Roger Waters hits out at being denied access to Pink Floyd fans

Roger Waters wanted to break up Pink Floyd 37 years ago. Now he complains that his solo work isn‘t released as „Pink Floyd“ ?!

Roger Waters and David Gilmour – the yin to the yang? Not entirely perhaps, but they will have a strong bond, however unhealthy their relationship is.

The urge of the songwriter to sing their own songs must be strong. David Gilmour is an excellent singer, so I can imagine there was some resistance when Roger Waters took over the lead vocals. Roland Orzabal also assumed the main vocal duties from Curt Smith. It can’t be much fun being beholden to the main creative talent in a band.

What I like about Roger Waters is his desire to speak up for what he believes in, regardless of the negative impact that has on his popularity and music sales. He’s interesting as a result. Those that dislike him really dislike him.

In the music world he’s a visionary. To realise The Wall as an album, concert and film took some doing, with massive financial risks, so I’m not surprised he was a tough guy to work with.

I’ve seen all his tours since he resumed playing live some years ago, and each tour has got better and better as a spectacle. I can’t recommend strongly enough to go and see him on his forthcoming tour once it gets going. I guess with Covid 19 it’ll be at least two years time before it gets to the UK, all being well.

Though I’m a fan of The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking, his first two solo albums suffer from the production and style of the recordings. I love The Final Cut which is much better than TPACOH. The two albums are too similar in style and structure, but with weaker songs on TPACOH.

Water’s choice of collaborator for each project seems crucial to the end result. Pat Leonard and Nigel Godrich must have worked well with him as Amused To Death and Is This The Life We Really Want are excellent, especially the latter album, which was his first mainstream album for twenty five years. Can you imagine Paul McCartney producing an album today that is up there in equivalent quality to a Beatles album? That’s pretty much what Waters did with Is This The Life We Really Want.

As for the desire to have his work listed on the Pink Floyd web site, then he’s got no chance and he knows it. He probably just wanted to scratch the itch and show his annoyance.

I’m also a fan of David Gilmour, with my highlight seeing him on the On An Island tour. They are both great men.

Syd Barrett often wove the names of people he knew into his lyrics… Lucifer Sam – ‘JENNIFER Gentle you’re a witch…’ references girlfriend Jenny Spires… Apples & Oranges ‘CORNERing neatly she trips up sweetly…’ references girlfriend Lindsay Corner… I always wondered if the line in Astronomy Domine ‘Lime and limpid green, the sound surrounds The icy WATERS underground’ was referring to ‘bandmate?’ Roger Waters… if so ICY Waters is probably a fair (hidden) assessment. The lyric could have worked just as well with the word ‘Water’ rather than ‘Waters’… anyway You decide!

You left the band 35 YEARS ago Roger!! YOUR decision, and yours alone.
Jeez, get over it. Move on with your life.

grumpy old man

i think Roger has a point, like him or not, he was a member of pink floyd, not just a member the chief song writer and vocalist. he should be allowed access to the floyd website etc. its not the Dave and Polly website, it’s the pink floyd website. he should be on there as much as Dave is, and definitely not polly. when was polly a member of pink floyd ?????? it’s just petty of Dave.

These guys all need their heads banging together , much like the members of NewOrder . It all comes across as petty and stupid .

Oh dear, here we go again…He really feels that he has an axe to grind doesn’t he? What a bitter gentleman he has become. When you were kids there was always someone (usually elderly) who didn’t want you playing anywhere near their house…..that’s Mr Waters! If it’s not David Gilmour he’s moaning about, it’s Pink Floyd, if not them Donald Trump, if not him it’s Israel v Palestine.. he never stops! So he takes a cheap shot at Polly Samson which just alienates him further, not because people love Polly Samson particularly but because it’s unnecessarily unkind. In some circles he’d be labelled a’troll’. The mans an idiot! You don’t see Deep Purple members taking cheap shots at Candice Knight for goodness sake! Like many I’ve seen him a number of times…..great shows but his moaning and ranting just wears you down and for what? His gigs attract millions of fans, he’s not short of a few bob, people recognise him, some worship the ground he walks on but he still keeps moaning. Everyone knows where they can access his stuff, Pink Floyd or otherwise but like Lloyd Webber’s awful stuff, Roger rants on for years and years and years…….

