Pink Floyd is finished says guitarist David Gilmour. - The San Diego Union-Tribune
George Varga Contact Reporter
Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason has long held out hope the three remaining members of the pioneering English progressive-band-turned-stadium-filling-stars will reunite, although he has been the group's lone voice of hope.
Now, Floyd guitarist David Gilmour – whose 2016 North American tour includes March 23 and 24 concerts at the nearly 18,000-capacity Hollywood Bowl – has officially put to rest even the mere notion a reunion is possible.
Gilmour, Mason and bassist-singer Roger Waters are the only surviving members of the band, which last year released "The Endless River." It was the group's first new studio album since "The Division Bell" came out in 1994, the last year Floyd (minus Waters) toured.
After acrimoniously quitting the band in the 1980s, Waters famously sued Gilmour, Mason and Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright (who died in 2008) for continuing to record and tour as Pink Floyd without him.  Gilmour's new solo album, "Rattle That Lock," will be released Sept. 18. He made it clear in a new interview that Floyd will remain locked, permanently.
“I’m done with it," Gilmour told England's Classic Rock magazine. "I’ve had 48 years in Pink Floyd – quite a few of those years at the beginning, with Roger [Waters]. And those years in what is now considered to be our heyday were 95 percent musically fulfilling and joyous and full of fun and laughter. I certainly don’t want to let the other  percent color my view of what was a long and fantastic time together. But it has run its course, we are done – and it would be fakery to go back and do it again.
“Obviously I accept there are people who want to go and see and hear this legend that was Pink Floyd, but I’m afraid that’s not my responsibility. To me, it’s just two words that tie together the work that four people did together. It’s just a pop group. I don’t need it. I don’t need to go there.”
Gilmour expressed similar sentiments in a 2002 Union-Tribune interview, although – at the time – he didn't completely dismiss the possibility of a Floyd reunion.
"The last thing on my mind is the Pink Floyd thing.  I'm just not thinking that way at all," he said in 2002, speaking from his family's English country home in Sussex. "I'm thinking of making an album under my own name and doing a few shows next year.
"And that means Pink Floyd just doesn't come to the front of my mind. It sits there, lurking, and maybe in a few years we'll see.  It's not something I'm thinking about with relish. It would take a two-year chunk out of my life, and I can't see myself wanting to be away from my kids (ages 5 months to 16) the same way I was willing to when I was an ambitious young man."
And what about fans who want to see the band one last time, or younger devotees who have never had the chance to do so at all?
"That's painting me into a corner a bit," Gilmour told the Union-Tribune in his 2002 interview. "I don't do things for fans. I love the fact we have fans, but artistic achievement is not done by considering other people. That may sound awful, but that's just the way it is. You can't please everyone, so you might as well please yourself."
Now, Gilmour, 69, is citing a new reason Floyd will not reactivate on this, or the dark side, of the moon: The death seven years ago of band keyboardist Wright.
"To do it without Rick would just be wrong," Gilmour told Classic Rock.
"I absolutely don't want to go back; I don't want to go and play stadiums... under the [Pink Floyd] banner. I'm free to do exactly what I want to do and how I want to do it."
Gilmour, Waters, Wright and Mason reunited in 2005 in London to perform at the Live 8 charity concert. Gilmour and Mason briefly joined Waters on stage at a 2011 charity concert in London. In late May, Waters and Mason stood side by side at London's Regent Street Polytechnic College, where they were on hand to commemorate the band's 50th anniversary.
Gilmour, conspicuously, did not attend. Original Floyd guitarist and singer Syd Barrett, whom Gilmour replaced in 1969, died in 2006.
Pink Floyd, Gilmour told Classic Rock, is "just a pop group. I don't need it. I don't need to go there. I'm not being coy or difficult; I just think that at my age I should do whatever I really want to do in life."