Pink Floyd: David Gilmour satisfied with the sale of the catalogue

Currently engaged in the North American stages of the tour in support of his latest album, “Luck and strange” (here our review), after the dates in Rome (here our story) and London, David Gilmour gave a long interview to the “ Los Angeles Times” touching on various topics.

Among other things, the legendary guitarist spoke about the sale of Pink Floyd’s catalogue, an agreement which saw Sony Music take possession of the masters, related rights and image rights of the historic British band for 400 million dollars. Expressing his satisfaction with the operation, Gilmour explained:

“It’s history, it’s all part of the past. This material is for future generations. I’m an old person. I’ve spent the last forty years trying to fight for the better, against the forces of indolence and greed, to do the best we can with our work. And now I have let go of this battle.”

He added:

“I got my advance — because, you know, it’s not new money or anything. It’s an advance on what I would have earned in the next few years anyway. But it’s nice to say goodbye to the arguments and arguments and nonsense that have been going on for the last forty years between these four very different groups of people and their managers, and whatnot.”

On the sidelines of the same interview David Gilmour also talked about when he felt intimidated by the record label for Pink Floyd’s latest album, “The endless river” in 2014, released twenty years after the publication of the previous one “The division bell”.

“When we made that album, there was a project that Andy Jackson, our engineer, had put together called ‘The Big Spliff’ – a collection of bits and pieces of jams from the 1994 sessions for ‘The division that were in circulation in the bootlegs”, explained the guitarist: “A lot of fans wanted to hear that material we had created at the time, and we thought we’d give it to them”. The material was then collected by the band in “The endless river”, a work almost entirely composed of instrumental music, except for “Louder than words,” the only song with lead vocals. Despite the excitement of the wait, the album received mixed reviews upon release.

“My mistake, I think, was to let the record company intimidate me into releasing it as a proper Pink Floyd album,” Gilmour admitted, suggesting that expectations for the album were disproportionate: “It would have It had to be clear what it was — it was never intended as a sequel to ‘The Division Bell,’ you know, it’s never too late to find yourself in one of these traps.”