The Pink Floyd shows Roger Waters never forgave them for: “For his own profit”
No one in Pink Floyd had to have fond memories of their time together after they split.
Roger Waters had become the kind of dictator who insisted that everyone play the song his way, and when David Gilmour took the reins after he left, it finally felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He was in unknown territory for the first time, but once Waters left the fold, he knew that there were a few bridges that would be burned forever when they began performing without him.
Granted, it’s not like the band couldn’t carry on without him. Gilmour had written standalone tunes for the band before, and they had already replaced Syd Barrett in their early days, so what was the difference here? Well, you see, that all comes down to how Gilmour and Waters saw their roles in the group.
Waters was always looking at the big picture of the show and wanted to create a scene in the listener’s mind half the time. That certainly helped when making albums like Animals and Wish You Were Here, but that was never Gilmour’s approach. He wanted to make songs that people could relate to, and while A Momentary Lapse of Reason was far from the best Pink Floyd album, it at least had some decent cuts like ‘Dogs of War’ and ‘One Slip’ that felt in line with their old sound.
But if they were going to go back out on the road, it’s not like they were going to ignore the last few years of their career. Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here had become modern classics, and while they might have had a new album to promote, there’s a good chance that the fans wouldn’t let them out of the venue if they didn’t try their hand at playing tunes like ‘Money’ or ‘Wish You Were Here’.
Waters was more than happy to do what he wanted, but The Wall was more than an album to him when he made it. This was the autobiographical tale of a rock star losing his mind, and while the bassist did take the rights to use the rock opera in his own shows, he remembered feeling gutted when he heard about Gilmour going out onstage to perform songs like ‘Comfortably Numb’.
The whole concept of The Wall was to listen to it from start to finish, and breaking it up felt like a slap in the face to Waters when putting his solo version of the album together, saying in 1990, “I absolutely acknowledge that some of the work involved in The Wall is Dave’s. But the fact that he cares as little as he does for the feelings that are in the piece, I think, makes it impossible for me to invite him to be there. You know, he has been out in stadiums playing my piece, in exact opposition to my emotions and ideas and philosophies and whatever, for his own profit. And I can’t forgive him for that.”
But it’s not like Gilmour is mutilating the song by any means. Whenever he plays tracks like ‘Comfortably Numb’ or ‘Run Like Hell’, they remain extremely faithful to the finished versions, but breaking them up was already a step over the line. Waters knew this was an elastic piece, so doing a greatest-hits version of their set every night would be like trying to make The Mona Lisa and Van Gogh’s Starry Night work as one painting.
Which probably explains why Waters always relished the opportunity to reinterpret The Wall every chance he could. Gilmour may have been proud to have worked on such a spectacle, but Waters knew that there were far more interesting avenues to go down than treating them like museum pieces.
