'A Momentary Lapse of Reason' was mainly recorded at Dave's studio, 'Astoria', followed by three months post-production work in Los Angeles.

June 15, 1987 30 hired hands move 800 hospital beds onto the beach at Saunton Sands in North Devon for Storm Thorgerson to shoot what will be the cover of 'A Momentary Lapse of Reason'.

September 7, 1987 'A Momentary Lapse of Reason' album is released.

The sound of the alarm system at David Gilmour's studio Astoria was used at the start of 'One Slip'.

On September 9, 1987 Pink Floyd's first tour in 10 years began. 'MLOR' is Pink Floyd's longest running tour to date.

The tour featured the world's biggest outdoor stage, custom-built by Paul Staples. The proscenium alone was 85 foot high by 98 foot wide. Transportation required four steel systems on the road at any one time, and 45 trucks were used to move the steelwork and equipment.

For this tour, Brit Row merged their own facilities with those of their close associates, American-based Maryland Sound Inc. (MSI) whose proprietory PA stock formed the core of the touring system.

Buford Jones joined PF for the tour, his live mixing credits had included ZZ Top, Lynyrd Skynyrd, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, and David Bowie.

For the 'Lapse' filmwork, the location used for the films was Grantchester Meadows, a place that's always been close to the hearts of the band.

October 12, 1987 After the show Dave, Nick, Scott Page, Rachel Fury, Margaret Taylor, Guy Pratt and Tim Renwick made an impromptu appearance at The World Club in New York City, where they performed a forty minute set of R&B standards.

The entire show of November 11, 1987 in Atlanta, Georgia was filmed using twenty-three panavision video camera. The entire concert was due to be screened on various European networks, but at the last minute for unknown reasons, was cancelled.

In January 1988, members of Pink Floyd made an impromptu appearance at the Round Midnight Club in King's Cross, Sydney, Australia after one of their many shows in the city.

Before the concert of January 29th 1988, a 12 meter long, inflatable pig, being used at a record company function 'broke free' from its mooring and slowly disappeared from sight, just as its fellow porker had done in 1977.

On January 28, 1988 EMI announced the forthcoming UK Pink Floyd concerts in a spectacular style. In London, they held a press party aboard 'The Tattershall Castle', a Thames riverboat moored near The House of Parliament, alongside which flew a giant inflatable bed. Here, and at several other places around the UK, thousands of pink balloons, emblazoned with the word FLOYD were released. Each bore a label which guaranteed the finder a priority ticket application.

In February 1988, members of the touring party, including Dave, Pratt, Wallis, Renwick, Page, Taylor, Fury, McBroom, and Carina, preformed under the name 'The Fisherman' on two occasions in after-show gigs at the Corner Hotel in Richmond, Melbourne to crowds of about 200. The first show also featured Roy Buchanan and seventies Floyd backing vocalist Vanetta Fields, who reportedly sang an amazing version of Little Red Rooster. The second show saw The Fishermen perform a set that included, 'Respect', 'I Shot the Sheriff', 'Unchain My Heart', 'Superstition', 'Reeling In The Years', "Good Lovin Gone Bad', and 'Pick Up the Pieces'.

March 27, 1988 Members of Pink Floyd took part in a 'banger' race at Wimbledon Stadium, London, to raise funds for the Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy Charity.

May 6, 1988 Pink Floyd's flying pig met an unfortunate end during the first Foxboro concert, when it was grabbed by the audience and torn to shreds. Fortunately, the band kept a spare inflatable on hand.

May 13, 1988 Back stage in Werchter was a life size bulb 'man' standing between two white pillars (a plastic fern plant on each). There were electric cables running up one leg,... it was used only to brighten up the dressing-room areas!

May 23, 1988, EMI issued a third single from "A Momentary Lapse of Reason, One Slip came as a 7" (EMI EM 52) and CD (CD EM 52) versions, both with an addition track, the dogs of war: (live) recorded in Atlanta, GA on 5th of November 1987.

On June 6, 1988, Additional versions of the One Slip single were released, One was a pink vinyl 7" in a gate fold sleeve (EMG 52), including a voucher guaranteeing tickets for the forthcoming UK concerts. The other was a 12" in a poster sleeve (12 EMP 52)

Before the shows in Rotterdam, Holland, on June 13-14, 1988, the crowds were entertained by two airplanes performing aerobatic stunts. Holland was the only country on the tour to allow this to happen.

June 16, 1988, Berlin, Germany- Pink Floyd played on the Western side of the Berlin Wall, 2000 East Germans congregated on the other side to listen. There were several arrests as the fans chanted for the wall to be torn down.

