The Pink Floyd tour Roger Waters called musical “prostitution”
In little over ten years, the creative peaks climbed by space rock stalwarts Pink Floyd would plummet to one of the most bitter divorces in the history of popular music.
Following their golden album, sparked by 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon, bassist Roger Waters began accruing a greater role in steering the band’s creative course and conceptual direction, culminating in 1979’s The Wall, a rock opera that served as his very own quasi-biopic. Such artistic commandeering fermented internal disgruntlement, frustrations with purported unrecognised contributions to their acclaimed LPs, and accusations of Waters’ intolerable ego quickly oversaw Pink Floyd’s unravelling as the 1980s arrived.
The unified alchemy that the band possessed only a few years prior was irrevocably shot. Keyboardist Richard Wright would find himself fired and rehired, yet absent from 1982’s limp The Final Cut, and Waters was already pursuing solo efforts two years later with The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking. By 1985, the split was official, Waters no longer fronting Pink Floyd, and the band carrying on with guitarist David Gilmour, drummer Nick Mason, and Wright back into the fold.
Pink Floyd’s Mk II would enjoy commercial success for their live shows, playing stadiums around the world and breaking gross records with 1994’s The Division Bell Tour. Yet, the albums were severely lacking. Never reaching the captivating heights of their earlier material, the mushy dross that 1987’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason all too often wades in felt in serious need of a sharper focus from their former director.
So began the next 40 years of snide bitchiness. Legal battles would embroil the group before Pink Floyd’s use of the name prevailed, and Waters would hurl potshots at his former bandmates for years, taking particular aim at Gilmour, never above excoriating his perceived inferior songwriting and lyrics. Waters harboured a contempt for what he felt was his legacy’s besmirchment by playing corporate arenas around the globe.
“I almost never think about it, but for Dave and Nick to be going around the world playing in football stadiums, the very songs that I wrote in protest of that rank kind of commercialism felt very much to me like my children being sold into prostitution,” Waters told Billboard in 2000. “It was very painful, and if I could have stopped it, I would have.”
It was clear who had the ideas. While Pink Floyd was resting on their laurels, Waters was ploughing on with innovative new projects, conceiving of Radio KAOS’ extravaganza, soaking up the Cold War paranoia of the day, and pouring the record’s tech-narrative into a multi-media overload for its pioneering live show. Waters wasn’t above plundering Pink Floyd’s oeuvre, resurrecting The Wall for massive world tours and even remaking their lauded opus on 2023’s The Dark Side of the Moon Redux, but there’s little doubt that Waters would have pushed his former band to a realm both more interesting and pertinent to the contemporary.
The original quartet would reunite for 2005’s Live 8 performance to much press frenzy, but it would prove to be a serious one-off. With mutual sniping still occasionally firing to this day, hatchets seem as unlikely as ever to be buried any time soon.
