Floating Restaurants and Frivolous Godfathers: The real reason Pink Floyd split?
“The myth of the starving artist is a myth. The big bankers and prominent young ladies who buy art started it,” Bob Dylan once said. “Look at Matisse; he was a banker.” When dangerous romanticism is put aside, it seems patently apparent that the belly is the engine-house of human output. When it’s low on fuel, art becomes a frivolous sufferer. Pink Floyd know this well.
The official story of their break-up focuses mostly on creative differences. These were undeniable and certainly played a huge part. However, ‘creative differences’ is a very broad phrase, and multiple factors can expound them beyond the art being brought to the studio by respective members. Since their inception, functioning as a dysfunctional band was at the core of what made them great.
Sure, by the time records like Animals arrived in 1977, this ethos was disrupted as Roger Waters was the dominant leader of the group, looking to go about things his own way, evidenced by the album credits that suddenly almost exclusively sport his name. But this dominance also extended to the managerial side of their operation, and it was this element that proved truly disastrous.
This was a side of things that Waters had been running in earnest since shortly after Syd Barrett’s departure. Around the time of Dark Side of the Moon, the band’s mammoth commercial breakthrough in 1973, he began writing all the lyrics and tightening his grip on all aspects as a result. Fame and fortune finally came their way, which always throws a spanner in the works, but it can destroy the cogs completely if it’s mismanaged fame and fortune, which is exactly how things turned out.
The Dark Side of the Moon was a huge record for the band; their previous release, Obscured by Clouds, had charted at 46 in the US. Suddenly, they leapt up to first. There was an influx of cash. For all the band might have said they weren’t all that interested in commerciality and the trappings that come with it, this seemed like a just financial reward for a journey through rock ‘n’ roll far more rigorous and straining than most. This wasn’t a lottery they had no cause for but an ice-cold beer to weary travellers.
Tragically, Waters, effectively, said don’t drink up just yet. With Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here raking in millions for each member, the erstwhile bassist instructed the band to funnel their money into Norton Warburg, a financial investment company conveniently owned by his friend Andrew Warburg. In fact, Warburg wasn’t just his friend; he was the godfather to his children. Alas, the band would soon learn that close connections do not equate to sound financial advice.
To avoid the 83% tax bill that the band members were facing, thanks to the fortunes rolling in, Warburg decided to plunge the funds into an investment portfolio. This included a very odd assortment featuring a floating restaurant, a fudge manufacturing hotel, a movie that was canned before seeing the light of day, a skateboarding shop, a children’s shoe factory, a computer game, and a car hire business. This was a shitshow of epic proportions. All the businesses, even the surefire fudge hotel, failed miserably.
Warburg hadn’t anticipated this. He had failed to take into account the impending tax provisions. And with disaster looming, he doubled down, throwing money into further mad schemes – most likely things like a chocolate fireguard or an underground beach – before fleeing to Spain, where the authorities caught up with him and arrested him for fraud. Everything that the band had worked towards since the days of Syd Barrett, who had lost his sanity to the cause, were now squandered on Waters’s bad advice.
Meanwhile, he was amplifying his creative control. Can you imagine that? That surely grates more than a gripe over whether it should be a F# or Cm. Naturally, Waters was distressed about the whole thing too. They weren’t only out of pocket despite two records that were being hailed as globally huge masterpieces, they were near enough facing up to criminal tax avoidance charges. At the very least, they were liable to pay what was owed, which they suddenly didn’t have.
“It was entirely our fault,” David Gilmour told Weekend Knack, “pure stupidity”. While the band were obviously all culpable for having agreed to the ordeal, given Waters’ personal connection to the dastardly Warburg, it’s easy to see how ‘fault’ and ‘stupidity’ might have swayed more heavily towards certain members and how that member might have resented that.
Like The Rolling Stones before them, the band needed to flee to the south of France. But at least the Stones had blown it all on drugs rather than fucking floating restaurants and fudge motels. For a year, having recently started families of their own, the band were not allowed to enter the UK and advised to stay well away by the financial experts now handling their case.
“Roger was starting to go a bit mad,” Nick Mason would explain of this period. Who could blame him? Who could blame his bandmates for being miffed about it? Who couldn’t empathise with the old friends now wanting to put this whole period behind them and pursue stable family life, living off the riches that huge hits finally afforded them once their sorry finances had been sorted, rather than warring on a well-trodden path that was looking increasingly wavering?
Of all the arguments behind their demise, this case is the only one with documented receipts of the despair. No doubt creative differences played their part, but it’s hard not to see them as a more romantic line to sell, but ultimately, underscored by the whole picture as opposed to sudden cracks in the art itself.
