The Division Bell

Richard Wright

As stated before, Richard Wright was essentially fired from Pink Floyd just before the Wall tours. He did not appear on TFC. He did, however, appear as a ``session'' musician on AMLoR, (although how much he really played is open for debate see rick on LOR), and also participated in the DSoT tour. With _The Division Bell_ he's finally back in the band:

  [from MTV News]
  Wright: On this one I have been involved right from the beginning.
          Writing and singing, and it's a completely different
          situation this time, and I'm not on a wage (big smile).
          I'm in partnership with them, and very happy about that.
          We are actually three of us making a Pink Floyd album.

Polly Samson

Polly Samson is a journalist (for Sunday Times), writer and as of 29jul1994 the wife of David Gilmour, she co-wrote the lyrics for a number of tracks on The Division Bell.

In the spring of 1999, she released a book of short stories called ``Lying In Bed.''

What is a Division Bell?

[From a post by Chris Solnordal:]

   [In England and Australia] during parliamentary sessions, if there is a 
   disagreement about a matter then a vote must be taken. At this point, 
   The Division Bell is rung for some time, and during that time every 
   parliamentarian who is eligible to vote must proceed to the house. When 
   the Division Bell stops sounding, the doors are shut and so if you're 
   late you miss out on casting your vote.

The use of this for the title was suggested by Douglas Adams (author of the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" radio show, book series, TV show, and computer game, among other things), which is why he is listed in the album's credits. Adams made the suggestion in exchange for Gilmour donating a certain sum of money (£5,000) to a charity of Adams' choosing, the Environmental Investigation Agency. Adams has also said that Gilmour asked him to fool around with the lyrics a bit, but that none of his suggestions were actually used on the album.

Douglas Adams appeared at the October 28th Earl's Court show, playing acoustic guitar on ``Brain Damage'' and ``Eclipse.'' This was Gilmour's birthday present to Adams (Adams' 42nd birthday was in March, 1994).

Keep Talking - Stephen Hawking

[Thanks to David R. Rorabaugh and Microsoft's Encarta]:

   Hawking, Stephen William (1942- ), British theoretical physicist, best 
   known for his attempts to unite general relativity theory with quantum 
   mechanics and for his integrally related contributions to cosmology. 
   Hawking is Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University.
   Much of his work has dealt with the black hole concept.  His research 
   indicates that general relativity, if true, supports the big bang theory 
   of the creation of the universe.  He wrote "A Brief History of Time" 
   (1988). Hawking has made his important contributions to science while 
   battling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, an incurable disease of the 
   nervous system.

It is this disease, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, which forces him to use a speech synthesizer to talk, which is what you hear on ``Keep Talking.'' The phrases he speaks are sampled from a British Telecommunications commercial that Gilmour heard after the song was otherwise completed. Gilmour liked it so much--he said it almost brought him to tears--that he asked BT if he could sample it.

NOTE: The complete text of the advertisement is in the TDB lyric file at http://www.gawth.com/~rjones

Page Numbers

The page numbers in the TDB booklet are in different languages

        3. Spanish                    15. Swahili
        5. English                    17. Chinese / Japanese *
        7. Sanskrit                   19. French
        8. Italian                    21. Hebrew
       11. German / Dutch             22. Russian (Cyrillic)
       13. Japanese (romanized)

* On some CD booklets, you can see ``Dix-Neuf'' written faintly under the characters.

It has also been suggested that the circles on page 2 are a binary representation of the number 2.

Braille

The spine of the TDB CD has the words pink floyd (lower case) listed in braille. (At least on the EMI release).

Differences in Artwork

The UK(EMI) and US releases of TDB differ in minor details. [Most information from the Pink Floyd Encyclopedia]

    U.K. Edition Artwork                  U.S. Edition Artwork
    _____________________                 _____________________
    Front cover has darker sky and        Lighter sky, church between
    four lights between the mouths        mouths
    Back cover has one wave between       Multiple waves between the
    the mouths                            mouths
    The Cluster One pages show four       Three buildings are shown
    observatory buildings
    The words on pages 2-3 are red        The words are in white
    Page 8 is darker than U.S. edition    Lighter than U.K. edition
    Take It Back page has balloons        There are no balloons near the
    next to the tree                      tree
    Take It Back lyrics are white         Lyrics are black lettering on
    against brown background              a white background
    CBTL photo is close-up and taken      Photo taken further back and
    near ground level                     a bit elevated

The cassette release had different art, featuring a photograph of the heads taken at dusk, near dark, with floodlights on them. Additional variations of the art appear in the Division Bell tour book, sheet music books, and other sources.

Poles Apart

According to Polly Sampson, who co-wrote the lyrics, the first verse is about Syd Barrett, the second verse is about Roger Waters.

23.04.2001