(Credits: Far Out / Anton_Corbijn)
Wed 15 October 2025 22:00, UK
Artists are often their own worst critics, and David Gilmour is no exception. Although there are those who will have you convinced that Pink Floyd’s extensive discography never set a foot wrong, there are certain moments from the band’s tenure that are still soaked in regret in the mind of the guitarist.
Great bands come and go in the fast-moving dog-eat-dog world of the music industry, but Pink Floyd were always a special case. Subverting the sounds of the swinging sixties with their vast psychedelic experiments under the leadership of Syd Barrett back in the 1960s, and exploring the cosmos with legendary records like The Dark Side of the Moon years later, Pink Floyd seemed to succeed where virtually everyone else failed: balancing profound artistic innovation with widespread commercial success, which has lasted well over half a century at this point.
Still, that is not to say that the band was always a harmonious place to be – quite the contrary, in fact. Going back to the time when Barrett was unceremoniously booted from the band, the group were routinely characterised by intense conflicts and consistent in-fighting, typically resulting from the butting of heads of David Gilmour and Roger Waters, which has never really subsided.
As such, Gilmour doesn’t view some of the earlier Waters-led Floyd projects with much sympathy – 1970’s Atom Heart Mother, for instance, he once dubbed “dreadful”, “shit”, and “our lowest point artistically” during a 2001 chat with Mojo. To his credit, though, Gilmour is also capable of highlighting the band’s mistakes and mis-hits from the post-Waters age, following the songwriter’s unamicable departure back in 1985.
Notably, the band’s first album without Waters, 1987’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason, has been a constant source of regret and disappointment for the songwriter since its initial release – a feeling he shares with vast swathes of Pink Floyd’s unwavering fanbase. The reasons for its lacklustre reception are myriad, but Gilmour himself tends to pin it down to the rapidly outdated synthesiser sound which dominated much of the tracklisting.
“In the Eighties, there was a mass of new technology – new keyboards, synthesisers – and we were keen to make a record of its time,” the songwriter explained on the podcast The Lost Art of Conversation. “We embraced this technology with massive enthusiasm.”
Adding, “But it was a fashion and fashions go out of fashion.”
In contrast, Pink Floyd boast an impressive collection of albums which haven’t really aged since their release. The Dark Side of the Moon, for instance, still sounds like a snapshot of some far-out future today, over half a century on from its release. “In years after the album [A Momentary Lapse of Reason], there were moments when I thought that we hadn’t followed the timeless template that perhaps we should have done.”
It is easy to see why Gilmour regrets that particular record, but it must be said that the reasons for its failure weren’t entirely down to the mid-1980s synthesiser sounds. After all, the production was plagued by stress, what with Roger Waters engaging the band in lengthy legal battles, and Gilmour’s songwriting certainly suffered when he was out there on his own, without his arch-nemesis bandmate helping him along.
Regardless of the exact reasons why A Momentary Lapse of Reason didn’t hold a candle to the band’s previous successes, though, it is fair to say that it forms a lasting and unshakable sense of regret in the mind of David Gilmour.
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