question: How do you feel about fans exchanging bootlegs?
Waters: "I think it sounds like a healthy hobby." — Microsoft Network (MSN) Internet chat, March 13, 2000

Mason: "I hate bootleg recordings. Please let us make the recordings." — Internet chat, September 3, 1998

question: Has Pink Floyd ever considered releasing a live album?
Gilmour: "Well, on tour we generally play the whole side of an album. Like on the last tour, we did Wish You Were Here the first set and Animals the second set. And, I mean, to do a live album, it would mean that we were just taking that whole thing and putting it back on an album again when everyone's already gotten that album in the first place. That doesn't seem to have a point to it, to me. People will just have to stick with the bootlegs—there are quite a few of those, you know. It's flattering that people want to buy them, and the only ones who aren't too pleased is CBS." — Relix magazine, February 1979

question: Do you own any Pink Floyd boots yourself? And if, what do you think about the sound quality in general?
Gilmour: "The sound quality is usually dreadful, but I've got one with hundreds of things on. Not quite sure where they've got it from. For people like us who've done a lot over the years it's not a major issue, whereas for people starting out its more difficult to cope with bootlegs." — dotmusic.com Internet chat, January 2002

question: Why don't you release a collection of studio outtakes and demos etc. like The Beatles' Anthology series? Because there are certain tracks from the Syd-era like 'Vegetable Man' and 'Scream Thy Last Scream' that most Floyd fans own... will there ever be an official release for these gems?
Gilmour: "There are just one or two tracks like the one you mentioned earlier before my time, but the later Pink Floyd... I wouldn't be opposed to having them out in better form than they are now, i.e. Bootleg." — Microsoft Network (MSN) Internet chat, March 16, 2000

Waters: "Strangely enough I was talking to an English journalist who is very into bootlegs and bits and pieces and he was complaining about the new Pink Floyd box set because there wasn't anything special in it. Reasonably enough in my view, but that's another story. And we were talking about the possibility of releasing demos, you know, as he said you should release your demos sometime as an album and I thought, 'well, that's not a bad idea.'" — Rockline radio interview, February 8, 1993

Gilmour: "We really don't have anything around that hasn't been released, because the way we works tends to be that if something... if we don't think it's going to really work, or it's not going to be used, we don't tend to work on it, so virtually everything that we've actually worked on in the studio is out. So there's really nothing left in terms of outtakes and all that stuff, and there's no properly recorded live stuff from the '70s that's worth listening to, and, besides, you can buy it all on bootleg." — Rockline radio interview, November 24, 1992

question: Why not release live recordings of the '73, '75, or '77 tours? They're already sought after by fans in the bootleg industry.
Waters: "I don't think we made recordings in those days." — Microsoft Network (MSN) Internet chat, March 13, 2000

interviewer: Why a live LP, having done one of the previous tour too?
Mason: "Someone said, 'Why not just call it The Inevitable Live Album and be done with it?' One reason for it was that we did like Dark Side as an entity. It takes on a slightly different quality when it's played through as a continuous piece rather than recorded track by track in the studio. When we were recording it in 1972 I don't think we were conscious of the fact that the tempo remains so constant throughout. Live, you perhaps alter the dynamics a bit to get away with it. In the studio you go for the perfect take. The other reason for it was that, to forestall bootlegs, we should do our own version and make a better job of it." — MOJO magazine, July 1995

interviewer: Dave Gilmour sings reggae and Bob Dylan! ...in fact, I wanted to play more of that but that's all you'd let us have 'cause you probably figured that...
Gilmour: "Well, I could sell the bootleg myself!" — "Into the Night" radio appearance, BBC2, July 28, 1992

Mason: "It's not just the money; it doesn't exactly worry rich pop groups, does it? If people want to make music free, that's fine, but a lot of people make their living that way and if it's going to happen, they will need to restructure the whole music industry, which won't be easy, especially as the laws are different in each country. The Japanese, for example, are notorious bootleggers, but legislation allows them to do it and prevents anyone else. Besides, part of the attraction of vinyl and CD is the package for the collector.

A record collection is a nice thing to have and you don't get that on the Net." — Demon Dispatches, June 9, 1999

Andy Jackson (regarding the 1994 tour): "Inevitably, at the end of every show, we'd have a talk about what we did and try to tighten things up on the next one, having listened to the DATs I recorded each night. But it didn't take long to get the show well routined. At the end of the tour, all the DATs were locked in a cupboard somewhere, probably in the Floyd warehouse. They were all collected up and a list had to be made of where each one was and who I'd given one to. A few of them went missing... I'm sure you could find the bootleg somewhere!" —Sound On Stage magazine, June 1997

Gilmour (on the PULSE DVD): "There's something called 'Bootlegging the Bootleggers', which has got several songs that we weren't doing on this particular version of the concert because we were doing Dark Side of the Moon, so there are a number of other songs which we have taken and we did call around to various fan sites and did look for bootleg material and we had some that our security people had confiscated... during the tour and so we could edit between several different cameras on the same nights. And we used the sound from those microphones and we synched it up to the desk mixes that had come off our PA on those nights to achieve a sort of well, they're pretty good actually They're very good." — PULSE DVD release press conference, July 3, 2006

question: What do you think about MP3s and their impact on the recording industry, and do you feel that it is a bad or good thing to see bootlegs being distributed in that manner?
Gilmour: "I have an MP3 player which I can see part of now hanging from the end of a hook. I don't understand it, I have no idea of what impact it will have on the recording industry, but time usually sorts those things out." — Microsoft Network (MSN) Internet chat, March 16, 2000