The one bandmate David Gilmour never spoke to ever again: “I didn’t go”
The entire history of Pink Floyd is like watching a musical soap opera; half the time, David Gilmour and Roger Waters talk about each other.
The guitarist never wanted any trouble once Waters decided he had had enough of the band, but going to court over the use of the band’s name and dealing with his bandmate badmouthing the band didn’t exactly mean that they would kiss and make up after the fact. But even though Gilmour had some issues that he still hasn’t worked out with Waters, there were more than a few bandmates that he wished he had ended things with differently.
But no one could have really imagined how little time that Gilmour would have had with his bandmates. If we’re being honest, no one would have imagined that Ricard Wright would have been gone so soon, and even though many people would love the idea of Gilmour and Waters reuniting with Nick Mason all over again, there’s no way that the band could stand as they were without Wright’s massive organ lines throughout their tunes.
And it’s not like Gilmour is looking to mend the fences any time soon. He is firmly aware that he was in a band called Pink Floyd at one time, and even though he would take the name out of retirement every now and again for a song like ‘Hey Hey Rise Up’, it was all done in service to causes greater than himself half the time. But the only reason Gilmour even got in the band in the first place was due to Syd Barrett.
Which isn’t exactly the position that you want to be in as a replacement member. Barrett was already the leader of the group in many respects, and even if he had the kind of musical vision for the band when making The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, his deteriorating mental state was going to do a number on the band if they kept him on. Gilmour was already being brought in to fill in for Barrett on multiple occasions, but by the time that Barrett was let go from the band, every member had a lot of emotions to work through.
They had become one of the biggest bands in the world without him, and even if they had a lot of potential after Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here was the first time where they could let out their emotions for their friend. Getting a visit from Barrett in the middle of things was already more than a little bit spooky, but Gilmour felt that he never had closure after his friend with the shaved head walked out of the studio back in the mid-1970s.
Barrett spent the rest of his life mainly tending to himself and getting the proper care and attention from his loved ones, but Gilmour never got the chance to talk to his old friend ever again since that final meeting, saying, “It was a tragic waste. I also felt a great sense of regret that I didn’t go and see him in all those years. His family had said it would be better if people didn’t. But I wouldn’t have thought that would have applied to me. So I do regret that I hadn’t been more bullish about it.”
On the other hand, Waters did have a good point when he said that most of his grieving for his best friend had been done years before during the Wish You Were Here sessions. Barrett wasn’t dead by any stretch, but the friend that they had once known who had that brilliant way of writing songs had been gone decades before he actually passed away.
Still, the fact that Gilmour never got to see his friend one last time was the kind of regret that he was never going to simply shake off. It was a tragedy to see someone like Barrett lose that spark in his eyes, and even if Floyd’s career afterwards was defined by his absence in a lot of respects, any of them would have traded some of their classics to have their friend perform with them one more time.
