The Division Bell Tour

The Division Bell Tour in 1994 was promoted by Canadian concert impresario Michael Cohl and became the highest-grossing tour in rock music history to that date, with the band playing the entirety of The Dark Side of the Moon in some shows. The first show they played the whole The Dark Side of the Moon was on July 15th, 1994 at the Pontiac Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan, which was the first time since 1975 it was played. While preparing for the tour, Pink Floyd spent most of March rehearsing in a hangar at Norton Air Force Base in California.[1]

The concerts featured even more impressive special effects than the previous tour, including two custom designed airships.[2] Three stages leapfrogged around North America and Europe, each 180 feet (55 m) long and featuring a 130-foot (40 m) arch resembling the Hollywood Bowl venue. All in all, the tour required 700 tons of steel carried by 53 articulated trucks, a crew of 161 people and an initial investment of US$4 million plus US$25 million of running costs just to stage. This tour played to 5.5 million people in 68 cities; each concert gathered an average 45,000 audience. At the end of the year, the Division Bell Tour was announced as the biggest tour ever, with worldwide gross of over £150 million (about US$250 million). In the U.S. alone, it grossed US$103.5 million from 59 concerts. However, this record was short-lived; less than a year later, The Rolling Stones' Voodoo Lounge Tour (like the Division Bell Tour, also sponsored in part by Volkswagen) finished with a worldwide gross of over US$300 million. The Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Metallica, U2, The Police, Bon Jovi, Roger Waters and Madonna remain the only acts ever to achieve a higher worldwide gross from a tour, even when adjusting for inflation.

A Volkswagen Golf Pink Floyd Edition

The tour was sponsored in Europe by Volkswagen, which also issued a commemorative version of its top-selling car, the "Golf Pink Floyd", one of which was given as a prize at each concert. It was a standard Golf with Pink Floyd decals and a premium stereo, and had Volkswagen's most environmentally friendly engine, at Gilmour's insistence.[3]

These shows are documented by the Pulse album, video and DVD.

The final concert of the tour on 29 October 1994 turned out to be the final full-length Pink Floyd performance, and the last time Pink Floyd played live before their one-off 18-minute reunion with Roger Waters at Live 8 on 2 July 2005.

Pink Floyd:

• David Gilmour – guitars, lead vocals, pedal steel guitar
• Nick Mason – drums, percussion
• Richard Wright – keyboards, lead vocals on 'Astronomy Domine," "Time" and "Comfortably Numb", backing vocals

Additional musicians:

• Guy Pratt – bass, lead vocals on "Comfortably Numb" and "Run Like Hell", backing vocals
• Jon Carin – keyboards, lead vocals on "Comfortably Numb" and "Hey You", backing vocals
• Gary Wallis – percussion, additional drums
• Tim Renwick – guitars, backing vocals
• Dick Parry – saxophones
• Sam Brown – backing vocals, lead vocals on "The Great Gig in the Sky"
• Claudia Fontaine – backing vocals, lead vocals on "The Great Gig in the Sky"
• Durga McBroom – backing vocals, lead vocals on "The Great Gig in the Sky"

There were two typical set lists used throughout the tour. The first was used all tour, and the second was introduced on 15 July at the Pontiac Silverdome, and rotated with the first typical set list for the remainder of the tour.

Typical set list one:

Typical set list two:

Songs rarely played during this tour were:

• "One Slip" (only played once on 22 April 1994 in Oakland, California between "The Great Gig in the Sky" and "Us and Them"; at this show, "Wish You Were Here" was played after "Us and Them")
• "Marooned" (only played twice on 29 and 30 August 1994 in Oslo, Norway before "Run Like Hell")

• List of highest-grossing concert tours

• Pink Floyd Drums: The Division Bell Tour Drums