The Pink Floyd albums David Gilmour called impossible to complete: “The thought of continuing was worse”
It’s never easy trying to balance the power dynamic within a rock band. It might be going smoothly for the first few years, but the minute someone says they have more power than their fellow musicians, it only takes a few more wrong moves before people leave with hurt feelings and bruised egos between them. Whereas Pink Floyd at least knew life after death with Roger Waters at the helm, David Gilmour pointed to projects like The Wall and The Final Cut as the moment where everything turned insufferable.
But Pink Floyd were already on the brink of collapse when Waters decided to take the reins. It was clear that their time with Syd Barrett had run its course, and if they were going to get anything done, it would normally come from Waters writing his more nuanced take on rock and roll, usually involving a dour look at society.
While it took a little time for everything to kick in, suffice it to say that the world listened once Dark Side of the Moon came out. Whereas most prog rock bands would be lucky to sniff the back end of the chart now and then, having an album that stayed on the charts for nearly a decade wasn’t necessarily going to leave everyone with a level head.
Waters had previously insisted that he tried to keep himself fairly grounded in his personal life, but that wasn’t what was happening in the studio. In the video for Live at Pompeii, some of the bonus material showed keyboardist Richard Wright talking about the more combative side of the group, and that would only end up getting worse once Waters came up with the idea for The Wall.
Despite its amazing premise, the actual album is a recording experience that no one wants to relive. After firing Wright halfway through the sessions, most of the album ended up being completed with Waters and Gilmour, usually bringing in backing musicians or using Michael Kamen to provide orchestral accompaniment.
Gilmour walked away from the album creatively unscathed, but the next few years were an absolute nightmare for him, telling Creem, “The Final Cut and the making the The Wall film were both nearly impossible. The thought of continuing with Roger in that frame of mind was far worse than the thought of him going. Roger wanted to do all the writing. He *wanted* to take over the whole thing.”
But this wasn’t suddenly The Roger Waters Experience brought to life on a grand stage, and Gilmour let him know that when he decided to continue on after he left. Waters may have protested and argued that he was the heart and soul of the group, but the thought of him dragging the group through yet another lavish conceptual project with limited involvement from anyone would never go over well.
Gilmour would eventually see the band through to the end up until their final release The Endless River, but it wasn’t a case of the group going out with a bang of anything. The group once known as Pink Floyd grew apart due to a creative impasse, and once Gilmour had had enough, he knew that he would be much happier working on The Division Bell than another setpiece.
