Inside Out (40 page)

If nothing came of the exercise we were committed to a process of either seeking outside help or waiting for the individuals
to come up with songs at their own pace, which historically had tended to be very slow. We had also spent some time maintaining
that together we did create something unique. Failure now to produce anything would be deeply wounding to our egos as much
as anything else and might well result in abandoning the project. While the world held its breath we sent out for more sandwiches.

After the very first day, however, we realised that we would be able to produce some good material, and after a couple more
sessions we brought Guy Pratt in to play bass. This immediately added a stronger feel to the playing but we also found that
an interesting phenomenon occurred, which was that Guy’s playing tended to change the mood of the music we had created on
our own.

Serendipity was equally important. At one point David, frustrated at being unable to get one particular idea directly out
of Rick, recorded him tinkering away on the keyboard, unaware that the tape was still running. From this ad-lib session we
retrieved another three possible pieces, including one piano part which we were never able to re-create quite as well in any
other of the recording sessions and finally ended up using his original Britannia Row piece just as we had done with the Asdic
note on ‘Echoes’.

The improvisations we were coming up with were not, though, meant to be mood-pieces like the doomed ‘Nothings 1–24’ we’d tried
to produce before
Meddle.
Instead we would sift through the results captured on the two-track for nuggets of musical ideas – the core of ‘Cluster One’
and ‘Marooned’ emerged and lingered through to the final album. But the truly significant thing was that each improvisation
represented a kick-start to the creative process. That was – as we had always found – our most problematic hurdle. And by
allowing ourselves to play whatever came into our heads, with no taboo or no-go areas, I had the impression that we were expanding
a field of vision that had become increasingly narrow over the past two decades.

After two weeks we had taped an extraordinary collection of riffs, patterns and musical doodles, some rather similar, some
nearly identifiable as old songs of ours, some clearly subliminal reinventions of well-known songs. These – which we would
identify as ‘Neil Young’, or whoever seemed to be the originator – were
easy to knock out of contention. But even having discarded these, forty ideas were available. Given that in the past some
of our records had painfully gestated from a month’s work to provide a single useable note, this was a positive fund of potential
pieces. At our usual work rate that was enough to keep us recording until well into the twenty-first century. We eventually
ended up with enough left-over material that we considered releasing it as a second album, including a set we dubbed ‘The
Big Spliff’, the kind of ambient mood music that we were bemused to find being adopted by bands like the Orb, although – unlike
Gong’s Steve Hillage – we never received any invitations to join this next generation on stage.

Led by David, but with input from Rick, the formal songs were created. My impression is that David had finally got to grips
with producing music when he needed it. Perhaps some of the onus of lyric writing had been removed with assistance from Polly
Samson, his new girlfriend, later his wife. Maybe the previous tour and album had proved a point, but it definitely felt less
pressured, and both David and Rick seemed to produce work more easily. David was still required to lead the process, but with
Bob Ezrin on board again, and the friendly face of Andy Jackson handling the engineering, it was a familiar rather than untested
team.

Throughout this preparatory phase, the atmosphere was pleasantly calm. Above all it was litigation-free, as correspondence
with Roger via the legal profession had come to an end. I was finding it particularly helpful to be spending so much time
making music with the others, and with a real sense of purpose. I have never been the most diligent of drummers when it comes
to practising technique, so the simple act of playing together regularly helped get me back in some kind of shape. Since Knebworth
in 1990, my only genuinely live performance had been at the Chelsea Arts Ball in October 1992 at the Royal Albert Hall.
The Chelsea Arts Club had regenerated itself – and as part of this resurgence they mounted a ball, which was one of the biggest
events they had ever done. Tom Jones was appearing, and – as a result of Gary, Tim and Guy working with Tom Jones – we had
agreed to provide a guest appearance of three numbers. Inevitably this led on to Jon Carin and Tim turning up. We rehearsed
for a day or so, and played a relatively low-key set with virtually no stage effects, films or fireworks.

After leaving Britannia Row we reconvened on David’s houseboat to develop a core of pieces. From February 1993 through to
May we worked on about twenty-five different ideas, trying to play as much as possible together in the studio. The houseboat
was certainly more congenial than recording in a bunker. By now David had added a conservatory containing a kitchen, sitting
and dining area. The ambience of the river and the benefits of operating in daylight worked its charms again, as did having
a definite split between the workspace on the houseboat and the area on dry land where we could sit, talk and discuss progress.

The album feels much more home-made, very much as a band playing together in one space. I think that Rick in particular felt
significantly more integrated in the process this time, compared to
Momentary Lapse.
It was nice to have him back.

The songs had been through a substantial sifting process. There was plenty of material and no desperation; instead we were
able to simply concentrate on developing ideas. At band meetings we now started whittling down the possible songs to the probables.
We set up an extremely democratic system whereby David, Rick and I would each award marks out of ten for each song, regardless
of who had originally generated the piece. This should have worked smoothly, had Rick not misinterpreted the democratic principles
underlying the voting system. He simply awarded all of his ideas the full ten points, and everything else got
nul points.
This meant
that all of Rick’s pieces had a ten-point head start, and it took David and me a while to work out why this new album was
rapidly becoming a Rick Wright magnum opus. The voting system was placed under review, as we came up with various systems
of electoral colleges and second preference votes that would have graced any mayoral contest.

The same issue reappeared a decade later when we were selecting tracks for inclusion on
Echoes,
the compilation album which required input from David, Rick, myself and Roger. As well as the oars being poked in by a whole
galley-load of record company executives, engineers, producers and managers, this time we had to deal with the fact that Roger,
like Rick before him, would only vote for his own tracks. God bless democracy.

