Momentary Lapse of Reason is the one album that there is no consensus on whether it is a good album or not. Critics can’t seem to agree, nor can the fans.
David Gilmore and Nick Mason reunited under the Pink Floyd name in 1986 with Richard Wright joining them during the last two months of recording. Bob Ezrin, who assisted with the production of The Wall (1979), was enlisted as co-producer with Gilmore. This album marked the demise of the Waters-Gilmore era for Pink Floyd. Their previous album, The Final Cut (1983), put much strain on the partnership of David Gilmore and Roger Waters, resulting in long running legal battles.
The band was criticized by some fans for not sounding like a Pink Floyd album, but that does not mean that it isn’t good. It went off in a different direction, but lyrically it is similar to Dark Side of the Moon (1973) and The Wall (1979). It probably has the darkest tone of all their albums, and (no pun intended) was a new machine. Musically others would argue that it is not as strong earlier albums, but I would disagree with this statement. I personally found the album much more accessible than previous outings (I do revere the album in the same sense that I think The Final Cut is a masterpiece). The album takes everything that is great about Pink Floyd and distills it for new generations and is the perfect entry point for new listeners.
The highlights of the album are definitely The Turning Away, A New Machine Part 1 and 2, Terminal Frost and Sorrow. Learning to Fly is my least favorite track on the album, but it’s still a great track. The album was very successful and went platinum no less than four times in the US, spawning a world tour which made a reported $75 million, along with a live album, The Delicate Sound of Thunder (1988). A tape of the latter was also taken to space by the crew of the Russian Soyuz TM-7. It is claimed that Pink Floyd’s The Delicate Sound of Thunder is the first rock music to be played in space.
Having said everything important about the music and lyrics, let’s also take a look at the amazing sleeve design for the album. The late Storm Thorgerson conceptualised the cover art and Howard Dowling did the photography. The hundreds of hospital beds were arranged on Saunton Sands in Devon by Colin Elgie and took around two weeks to create (no Photoshop or CGI trickery was used). This is the same beach used for the WWII scenes in the The Wall (1982 film).
Thorgerson states in his book, Mind Over Matter: The Images Of Pink Floyd (2015), that the idea for the cover came to him in two parts. Firstly, the track “Yet another movie” contains the line “a vision of an empty bed”. One bed wasn’t enough though, so the idea was to have many beds. Secondly, since the album begins with the sounds of lone rower in a boat, Thorgerson thought of a river bed, or a river of beds. So 700 beds were arranged in the shape of a long winding river on a beach, with a ‘rower’ sitting on one of them.
If there ever was a designer for rock royalty, it was Storm Thorgerson. He did design work and directed music videos for everyone from Led Zeppelin to Black Sabbath to The Alan Parsons Project. His most recognizable sleeve design was for Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, which has been hailed as one of the greatest album covers of all time.
You can order Thorsgerson’s book, Mind Over Matter: The Images Of Pink, here.
