Dream Theater Keyboardist Recalls How Pink Floyd Fired Him From An Album Session

In a new interview with The Chuck Shute Podcast, Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess has recalled an unexpected Pink Floyd album session and revealed how he was fired from the studio.

Pink Floyd is an English band that was formed in London in 1964. Releasing its debut album in 1967, titled The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, Floyd has released fifteen studio albums in total. The band has sold more than 250 million albums worldwide.

However, during the interview, the keyboardist discussed a moment he lived with his close friend, Blue Ocean. Remembering his friend’s phone call to him, the keyboardist stated that his friend asked him to go with him somewhere. That place was Pink Floyd‘s album session, and he didn’t know that he went to Floyd album session at first.

“[One day], he said, ‘Come on, let’s go do this,'” the musician recalls. “And then while we’re going to the studio, I knew nothing about it.

“He says, ‘You can play snare drum, right?’ I was like, ‘Wait, a snare drum? I played that in third grade.’ Whatever, I didn’t know where we were going.

“We got there and I’m playing. He hands me some sticks and puts me at a snare drum, and there were 14 drummers there in this beautiful studio but I still didn’t know what it was.

“And I started trying to remember how to do that, but the guy, [producer] Bob Ezrin, looks at me and he says, ‘I don’t know. Maybe you can hang out, we don’t really need you to play.’

“It got pinned down to the guys who we thought were the best, so I went into the control room, it was very casual, I just walked into the control room.”

Jordan Reveals How He Realized He Was In Pink Floyd Session

Later then, the keyboardist said he heard Pink Floyd icon David Gilmour when he was playing Bring the Boys Back Home from the band’s The Wall album. According to him, he realized he was in a Pink Floyd session when he heard Gilmour‘s voice. The keyboardist also admitted that he was kicked off from the session.

“All of a sudden, I hear David Gilmour’s voice when they were rewinding,” he continues. “We were playing on that whole section of ‘Bring the Boys Back Home.’

“‘The guy in Pink Floyd?! What the hell is this?’ Because mostly they were just going to that one section but they happened to rewind a little bit more and I heard David Gilmour’s voice.”

“I said, ‘Holy shit, is this a Pink Floyd session?’ And I didn’t care that I got kicked off the drums – fuck it, I’m not a drummer anyway. I was hanging out with my friend, enjoying whatever this was.

“So I thought to myself, ‘This is a fucking Pink Floyd session!’ It’s a funny memory.

“But so that story is true. It was a long time ago, and yeah, I got kicked off the Pink Floyd session.”