillingly beautiful vocal exploration" and a "brilliant stroke of imagination". He concluded: "
A Momentary Lapse is Gilmour's album to much the same degree that the previous four under Floyd's name were dominated by Waters … Clearly it wasn't only business sense and repressed ego but repressed talent which drove the guitarist to insist on continuing under the band brand-name." Recognizing the return to a more music-oriented approach,
Sounds said the album was "back over the wall to where diamonds are crazy, moons have dark sides, and mothers have atom hearts".
Conversely, Greg Quill of the
Toronto Star wrote: "Something's missing here. This is, for all its lumbering weight, not a record that challenges and provokes as Pink Floyd should.
A Momentary Lapse of Reason, sorry to say, is mundane, predictable."
Village Voice critic Robert Christgau wrote: "You'd hardly know the group's conceptmaster was gone – except that they put out noticeably fewer ideas." In 2016,
AllMusic critic William Ruhlmann described it as a "Gilmour solo album in all but name".
In 2016, Nick Shilton chose
A Momentary Lapse of Reason as one of the "Top 10 Essential 80s Prog Albums" for
Prog. He wrote: "While it's not a patch on the Floyd masterworks of the 70s, it merits inclusion here. The ironically titled 'Signs of Life' is an instrumental prelude for 'Learning to Fly' which showcases Gilmour's guitar, while the pulsating 'The Dogs of War' is considerably darker, and the uplifting 'On the Turning Away' simply sublime."
ReissuesThe album was reissued in 1988 as a limited-edition vinyl album, complete with posters, and a guaranteed ticket application for the band's upcoming UK concerts. It was digitally remastered and re-released in 1994, and a tenth anniversary edition was issued in the US three years later.
A Momentary Lapse of Reason was reissued again as part of the
Later Years box set released in December 2019. The album was "updated and remixed" by Gilmour and Jackson, with restored contributions from Wright and newly recorded drum tracks from Mason to "restore the creative balance between the three Pink Floyd members".
Rolling Stone described this version as "more tasteful ... [it] doesn’t drown in eighties reverb the way the original did ... Although none of the
Momentary Lapse remixes will be dramatic enough to sway the band’s critics, they add clarity to what Gilmour was trying to achieve." A standalone album was released on 29 October 2021."
For the record, I do prefer the
Later Years remix with the extra contributions from Nick and Rick.