On March 30, 1994, famed progressive rock superstars Pink Floyd embarked on their final concert tour, called The Division Bell Tour. Shortly after wrapping up the impressive worldwide trek, the band called it quits. Subsequently, the recordings from that very tour were compiled into the 1995 live record, Pulse.
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It was a really impressive final tour for Pink Floyd. In fact, The Division Bell Tour became the highest-grossing trek in the history of rock music up until that year.
The Glorious Experience of Pink Floyd’s Final Tour
The Division Bell Tour was quite a thing to behold for fans. For several of the tour dates, Pink Floyd performed the entirety of their groundbreaking 1973 album The Dark Side Of The Moon from front to back. The first time they dove into the whole of that album during their final tour was on July 15 in Pontiac, Michigan. It was the first time since 1975 that they had done so.
The whole of the tour was on another level, too. Their use of special effects was a bit more egregious than previous tours, complete with multiple custom airships. The band even brought three different stages with them across North America and Europe.
It wasn’t easy to do, either. Dozens of articulated trucks and a crew of over 160 people were needed to haul 700 tons of stage steel around the world. It cost millions to produce, but they more or less made their money back. Each set in a total of 68 different cities pulled in crowds with an average of 45,000 heads.
Those are impressive numbers, considering the whole of the band wasn’t really there. Rather, it was the newly-shrunk trio of David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright, accompanied by a revolving door of backing musicians. Roger Waters wasn’t in the picture, and he wouldn’t reunite with Pink Floyd until 2005.
The sponsors probably helped a bit. Volkswagen was all over the European leg of the tour, and they even released a Pink Floyd version of their Volkswagen Golf. Gilmour wasn’t exactly happy with it, though. He would later donate the money he earned from the partnership to charity and noted that the band “will not do it again.”
In the end, The Division Bell Tour pulled in a worldwide gross of about $250 million. Pink Floyd would come to an end and reunite off and on through the years. But I doubt anything will quite top that enormous, career-defining tour.
Photo by Sobli/RDB/ullstein bild via Getty Images
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