The court battle that tore Pink Floyd apart for good
If you had started listening to Pink Floyd in their earliest moments, you can be forgiven for thinking the halcyon days of the 1960s were bound to keep the sonic bonds of fraternal cultural revolution tightly wound forever. Of course, we know now, the only thing more prone to a break-up than a band is a sitcom couple made of Lego.
A myriad of strains and time spent breathing the same air inevitably cause tensions, and then more often than not, someone throws the towel in. Thus, sadly, what once started off as a few friends against the world, high on the sanguine fumes of careless creativity and adrenalised adventure, quickly surpasses the bittersweet realm of success and turns sour. Welcome to the world of Pink Floyd and the messy courtroom battle that would forever break up the band and tarnish their glittering legacy.
In 1961, Syd Barrett’s father passed away a month before his 16th Birthday. The grief this caused often seems underplayed in what followed. It was this moment that encouraged him to perform in the first place, as his mother thought it might help him recover from the grief.
Within four years, Barrett had found some solace, and Pink Floyd formed in 1965 with Barrett, Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Richard Wright. The group would sow the seeds of psychedelia in the streets of London and quickly became known as the progenitors of acid rock.
Barrett was at the forefront of this growing cultural revolution. His uniquely positioned lyrics spoke to a new generation sick of pop’s sensible sensibilities, and those, couple with his starry-eyed gaze, quickly made him a poster boy for a new sound. But the toil of being in such a band, with such a penchant for the potion that seemed to fuel the movement, meant Barrett was quickly left catatonic by LSD.
The Waters v Gilmour feud
By January 3rd, 1968 David Gilmour had accepted a try-out to replace him. And a few weeks later, he was in the front row of a gig at the Imperial College in London, almost motionlessly watching his old college friend play his licks. The band survived this transition of frontmen, but arguments soon ensued between Waters and Gilmour that flitted on and off for decades.
The two men would spend the majority of their adult lives embroiled in arguments with one another. For the time being, though, these centred in the studio as the two creatives battled one another for creative control. Waters, the songwriter, and Gilmour, the sonic perfectionist, the two forces of Pink Floyd, fire and ice, would spend eternity duelling. Sometimes it would breed moments of genius like ‘Comfortably Numb’, other times it would render the group incapacitated.
In July 1978, at Britannia Row Studios, Roger Waters pitched his bandmates two new ideas for concept albums. The first option was a 90-minute demo with the working title Bricks in the Wall. As we all know by now, the pitch got the vote, and the band heeded Waters’ creative vision.
Hitting The Wall
The project arrived at a curious time for Pink Floyd; they had reached a period in their career where stardom was secured, but the toil of keeping it lofty was taking its toll. They were drained, and more often than not, that is infertile soil for creative fruit, but The Wall provided a mechanism whereby they could flip the drawback on its head.
After a long tour in which the strain became self-evident, tensions culminated in a multitude of mishaps. On the final night of their 1977 tour at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, David Gilmour refused to take the stage for the encore after a disastrous performance, so touring guitarist Snowy White stepped in. Once more, the performance was subpar, so they decided to take to the stage one more time, but during ‘Drift Away Blues’, the roadies had already started dismantling the stage.
However, the lowest part of the night came earlier for Roger Waters, and it may have gone unnoticed to most. As the band were midway through their set, a skirmish emerged at the front of the crowd. During which, Waters approached the front row and spat in the face of a rowdy fan.
Later, while speaking to Howard Stern, he confirmed the truth to this rock ‘n’ roll legend, declaring: “It is (true), to my eternal shame.” Waters had lost sight of himself after the tour had played games with his head, and The Wall represented the change that had gradually taken place. Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett had already succumbed to the snares of the rock ‘n’ roll realm, and Waters wanted to exorcise this bedevilment in a sonic serving of deliverance. This dark inspiration may have been creatively conducive, but it came with its own inherent pitfalls to boot.
