A Momentary Lapse of Reason
Release date: September 8th, 1987

After the departure of Waters in 1985 and a tense period of well-published wrangling over rights to the group name, Gilmour began to put together a new Pink Floyd album in 1987 using the American producer of The Wall, Bob Ezrin, and working on songs with a squad of assistants, including Phil Manzanera. Like its predecessor, A Momentary Lapse Of Reason eventually turned out to be a solo album in all but name.

David Gilmour: "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. Nick played a few tom-toms on one track, but for the rest I had to get in other drummers. Rick played some tiny little parts. For a lot of it, I played the keyboards and pretended it was him. The record was basically made by me, and other people and God knows what. I didn't think it was the best Pink Floyd album ever made, but I gave it the best damn shot I could."

Nick Mason: "Dave was under a lot of pressure to come up with songs and he looked for help where he could find it. It was fun recording on the boat (Gilmour's floating studio at Hampton-on-Thames) but then we went to America and hired all these sessions musicians who could knock things off quickly. At the time it seemed like a reasonable route to go but that was quite alarming for me."

Rick Wright: "I wasn't a member of the band. By now they didn't know me. We hadn't played together for years. I was paid a wage on the sessions. I did get royalties on the album. Not as many as Dave and Nick though."