Roger Waters’ acrimonious 1985 departure from Pink Floyd left a bitter taste that he has never been able to wash out.
Moreover, there’s no doubt that the legal dispute he enacted after his exit – culminating in an out of court settlement in 1987 – only intensified the schism. While a détente was briefly enjoyed when the classic lineup reformed for Live 8 in 2005, it’s clear that Waters has never gotten over the fact that he left the British legends.
Fans and former band mates have wildly differing views of Waters, who ranks among the most divisive figures in music. Yet, despite what side of the fence commentators sit on, most agree that Waters is a creative control freak. Although Pink Floyd enjoyed their greatest creative and commercial successes – The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here – when he was steering the ship, they also occurred when he allowed David Gilmour, Richard Wright and Nick Mason to impress themselves upon the writing process.
Unfortunately for his former bandmates, after Wish You Were Here, Waters’ grip on the band tightened, with him famously dictatorial over proceedings when they were recording 1980’s hit concept album, The Wall. Reflecting just how bleak things were internally, guitarist and co-vocalist Gilmour, who had once been the perfect foil for Waters, was reduced to nothing more than a glorified session musician.
Things came to a head during the making of 1983’s The Final Cut. At this point, Waters essentially had complete control over the entire process, which had already seen Wright quit under the duress of making The Wall, Gilmour barely contributing anything and hating much of the material, and Mason’s appearances mostly being in the form of sound effects. It might have reached number one after it was released, but this was due to fans waiting three and a half years for a new Pink Floyd record. To all involved it was a wholly “miserable” time.
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The album failed to impact the zeitgeist like their other releases had done. After all, there were no group photos, promotional appearances or even tours. Waters and the rest of the band knew this was the end for the classic iteration of Pink Floyd.
“I was in a pretty sorry state,” Waters later recalled. “By the time we had got a quarter of the way into making The Final Cut, I knew I would never make another record with Dave Gilmour or Nick Mason.”
As we know, Waters’ dim view of his ex-bandmates worsened after he left, so there’s no surprise that their first record without him, 1987’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason did not tickle his fancy. Although he said there were a couple of “really nice tunes on it”, conceptually and lyrically, it was “rubbish”, he said. In true form, he maintained that it would have been much better if he was still in the band.
He once told CDNOW.com: “A Momentary Lapse of Reason had a couple of really nice tunes on it that, had I still been in the band, those chord sequences and melodies would have been made it onto a record that I was involved in. But conceptually and lyrically, it’s just rubbish, partly because it’s not true. It’s like, ‘Let’s try and write songs that sound as if they’re Pink Floyd and make records that sound like Pink Floyd records.’”
