The 1987 song David Gilmour used to resurrect Pink Floyd: “Taking to their wings again”
How the hell was David Gilmour supposed to build Pink Floyd back up?
He was certainly a big part of what made the band great in the first place, but since he was only joining in the early days as a substitute for Syd Barrett, how the hell was he going to take the reins after Roger Waters figured that the band needed to break up? He wasn’t about to spend all his life on this band to throw it away, and even if Waters had his say on the matter, Gilmour was going to do everything he could to keep the ship running.
Then again, that didn’t come without more than a few headaches along the way as well. Half of the greatest songs that the band ever made were about all of them working together, and even if Gilmour could keep Waters in check every now and again, it was a much different story when he started becoming the main frontman of the group. There was no way for him to bounce off of people in the same way, and it really sounds that way when listening to A Momentary Lapse of Reason.
This was the safest option in lots of ways, and while it does feel like a David Gilmour solo album in places, it’s not like the album is a total dud. There are more than a few songs that have the same energy that a lot of those early Floyd songs were going for, but there’s also a fair bit of noodling that sounds like the kind of 1980s tracks that Kate Bush would have thrown away on one of her records.
But ‘Learning to Fly’ was enough to keep their head above water for a little bit. The song was a modest hit at the time, and while it came alive a lot better once they started performing the track live, Gilmour felt that it was more than a song in a way. The band were in the midst of picking themselves up, and Gilmour felt that starting the record off with this as the first proper tune gave everyone that sense of optimism again.
No one seemed to be having any fun on The Final Cut, but this felt like the first time that Gilmour could reclaim the band in a while, saying, “‘Learning to Fly’, from the spiritual aspect of it, is about Pink Floyd taking to their wings again, as well as me taking to my wings again, and all sorts of things. And learning to fly, of course, physically. So there’s a number of levels to that.” It’s just a shame that it does get bogged down by some of the flavours of the day in post-production.
Bob Ezrin certainly was the right man for the job after having worked on The Wall, but you can definitely hear where he was trying to turn Floyd into something that they weren’t. Gilmour was willing to go along with everything and make a record that fit the mood of the times, but even when compared to the more fanciful records they made before they landed on ‘Echoes’, A Momentary Lapse of Reason is still one of the most dated records they have ever made.
It’s still great if you’re looking for more Gilmour guitar solos, but if you want to get a real idea of what the band was supposed to sound like, it’s much better to hear the songs from this record live. Delicate Sound of Thunder isn’t the finest live performance that they’ve ever given by any stretch, but compared to what happened on the record, ‘Learning to Fly’ and especially tunes like ‘On the Turning Away’ feel like they have a shot of life put into them when you hear them working off the crowd.
It wasn’t going to be easy moving on without Waters, and while the bassist did throw more than his fair share of shots at this record after the fact, Gilmour wasn’t about to apologise for moving on from everything. He was going to create the best record that he could, and even if A Momentary Lapse of Reason wasn’t absolutely perfect, you can hear that he’s ready and willing to move on to the next phase of his career.
