After decades of triumphs, turbulence, and transformative music, David Gilmour finally said goodbye to the world of Pink Floyd—not with a bang, but with a sigh of relief. Though the band gave him fame, fortune, and legendary status, it also became a weight he could no longer carry. Now 78, Gilmour has stepped into a quieter chapter, and with the release of Luck and Strange in 2024, he’s finally unshackled himself from the beast that was Pink Floyd.
The new solo album—his first in nearly a decade—is a mature, thoughtful work by an artist who knows exactly who he is. It’s the sound of a man free from the exhausting debates, power struggles, and business entanglements that defined his final years with the band. As Gilmour put it himself in an interview at the time, walking away from Pink Floyd felt like being released from a “mud bath.”
That bath was long overdue to drain. In September 2024, the same month Luck and Strange arrived, Gilmour revealed how desperately he wanted to be rid of the back-and-forth involved in selling Pink Floyd’s back catalogue. A month later, the sale was complete: Sony had acquired the rights for a reported $400 million. For Gilmour, it wasn’t about the payday—it was about the closure. “I wanted out,” he said plainly.
But it wasn’t just the business side of Floyd that haunted him. Around the same time, he also opened up about a creative decision he still regrets: the band’s 2014 swan song, The Endless River. Often hailed as a nostalgic and ambient send-off, Gilmour now views it differently. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times that November, he made a startling confession: the album never should have happened—not in the way it did.
To understand why, we have to go back to The Division Bell era in the early 1990s. During those sessions, a collection of instrumental recordings was compiled by engineer Andy Jackson and given the working title The Big Spliff. Though initially shelved, it lingered in the vaults—and later in the bootleg world—for years. After Richard Wright’s death in 2008, Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason returned to the tapes in 2013. With updated studio tools, they reshaped the material into what would become The Endless River.
But Gilmour now sees that process as flawed. “A lot of fans wanted this stuff that we’d done in that time, and we thought we’d give it to them,” he 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. It should have been clear what it was — it was never intended to be the follow-up to The Division Bell.”
Despite being released with good intentions, The Endless River turned into something Gilmour never wanted: a “proper” Pink Floyd album built from leftovers, wrapped in nostalgia, and pushed by industry pressure. “It’s never too late to get caught in one of these traps again,” he said wryly.
For fans, The Endless River might have felt like closure. But for Gilmour, it was the final reminder that he needed to walk away for good—not from the music, but from the myth, the brand, the never-ending negotiations. With Luck and Strange, he’s shown that there’s life after Pink Floyd. And this time, he’s not looking back.