As David Gilmour would later declare: “I think things like ‘Comfortably Numb’ were the last embers of mine and Roger’s ability to work collaboratively together.” In the end, Waters would leave the band in a bitter dispute, and The Wall’s creation was their last edifice as a whole, with the subtitle to 1983’s The Final Cut clearly indicating the end: “A requiem for the post-war dream by Roger Waters, performed by Pink Floyd.” While the ‘end of the post-war dream’ was ostensibly a shot at Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, it could just as easily have been about the death of Pink Floyd’s flowery 1960s vision.
Roger Waters quits Pink Floyd
In December 1985, Waters finally formally quit the band that he had co-founded. When he did so, he assumed that the whole group would disband. They did not. Since then, any lingering hopes of a Pink Floyd reunion have been met with a pretty definitive no, like Oliver Twist’s request for more, as David Gilmour has even recently announced” “I absolutely don’t want to go back.”
Speaking to Guitar Player magazine about rumours of a possible reunion, the six-string legend revealed: “It has run its course, we are done. I’m all for Roger [Waters] doing whatever he wants to do and enjoying himself. But I absolutely don’t want to go back. I don’t want to go and play stadiums. I’m free to do exactly what I want to do and how I want to do it.”
This irreparable rift grew between them once Waters took his former bandmates to court. It was beginning to be a tale as old as music itself, but the run of musicians taking their own band to court was always likely to be picked up by Pink Floyd. So many bands had done it, but none felt as personal as this case.
Roger Waters calls Pink Floyd “a spent force” in court
His High Court battle was to prevent them from using the name, claiming that the group was a “spent force of creativity” and they would ruin its legacy after he left. The resultant legal battle lasted for two years as both sides argued that they had contributed to something that they should be able to maintain, they just found themselves on different sides of the same coin, so to speak. It was eventually settled out of court, in a Christmas Eve meeting on Gilmour’s houseboat.
Waters would later remark: “It’s one of the few times that the legal profession has taught me something. Because when I went to these chaps and said, ‘Listen we’re broke, this isn’t Pink Floyd anymore,’ they went, ‘What do you mean? That’s irrelevant, it is a label and it has commercial value. You can’t say it’s going to cease to exist… you obviously don’t understand English jurisprudence.'”
While this lesson of commercialism in rock might have taught Waters something about the capitalist culture, and bridges were built for a special charity show in 2005, clearly, the scars haven’t healed. Recently speaking to Rolling Stone Rogers said, “About a year ago, I convened a sort of Camp David for the surviving members of Pink Floyd at a hotel at an airport in London, where I proposed all kinds of measures to get past this awful impasse that we have and the predicament we find ourselves in,” adding, “It bore no fruit.”
Later, citing his displeasure at seemingly being banned from the Pink Floyd website. “I think he thinks that because I left the band in 1985,” Waters stated, “that [Gilmour] owns Pink Floyd, that he is Pink Floyd and I’m irrelevant and I should just keep my mouth shut.”
Could Pink Floyd ever reunite?
Despite the fact that obviously there is a rift the size of the English Channel between the former members, rumours of a reunion recirculated online following an announcement that a live album of the bands iconic 1990 gig at Knebworth was set for release. These, too, have since been rubbished.
Since that moment, Gilmour has become one of Waters’ fiercest critics, often using his own words, and those of his partner, Polly Samson, to throw scorn at his former bandmate. Samson wrote: “Sadly, Roger Waters, you are antisemitic to your rotten core. Also a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac. Enough of your nonsense.” To which Gilmour replied: “Every word demonstrably true.”
It would seem that the flame of Pink Floyd burned out for good long ago, and recently Gilmour made sure to kaibosh any further talk of Pink Floyd reuniting with the kind of authority that would make a judge and his gavel feel a little insignificant, as he said: “Dream on, it’s not going to happen. There’s only three people left and we’re not talking and unlikely to so it’s not gonna happen.”
