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Pink Floyd technically released their final album in 2014, and David Gilmour is not happy about the way it turned out. During a new interview with The Los Angeles Times, the guitarist opened up about how he felt the band's label "bullied" them into framing The Endless River as a follow-up to 1994's The Division Bell when really it was composed of pieces taken from those sessions.
“When we did that album, there was a thing that Andy Jackson, our engineer, had put together called ‘The Big Spliff’ – a collection of all these bits and pieces of jams that was out there on bootlegs. A lot of fans wanted this stuff that we’d done in that time, and we thought we’d give it to them,” Gilmour explained.
“My mistake, I suppose, was in being bullied by the record company to have it out as a properly paid-for Pink Floyd record,” he noted. “It should have been clear what it was — it was never intended to be the follow-up to The Division Bell. But, you know, it’s never too late to get caught in one of these traps again.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Gilmour discussed Sony buying Pink Floyd's back catalog for $400 million. “It’s history — it’s all past. This stuff is for future generations,” he said. “I’m an old person. I’ve spent the last 40-odd years trying to fight the good fight against the forces of indolence and greed to do the best with our stuff that you can do. And I’ve given that fight up now.”
“I’ve got my advance — because, you know, it’s not fresh new money or anything like that. It’s an advance against what I would have earned over the next few years anyway,” Gilmour added. “But the arguments and fighting and idiocies that have been going on for the last 40 years between these four disparate groups of people and their managers and whatever — it’s lovely to say goodbye to.”