When Roger Waters accidentally wiped one of David Gilmour’s Pink Floyd contributions
Like most genre labels, prog-rock was somewhat ill-fitting since the umbrella covered Led Zeppelin, Yes, and Pink Floyd. Still, it helped to differentiate these fastidious creatives from the more unrefined rock exhibited by proto-punk outfits like The Stooges and New York Dolls. Whether pandering to punk, glam or prog, most of these eminent bands of the early 1970s seemed to have roots in psychedelia.
Under the initial leadership of Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd synchronised with The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Cream’s Disraeli Gears with their 1967 debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. From here, the band gradually evolved into a more spacious and eclectic sound under Roger Waters’ leadership.
While Pink Floyd worked on The Piper at the Gates of Dawn in Abbey Road Studios, Paul McCartney became a big fan. While encouraging the band, he allegedly prophesied that they would take the rock mantle from The Beatles. “In my discussions with him, [McCartney] had always been convinced that there would be a new synthesis of electronic music, studio techniques, and rock ‘n’ roll,” biographer Barry Miles recalled. “He didn’t see The Beatles as being quite the vehicle for that. But the Pink Floyd, he thought, were the very stuff that we’d been talking about.”
Indeed, Pink Floyd did seem to replace The Beatles’ position at the rock ‘n’ roll vanguard, but not quite how anyone expected. Centrally, nobody could have foretold Barrett’s tragic absence and the several years of transition that took place before the groundbreaking release of The Dark Side of the Moon in 1973.
When Pink Floyd reached their most impactful and critically acclaimed period in the mid-1970s, Waters had a firm grip on the helm. However, without the instrumental expertise and songwriting contributions of David Gilmour, Rick Wright and Nick Mason, his overarching concepts would have struggled to take satisfactory form.
When working on the 1977 concept album Animals, Waters was evidently inspired by George Orwell’s idea of sociopolitical hierarchy as illustrated in Animal Farm. Accordingly, the album consisted of four tracks: ‘Pigs on the Wing’ parts one and two, ‘Dogs’, ‘Sheep’ and ‘Pigs (Three Different Ones)’.
All of the songwriting credits on Animals belong to Waters as the primary lyricist, except for ‘Dogs’, which Waters co-wrote and co-vocalised with Gilmour. In a 1993 conversation with Guitar World, Gilmour revealed that the song was one of his original ideas. “I basically wrote all the chords – the main music part of it,” he said. “And we wrote some other bits together at the end.”
Gilmour had some rough lyrics sketched out under the working title ‘You Gotta Be Crazy’, but he and Waters later contrived the track into the album’s running concept. “It was fundamentally the same song, but the lyrics changed a little to suit the Animals concept,” Gilmour explained. “I did one or two very nice, slightly different guitar solos on it that I was quite pleased with.”
Detailing his contributions further, Gilmour pointed out the “three-part and sometimes two-part melody sections” and a “descending augmented chord” that he was “very proud of”. Once they had the finished product, however, “Roger went and wiped it out”.
Gilmour noted that it was a “mistake” on Waters’ part. Still, the incident undoubtedly triggered a degree of animosity between the pair as Gilmour “had to re-create” his meticulously crafted song.
