“None of that is lasting”: The Pink Floyd era Roger Waters thought never held up
Time can usually be the sworn enemy of any good album. As much as someone might try to capture the zeitgeist of the time and make something that will point towards the future, it’s up to the public to decide whether or not those sentiments hold up in ten years or ten months after its release. Although Pink Floyd has made music that has gone down in history as the greatest progressive rock ever made, Roger Waters thought that one era of the group never had the potential to age gracefully.
Then again, Waters’s track record was never the greatest regarding foresight. As soon as he left Floyd, The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking does sound incredibly dated on a production level, and no matter how much he tries to give an updated version of Dark Side of the Moon, there’s no other reality where that reimagining doesn’t come off like the ramblings of a madman rather than a bold creative direction.
When Waters split after The Final Cut, though, the rest of the group was determined to press on without him. After all, Waters wasn’t all of the group, and even if he wrote the lion’s share of their conceptual pieces, hearing what David Gilmour, Richard Wright, and Nick Mason had to offer was bound to be interesting.
Even when they eventually released new material, though, it was definitely a change of pace from what Waters had envisioned. The whole conceptual angle had been thrown out the window, and in its place were individual moments on songs that spoke to each other to create a coherent whole, like the imagery in ‘Learning to Fly’ or the grand scope of ‘High Hopes’ off The Division Bell.
That’s not to say that there weren’t some shaky moments. If The Final Cut got flak for being a Roger Waters solo album, A Momentary Lapse of Reason is one of the more dated attempts that Gilmour ever made in Floyd, making his own glorified solo album with gated reverb on the drums and some of the most questionable 1980s keyboards and drum machines thrown into the mix.
Despite this era having its fans, Waters felt that there was no way that lineup would stand the test of time, saying, “On the last record, Gilmour got his wife to help write the lyrics — that’s pure Spinal Tap. Eric Stewart of 10cc told me he got a call from Gilmour saying, ‘We’re trying to make a new record and we need a concept. Got any ideas?’ It’s funny now, but it really pissed me off then… that no one saw through that at the time. But I think history is starting to show that none of that stuff is really lasting.”
That’s not exactly fair, though. Gilmour was never looking to make the same grand spectacles that Waters was used to, and sometimes, the best moments on these later records came from impromptu jams that the band had that find their way onto the final record. And despite people being up in arms about Polly Sampson writing lyrics, her contributions to The Division Bell do a great job of painting a picture of the lack of communication between two people.
So while Waters can maintain that anything Floyd without him in it is borderline treason, it’s more than earned its spot in the band’s history. It might not be as grandiose as Waters wanted it, but it was always going to be something different, and Gilmour has done a fine job bringing his own identity into the group.