Before the summer break we took the eight or nine favourite tracks into Olympic Studios in Barnes, recruiting the other players
– apart from the backing singers – from the last tour (Gary, Guy, Tim and Jon) and recorded the lot in a week. This gave us
a boost, knowing that we could spend more time developing the songs since we realised the essential elements of each song
were already in place.

In fact, armed with this safety net, we eventually approached the recording after the summer in a very different way to all
our previous albums. We recorded all the backing tracks on the
Astoria,
completed with no more than the three of us – Rick, David and myself – setting up the pieces during a couple of weeks in
September. Advances in technology since
Momentary Lapse
meant that we could master tracks on the boat as we came towards the end of six months of recording – although there was
the usual mad panic at the very end involving the use of other studios for some overdubs as the pressure mounted. Some traditions
are too deep-rooted to give up completely.

Once again, it was good to have Bob Ezrin on board, sorting out
the drum parts and helping with the frankly tedious process of recording and modifying the drum sounds. As the final shape
of the songs emerged, Michael Kamen was brought in: he offered to provide the string arrangements we needed if we could loan
him a sound system and some lights for a children’s opera he was putting on in Notting Hill. This seemed like the bargain
of a lifetime – an Oscar-winning composer in exchange for a couple of speakers and a few spots. What we hadn’t realised was
that the musical extravaganza Michael was planning would have made
Starlight Express
seem low-key…

This far into the recording process, all we needed was a deadline or two, generally anathema to all Floyd members. A salutary
lesson had been learnt on the previous album, when a certain amount of dilly-dallying on our part, and shilly-shallying from
the record company, had resulted in the album coming out alongside Michael Jackson’s
Bad
and Bruce Springsteen’s
Tunnel Of Love.
Not surprisingly, in that particular contest, our podium position in the charts was distinctly bronze.

This time the deadline was set by making a commitment to a major tour, due to start in April 1994, the thinking being that
with a longer leadtime we could plan ahead and construct the most efficient routing through the vast stadiums of the US. But
as none of us were avid football fans, we missed one rather important factor: the tour coincided with the 1994 World Cup in
the US, which meant that certain stadiums were not only unavailable on some critical dates, but the pitches could not be used
for weeks beforehand to protect the precious turf and maintain their pristine condition. Rather than the logical and elegant
tour route we had imagined, the end result looked like it had been devised by a blindfolded man throwing darts at a map of
the States – or worse, by the old crew at the Bryan Morrison Agency…

The final stages of the album involved the trauma of title and cover design. Yet again the choice of title turned out to be
a cliffhanger. Even by January 1994 we had reached no agreement, and every day frantic discussions would take place as deadlines
were approached with caution, moved and finally missed. David favoured
Pow Wow,
I liked
Down To Earth.
Everyone had a favourite. No majority could be reached (even bringing into play our by now vast range of sophisticated voting
systems).

Help was at hand in the rather large shape of Douglas Adams. As well as being the author of
The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy,
Douglas was an Apple Mac genius, guitar enthusiast and – fortunately for us – a fan of Pink Floyd. He could bring a marvellous
sense of humour to the most desperate moments. He became party to a lot of the discussions about the album title. We found
it immensely comforting to talk about our problems with a fellow sufferer of deadline dramas – Douglas was once heard to remark
that he loved the sound of deadlines whistling past his ears.

At dinner one night, we agreed with Douglas that if he came up with a name for the album that we liked, we would make a payment
to the charity of his choice. He cogitated for a while and suggested
The Division Bell.
The real irritation was that it was a phrase contained within the existing lyrics: we really should have read them more carefully.

Armed at last with a definitive title, Storm Thorgerson came up with a huge variety of ideas, and we finally settled on the
concept of the pair of heads forming a single head in a kind of visual illusion. Storm is famous for insisting on doing things
for real rather than employing trickery, and so the heads (finally constructed, after various attempts, in both stone and
metal) were installed in a suitable field somewhere near Ely.

I visited the location for the photoshoot one chilly day in
February: it was a stunning scene, with the heads parked out in the fens. One of our biggest problems was trying to hide them
from the press, who would have loved to pre-empt the album’s release. Army surplus stores were raided and large quantities
of camouflage netting were acquired to be draped over the heads in a rather half-hearted attempt to disguise them. The fact
that the press failed to get their exclusive was, I suspect, either due to the fact that we had over-estimated the interest
in our album, or that the chilly east coast winds whipping in from Siberia seemed an unattractive alternative to the creature
comforts of the Groucho Club bar in Soho. Storm, who was out on the photoshoot near Ely Cathedral, remembers that the muddy
conditions meant that the lowloader carrying the heads could not reach the centre of the chosen field, so a slightly disgruntled
group of photographer’s assistants manhandled the heavy items across the mud and set them up. They were significantly more
disgruntled when Storm informed them that it was not the right field.

Meanwhile, we had been evolving the stage show. Back in 1973 we had done a show at the Hollywood Bowl, and a photo was hanging
in Steve O’Rourke’s office as a constant reminder of just how good a stage can look. We had in mind to try and take some of
the elements of that particular show and develop them for the stadiums we would be playing. We also wanted to add a degree
of flexibility into the proceedings. On the previous tour, the set had been completely nailed down, almost to the second.
This time we wanted to have the option of changing the running order and substituting songs.

We again resisted the use of large video screens showing the live performance. We never have and probably never will feature
close-ups of the band in that way. But we did want film pieces for some of the new music, and, having made the decision to
perform some of
The Dark Side Of The Moon,
felt it was time to revisit a number
of the
Dark Side
film clips. Although many had lasted very well and were included once more for the
Dark Side
suite, much of the film was very dated. In particular the politicians of two decades earlier who featured in
Brain Damage
were now so passé that half the audience were too young to know who they were. The rest had probably forgotten.