The Pink Floyd album that saw David Gilmour with “something to prove”
For those who believe in the power of divine intervention, music is often a gift from a higher source. This would be an entirely fitting concept to apply to Pink Floyd’s discography, especially considering how the music often tackles themes of time and progression in a way that’s entirely conscious of some broader state of mind. Despite being an atheist, however, David Gilmour can’t exactly explain it any other way.
While that’s not to say that his process of creating makes him a spiritual convert, Gilmour’s spontaneity when it comes to writing and making music doesn’t always feel easily explained away by anything pragmatic. As he once put it: “I hate to say it out loud, but there are times when it feels like music is channelling itself when I’m writing. It doesn’t always feel like it’s something I’ve done. It’s somehow just comes through me.”
Consequently, many of Pink Floyd’s songs address the very things that make up the fabric of our being. Whether this subconsciously stemmed from the band’s inner psyche or formed later after the seeds of inspiration struck, this meant that many of the concepts naturally lent themselves to more abstract realms, like time, and how something constructed by humans themselves is often a conduit for entrapment or disillusionment.
To Pink Floyd, time is less about the physicality of being vaguely or ambiguously aware of a ticking clock hoisted on the wall; it’s more about the viscera of loss and longing itself and how something so perceptively simple can be the root of all our problems. This became particularly prominent for The Final Cut, with Roger Waters taking the reigns by creating a concept that uprooted political backtracking when things were starting to seem more positive.
In this sense, time became a measurement of broken promises, which was especially poignant at this point in the band’s trajectory as the final studio album with Waters at the helm. With this in mind, Gilmour knew he had a task on his hands when working on the next record, A Momentary Lapse of Reason, not just as a songwriter but as someone who suddenly had to prove that Pink Floyd would survive—and be just as good at conceptually thought-provoking soundscapes, even if it was a tough ride along the way.
While this hyper-awareness could have derailed the entire operation, Gilmour used it as a motivator. “I obviously had something to prove in that Roger was no longer a part of it and obviously I had the view that people may have misunderstood or misread the way it had been with him within our history,” he later explained. “It was quite important to me to prove that there was something serious still going on there. It was ‘Life After Rog’. I don’t know about any particular change of direction.”
While many note the stark difference with A Momentary Lapse of Reason, many of the lyrics served up a continuation of the band’s previous experiences with entrapment and personal reflection, not just relating to time itself but how we can become products of the shackles of our own minds. This ambiguity wasn’t just already a Pink Floyd staple but also a demonstration of Gilmour’s overarching belief that meaning, when it comes to music, doesn’t have to dictate thought; it can be as inexplicable as divine intervention—even as someone who doesn’t believe.