Pathetic.

Who cares. You left the band nearly 40 years ago. Your not poor. Any fan knows who you are.

Stop whinging.

It would be nice to see pink floyd getting back together, and playing heaton park (manchester) in 2021.
Sorry, i was just daydreaming in this lockdown…

The thing is Mr Waters your idea of ‘communication’ of which you so lovingly speak, on your terms means, “You do exactly as I tell you otherwise I will smear, bully or if necessary, sue you”.

Time to move on Roger. You decided to leave and you rubbished the output of the remaining three for many years! Why this now ??

Is it just me or did he look and sound quite ill?

Roger left the band 35 years ago. He is not a member of Pink Floyd and has not been for a long time. He has his own social media channels. Any Pink Floyd fans that like Roger’s music are very likely following him on those channels. Stop whining, Roger.

It is always interesting reading or listening to what Roger Waters says, whether you agree with him or not is up to your own personal opinion of him as a musician and man. I watched the Rolling Stone FaceTime? webcast with interest and I after watching it thought (why don’t the others allow him to release Animals in a remastered form?, I thought that they were party poopers to be honest). I appreciate his political passion and his need to get behind things he feels passionate about, but equally I didn’t like the way the Hyde Park concert I attended two summers ago seemed to project a lot of these political passions onto 70,000 who may not have wanted to hear it or see it. Roger for me is Pink Floyd, most of what i term Pink Floyd music had him as the driving force behind it. Even though I have everything on vinyl I’m really not a great fan of the post Waters stuff and very rarely play any of it (apart from High Hopes).
None of us as fans looking in from the outside can possibly appreciate what arguments may go on behind closed doors between people who have known one another for longer than they care to remember. Maybe he has a point?, but then again maybe he should just work positively and keep such opinions private?. A difficult one for sure. But you cannot take away his legacy upon musical history that is set in stone.

The good old Roger have no fans left, but have yet to figure it out, it seems.

Roger is the Paul McCartney of P/Floyd, he {Roger} nearly boarders on genius in the music world of Floyd, unfortunately, When you sue the band I guess that means divorce!
He is only one part of the whole.

Why should people make up or at least tolerate each other? They made music until they could no longer work together and someone left. There are no rules of rock and roll that says you must remain in that band forever.
The few long past their prime bands still hanging on is anyone’s guess. Maybe it’s hard to come to terms with not having anything left to offer.
People will forget those last couple of bad records you made, but they don’t forget how bitter and petty you seemed at your end.

A critical band member leaves the era-defining, envelope-pushing British band they helped form, insisting the band shouldn’t/can’t continue without them. The remains members do not agree. Protracted legal action ensues, as does a bitter public slanging match. The wife of a remaining band member is slagged off publicly by the departed band member. Contrition, remorse and regret eventually follows, as does a legal settlement. Acrimony remains, as does profitable book deals, where disagreements are still aired publicly.

Yes folks, welcome to the world of…New Order!

Only difference seems to be that New Order achieved exactly what Roger Waters clearly wants in his world: ongoing access to the original bands social media platforms for the departed member. Peter Hook’s legal representation specifically negotiated this as part of the settlement reached between the warring parties. As such, New Order’s socials actively promote Hook’s tours, releases, etc and it all comes across as pretty mature, reasonable and beneficial to all parties (including – most importantly I would suggest – fans).

Like all legal settlements, it was a power play that sorted this mess out – and that power only resided with Peter Hook during settlement negotiations. Once they were finalised, game over.

Roger Waters obviously missed (or negligently forgot to consider) that boat at the time when he made his final settlement. Likewise, game over. No point complaining decades later about something you agreed to, or forgot to consider at the time, regardless of how creatively central you were to your former band’s output.

That said, it would only be a good thing IMHO if Roger Waters got what he wanted here. Good for fans, good for David Gilmour (it would make him look very generous, mature and conciliatory) and good for Roger Waters, just as it did for all New Order members, past and present.

To all concerned. Life’s too short guys! Take the high road. Bury the hatchet and make peace, whether united or separate, you all made extraordinary, enduring high art together that will live on well past all of us. All this crap aired publicly doesn’t add value to anything. And publicly slagging someone’s wife will never further your cause!

