The reason why Roger Waters walked out on Eric Clapton
Eric Clapton has never exactly been known as the easiest person to work with. Since he has spent half of his time as a superstar on his own and seen many of his supergroups fall apart due to creative differences, Slowhand’s inability to hold bands together can either be chalked up to the worst luck in the world or an unsavoury personality. When he guested alongside Roger Waters, though, the former Pink Floyd frontman had zero tolerance for Clapton’s grandstanding.
Then again, Waters probably wouldn’t have gotten into the music business were it not for hearing Clapton for the first time. After leaving The Yardbirds, Clapton’s stint in Cream turned Waters’ world upside down when he heard them in college, being knocked out by the sheer musicality going on in front of him.
While he may have been inspired to pick up an instrument of his own, Pink Floyd had decided to take things in a different direction. They may have had another guitar legend in David Gilmour, arrive after the loss of Syd Barrett, but Waters had a vision for the band to make something more than just psychedelic rock.
After moving on from Barrett’s departure on albums like Meddle, The Dark Side of the Moon saw the band emerge at the forefront of progressive rock, examining what drives people to madness across their next handful of albums. For all of the goodwill Waters had for the band, though, no one was exactly happy to be working on The Wall, leading to Waters firing Richard Wright and dictating everything that would go onto the album.
Since the band were being treated like side musicians next to Waters on The Final Cut, Waters cut his losses with Floyd and moved onto a solo career. Taking the rights to The Wall with him, Waters would eventually stage many different performances of the rock opera during his solo career, playing various songs alongside his new album, The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking.
During the 1980s, Waters got a creative golden ticket when Clapton decided to jam with him onstage for a handful of gigs. While Waters loved the idea of playing alongside his idol, Clapton was starting to hog the stage a bit too much for his taste, having the mindset of shredding first and asking questions about arrangements later.
Once Waters kicked into one of his songs on one of the dates, he decided to leave ‘Slowhand’ by himself onstage. As guitarist Tim Renwick recalled to Pigs Might Fly, Waters didn’t want to be outdone, saying, “In Hartford, we came to the end of the first half, and Roger just threw his bass on the floor of the stage, stuck his arm in the air, shouted ‘the great Eric Clapton’, and then stormed off”.
While Clapton stuck around for the remainder of the tour and Waters would eventually apologise for the way he acted, he knew that he wasn’t going to tolerate that behaviour in the studio. Even though Waters would eventually use Clapton’s Yardbirds successor, Jeff Beck, on later albums like Amused to Death, you know that there are some bruised egos onstage when ERIC CLAPTON is looking like the professional one.
