The album that saw Pink Floyd start to lose themselves: “Rick’s belief in himself was totally gone”
Most musicians would need to be bulletproof to get through the problems that Pink Floyd had to trudge their way out of. Outside of losing one of their leaders after Syd Barrett was pushed out, having Roger Waters take over as the main songwriter was an extremely mixed blessing. He gave them some of their best material and yet became one of the biggest dictators that any band had ever seen. Although that helped bring the band together over a single concept, it didn’t take long for them to lose their way after he left.
After all, Waters’s visions were half the reason why the albums worked so well together. David Gilmour will always be the core foundation of what made the group sound fantastic, but from the minute that Waters hit on ‘Echoes’, some of the best music they ever made felt a lot more human, as if we were hearing someone learn about the meaning of empathy for the first time. If fans learned anything from The Wall, though, it’s that that kind of empathy can be a little much.
Waters had seen the record as his vision, and since the rest of the members were kept at a distance, it gets really hard to listen to in some places, especially when Waters tries to take over for Gilmour’s voice. While The Final Cut was more or less a continuation of The Wall, Gilmour didn’t have time to listen to how complicated Waters’s feelings were. The emotion was there, but the songs weren’t, and even if Waters was content to leave the band behind, Gilmour wasn’t willing to roll over.
While the guitarist fought as hard as he could for the right to use the name, A Momentary Lapse of Reason tends to sound like someone who’s had to deal with more than a few lawsuits. His signature touch on slide guitar is certainly there, but since Richard Wright is hardly on the record and Nick Mason is kept at a distance, the whole thing feels like a neutered version of the group.
That’s before even getting into the production. Despite the band being on the cutting edge of new sounds, this is the most dated that they have ever sounded, with the gated reverb on all of the tracks sounding like it’s trying to get the song on the radio next to acts like Tears for Fears and Bananarama. Waters wasn’t safe from that sound on Radio KAOS, but hearing them carry on like this feels like a massive step backwards from albums like Wish You Were Here.
And despite having the determination to carry on, even Gilmour had to admit later that not everyone’s heart was in making the record, saying, “On the Momentary Lapse of Reason album, Nick’s belief in himself was pretty well gone, and Rick’s belief in himself was totally gone. And they weren’t up to making a record, to be quite honest about it.”
That’s probably why so many of the songs sound much better when they play them live. With much of the 1980s production gone, hearing tracks like ‘Learning To Fly’ and ‘On the Turning Away’ in that setting makes them feel like worthy editions to the band’s catalogue right alongside the greatest cuts off of Dark Side of the Moon and Meddle.
The tour also seemed to do the trick for getting everyone back on the same page, culminating in the band gelling together a lot more and delivering a fairly solid outing on The Division Bell. A Momentary Lapse of Reason does have pieces that stand out as Floydian in certain places, but the only real way for them to get back on the same page is for them to drop everything and play their hearts out onstage.
