The Division Bell Tour

Pink Floyd spent most of March 1994 rehearsing in a hangar at Norton Air Force Base in California and a soundstage at Universal Studios Florida.^[1] The Division Bell Tour was promoted by the Canadian musician Michael Cohl and became the highest-grossing tour in rock music history to that date. Pink Floyd played the entirety of their 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon in some shows. They first played the whole of The Dark Side of the Moon on 15 July at the Pontiac Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan, which was the first time since 1975 it was played.

The concerts featured even more 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 over 5 million people in 68 cities; each concert gathered an average audience of 45,000.

The 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, their first live appearance as a quartet in 24 years since The Wall Tour (1980–1981), as well as their last before Richard Wright's death in 2008.

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] In 1995, Gilmour said he had donated the money had made from the sponsorship to charity, and was uncomfortable with it: "I don't want [Volkswagen] to be able to say they have a connection with Pink Floyd, that they're part of our success. We will not do it again."^[4]

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. Less than a year later, the Rolling Stones' Voodoo Lounge Tour finished with a worldwide gross of over US$300 million. The Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Metallica, U2, the Police, Bon Jovi, Madonna and the former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters are the only acts to achieve a higher worldwide gross from a tour, even when adjusting for inflation. The stage set was designed by Stufish Entertainment Architecture, led by the architect Mark Fisher.^{[citation needed]}

Pink Floyd:

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

Additional musicians:

• Guy Pratt – bass, co-lead vocals on "Comfortably Numb" and "Run Like Hell", backing vocals
• Jon Carin – keyboards, co-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, co-lead vocals on "The Great Gig in the Sky"
• Claudia Fontaine – backing vocals, co-lead vocals on "The Great Gig in the Sky"
• Durga McBroom – backing vocals, co-lead vocals on "The Great Gig in the Sky"

• List of highest-grossing concert tours
• List of most-attended concert tours

• Pink Floyd Drums: The Division Bell Tour Drums