June 21, 1988 Pink Floyd became the first band to play at the Palace of Versailles, (on the coachpark outside the palace gates). The concerts were filmed for the 'Delicate Sound of Thunder' concert video, but only a small segment of 'The Great Gig In The Sky' was included. The band returned to the stage at the end of the show to watch a stupendous firework display which can be seen on the 'Delicate Sound of Thunder' video.

On July 28, 1988 to celebrate Rick Wright's birthday, the rest of the band joined by the entire crowd, sang Happy Birthday to Rick.

On August 19-21, 1988 all four concerts were recorded in Uniondale, Long Island, New York for the concert video 'Delicate Sound of Thunder'.

On May 9-10, 1989, Pink Floyd rehearses at the new Docklands Arena, London, prior to another European Tour. Lorelei McBroom, Durga's sister, replaced Margaret Taylor as one of the back up vocalists. Also conducted a press conference to launch the tour and left their palm prints in a Hollywood Boulevard style wall-of-fame.

On May 23, 1989 while the band were busy in Italy, Picture Music International, held a press premiere for the new Pink Floyd concert movie 'Delicate Sound Of Thunder' at a London conference center.

On June 3-7, 1989 Pink Floyd played in Moscow, Russia. Commenting on the logistics of transporting the whole entire show to Moscow, David Gilmour explained: "We said at the beginning that we weren't going to slim it down, we were just going to do the whole thing; lock, stock, and barrel."

July 4-9. 1989, Docklands Arena, London. The money from the first of these concerts was donated to four charities: Nordoff-Robins Music Therapy, Greenpeace, Childline, and Care of Victims of Torture.

July 6, 1989 David and Nick made a helicopter trip to EMI's pressing plant at Swindon, to meet with staff in commemoration of the pressing of the 500,000 copy of 'Dark Side Of The Moon'.

July 15, 1989 Venice, Italy was the most controversial concert of Pink Floyd's career. Despite local protest they were allowed to play a free concert from a barge in the lagoon opposite St. Mark's Square, from where an estimated 200,000 people watched. The concert was nearly cancelled on July 13th, when the City's Superintendent of Monuments claimed that the vibration could damage the buildings. To pacify critics Pink Floyd played at reduced volume. 100 million viewers in 23 countries (including the Soviet Union, Israel, Yugoslavia, and East Germany) saw the show on TV.

July 18, 1989 in Marseille, France, twenty two months after the tour started, Tim Renwick, commented "It was initially going to be an eleven week tour, I believe, but as soon as the first tickets went on sale it mushroomed."

'Round And Around' (Dave) at just over 30 seconds, the live version is the shortest track ever released by Pink Floyd.

Both albums(AMLOR and DSOT) combined sold over 11 million copies, with the live set achieving the distinction of becoming the first rock album to be played in outer space by the crew of the Soviet-French Soyuz-7 mission.

Quotes

The Momentary Lapse of Reason album will forever be written down in the annuls of rock history as either the Pink Floyd album without Roger Waters...or...the Pink Floyd album that breathed new life into its bandmembers, after years of misery and battle within its ranks.

Many fans enjoy Momentary, others do not, but whatever the opinions may be, it will always stand as a turning point in many people's lives...and for that, it makes the following comments by Dave, more poignant than any other comments he may have made in the past, or in the futre, about any other album. -

"I didn't want to get into a huge slanging match, I just wanted to get on with my life." - Dave

" It was my life as well as his (Roger's), Nick's as well as his and we both contributed in a very large scale to what Pink Floyd was." - Dave

"Well, it's my job. What can I say? It's what I do for a living. Pink Floyd is the particular career that I've chosen and have been involved with for twenty years and without a good reason, I don't see why I should pack it in. I'm 42. I've got no intention of retiring. I've got no intention of jacking this in or anything else that I do. I have no idea what I'll feel like in the future. You might see us when I'm 60, I don't know. I mean, if it's fun and people wanna come see it, it's a privilege." - Dave

"You see, this is part of what's been going on for years. Roger's very good at belittling people, and I think over the years he managed to convince Rick completely that he was useless and more or less convinced Nick of the same thing. And they both did not play a major part on that record. But we put a touring band together, and by halfway through the first leg of the tour, Nick was starting to believe in himself again. And by the time we did the live album at the end of the first year, they were both playing absolutely great, and the drumming on the live album is all straight Nick. And Rick's playing is great." - Dave

"We rehearsed the show for about a month in Toronto and it was a nightmare. It needed half a dozen of me to juggle everything." - Dave

"We agreed to pay him to clear us in regard to any rights he may or may not have had in various effects including the pig and odd bits of animation by Gerald Scarfe. Roger had gone 'round these people buying these rights and placing them with a company he owned. However, we never agreed that he owned the rights. Pink Floyd, all of us, had commissioned those pieces of work and paid for them. In order to save ourselves a huge amount of extra aggravation and lawsuit possibilities we agreed to pay him a fee for any right... that he may or may not have had. I did not and do not believe he had a leg to stand on, and on the tour we've just done no such money was paid to him." - Dave

