On November 11, 1986 Pink Floyd issued the following statement to the press, which said that, "...... although Roger Waters quit in December 1985, the group has no intention of disbanding. On the contrary, David Gilmour and Nick Mason with Rick Wright and producer Bob Ezrin, are currently recording a new album."

The new Pink Floyd was fleshed out by, among others, Dave's friend from Cambridge and erstwhile Mike & The Mechanics guitarist Tim Renwick, ex-Icehouse bassist Guy Pratt, percussionist Gary Wallis, and keyboard player Jon Carin, who helped Rick renew his skills as a musician after succumbing to Waters's autocratic behavior during the "Wall" project.

On their "Momentary Lapse" tour of 1987-89, Pink Floyd performed 199 shows to a total worldwide audience of 5.5 million, despite their initial plan to simply promote the album with an 11 week trek. Typically for Pink Floyd, it was the largest production ever taken on the road at the time.

Dave Gilmour: "I was never 'elected'. I was the one who said, Let's get on and do it again. In Easter '86 I started trying to consolidate the writing I had done into some sort of shape and get an idea of whether I could make an album. We wanted to do the whole thing. We didn't want to go out with the just the old stuff for nostalgia. Myself and Nick (Mason) had to put the money in to found it all. I had enough and Nick had to put his Ferrari GTO down. Obviously we could have borrowed money, but then we would have had to share the profits, and we were very confident that we would do ok. We spent from September '86 til Christmas putting the album into some sort of rough shape, and then in early '87 started to record it properly in a small studio with machines. Then we moved to Los Angeles and did a lot of the live stuff there with drummers and so on... musicians in Los Angeles are very good and reliable; they turn up and know exactly what you want and work quickly. We finished the album in June, and in the last week of July came music rehearsals in Toronto, then in the second week in August, all the equipment and ideas came together in a giant hangar and we tried to make it into a show that worked, in only three weeks."

"The strength of Pink Floyd always lay in the talents of all four members. Naturally we will miss Roger's artistic input, however, we will continue to work together as in the past. We are surprised at recent claims that Roger believes the band to be a "spent force creatively" as he's had no involvement with the current project. The three of us are very excited by the new material and would prefer to be judged by the public on the strength of the forthcoming Pink Floyd album." (Dave)