"Versailles was gorgeous. Thoroughly enjoyed playing that. Same with Venice. It was lovely. I was nervous. Playing live to 100 million people. It gets to you at times." - Dave

"Not everything is done for profit. I'm sorry to sound self-justifying about this, but we do take a certain amount of flak in this area." - Dave

"I simply thought, 'Are these songs good?' and worked on trying to make the ones I thought were good into a record. It can not help sounding quite a bit like Pink Floyd if it's got my voice and my guitar playing on it anyway." - Dave

"I just started out to make a record that I thought I would like -that's all I ever done with Pink Floyd. Inevitably, one is going to subconsciously lean towards what is acceptable to the Pink Floyd fan." - Dave

"We were in the studio in Los Angles still a long way from completing the record, maybe in May '87, when we wanted to start getting the tour going, and had the first dates fixed. Then Roger sent letters out to every single promoter in North America saying that he would sue them, seal their bank accounts and all that sort of stuff."

"That was another good thing about recording in Los Angeles - lawyers can't ring you up in the middle of your working day. Los Angeles starts eight hours after what we do, and as we didn't start in the studio until noon, that would mean British lawyers would have to stay in their office until eight or nine at night if they wanted to talk with us about anything. If you're there at the end of the telephone, they ring you up with every little detail. It's never that urgent. Better to have one one-hour phone call once a week, instead of every half an hour and us losing our train of thought.

"So it was all very tense and difficult, but promoters tend to be very 'street' people and don't take kindly to being threatened. Michael Cole, the guy promoting the Rolling Stones' tour, said he was willing to go ahead and put the tickets on sale, six months before we were due to go out. A problem that some of these promoters expressed to us, and we know it's been expressed to other people, is that they would actually be happier if we didn't put out a new record. If the public didn't have a new record that could supposedly disappoint them, then they knew they could sell out. But we wanted to move forward."

"The first tickets on sale were for the CN Stadium in Toronto, and that sold out, about 150,000 seats in a matter of hours, so we knew we could sell tickets. That gave us a big boost in confidence. The first leg of the tour we were pretty out of pocket at the start because we'd spent a lot of money putting it together and making the record. When the record was delivered, we got an advance, but that only paid for the record. So there was the daily risk on tour that would prevent us from doing anymore dates - though we couldn't see how they could do that - or there was a very real possibility that some sort of injunction would be put on us that would seal the bank accounts and stop us using any of the money."

"Never mind what it cost us putting the tour on, the running expenses added up to around $100,000 a day, so the first few weeks of the tour were very nervy, because if the bank accounts had seized up, then raising money would have been extremely difficult.. But there came a time when we had raised enough money and got it cleared into other bank accounts which couldn't be touched, and the expenses for the rest of the tour were covered. At that point there was nothing more Roger could do to prevent us, and we celebrated."

" We'd spent a lot of money fighting him. We had to have a team of lawyers in every city ready and briefed in case it was suddenly in front of a judge and we had to get someone there in 20 minutes. It never happened, but we had to be prepared for it. We didn't think he had an actual case, but you can't tell with the American legal system - there was the possibility you could find a judge somewhere who would take a few thousand dollars backhander. Not that I would want to cast aspersion on the honesty of judges in America, or England - or anywhere else, for that matter. But it certainly has happened before." - Dave

"I obviously had something to prove in that Roger was no longer a part of it and obviously I had the view that people may have misunderstood or misread the way it had been with him within our history. It was quite important to me to prove that there was something serious still going on there. It was 'Life After Rog,' you know. I don't know about any particular change of direction." - Dave

"That's why we set about a good album, a spectacular show and a tour that would go on for over a year. We wanted to leave no one in doubt that we were still in business and 'meant' business and no one was going to stop us." -Dave

"I knew we would get some fans who would not approve. We didn't get too many. There would be people in the audience who would make their feelings heard about Roger not being there, just by shouting very loudly during moments when the rest of the audience was being respectfully quiet. They are perfectly entitled to; I just can't understand why the fuck they bothered to pay for the tickets. If they don't like us, go see Roger instead."

"It died away but there was one or two funny incidents. There was once a whole row of about eight guys with 'Fuck Roger' T-shirts on. There was another guy wearing one of Roger's tour T-shirts, which had the name Roger Waters in green fluorescent lettering across the top, so I only had to glance into the audience and his name would be beaming at me. This guy was starting off by shouting at us, but by the end of the second half he took the T-shirt off, tore it up into little bits, put it on the floor and stamped on it!"