As you know, Roger Waters’ favoured engineer is James Guthrie and David Gilmour’s favoured engineer is Andy Jackson. Both are highly skilled engineers. Guthrie claims that he had been promised the “right” to do remixes of 1970’s Pink Floyd albums, though I doubt that the promise is actually contractual.
David Gilmour let Andy Jackson do new stereo & surround remixes of “Obscured By Clouds” & “Meddle” with the idea of including them in “The Early Years” boxed set, but Guthrie complained to Waters, and Waters invoked his right to veto the release of the surround mixes, though Jackson’s stereo remix of “Obscured By Clouds” was included in “The Early Years”. The surround mix of “Meddle” is clandestinely included on one of the blu-ray discs, but you need advanced technical skills (and a computer that supports Blu-ray), to be able to extract and play it. When that section of the boxed set was offered separately, the “hidden” 5.1 mix of “Meddle” was omitted.
This all happened because of Roger Waters. Neither James Guthrie or Andy Jackson was involved in the original recording sessions for those early 1970’s albums. What makes either one of them more qualified to remix the recordings? The obvious solution is to let both engineers create 5.1 surround mixes of those albums, release both mixes and let the fans decide which is best.
There may be no further releases of Pink Floyd archival materials from the 1970’s unless Roger Waters relaxes his unyielding stance, which is not only hostile towards David Gilmour. It is hostile towards all Pink Floyd fans.

I think he is basically jealous, with 2.1M likes of Roger’s FB page and 2.5M on Dave’s, he can’t win that war. Dave and family have been doing shutdown videos showing how much he is a nice family guy. Roger doesn’t.
On the PF site discography it lists all band members solo albums including Syd, Nick and Rick – except their recent ones – in fact Roger’s The Album Collection (2011) is the most recent. In News Roger’s most recent album is noted and linked to Roger’s website – obviously it is heavily biased towards Dave and Nick.
So cloak and dagger stuff really. But legally Roger doesnt seem to have a leg to stand on. Love lots of (not all ) his music, but not his bullying.

Jeeeeeeeez ! Just let sleeping dogs lie mate !!

Excellent thread,
With great comments.
Time to start a rumour.

One, excellent article, by jules pointed me to an interview (47 min )RW did with rolling stone.
In the interview RW mentions a meeting he arranged last year with the surviving members of pink floyd. Not unreasonably he chose to be private about much of what was discussed at that meeting.

I wonder, just wonder, if somewhere on the agenda was talk of a possible reunion, or at least, a joint musical project?

I enjoy music from both strands of this great band’s story. Recent output from both sides suggests to me that they are still producing music of a high quality. To paraphrase ‘er indoors, they (she refers to PaulM), they owe themselves (us?) one more great album.

It would take one great producer to enable them to be together. (Bit like Jeff lynne did with the Beatles). Yet it might be something we could need now or soon.

Anyhap, take care all

As a Pink Floyd fan since the early 1970s, I’d like to see all parties concerned put their grievances aside And give the fans what we want… remastered Animals in 5.1, quad, stereo with any outtakes, good lived performances of the Animals tour in 1977, etc., etc., etc. Get on with it guys!

Goes in the direction of the ongoing debate: “Oh by the way, which one’s Pink?”, and being “green”. The request by Water is just outlandish. He left the band, lost the right to the name due to a court case and settlement, and now he want to have access to business assets (social media platforms and brand recognition, fan information, and personal data), that has been built up in the internet/data age by the legal entity that he left behind long before. Yes, he may have been the dominant creative force behind much of PF’s music and its enduring legacy, but that is captured in publishing and reproduction rights to which he presumably is still entitled. For a person who has spent so much time distancing himself from PF and rubbishing the output of the remaining three, this is all a bit much. It’s like he has suddenly woken up to the fact that there is a new data economy and wants to be riding that gravy train under the PF banner after all.

It’s all so ridiculous.
Why shouldn’t there be “assholes” among musicians? The world is full of conspiracy theorists, terrorists, Nazis and the other “assholes”. Why don’t people treat themselves to one another? In times of Covid-19 it doesn’t matter what Rogers Waters and David Gilmour have for personal problems. Two old men take care of their vanities.

Reading the posts here it looks like most don’t agree with Waters as he left the bank years ago-, sorry but whilst that may be true I totally don’t agree- to me he has a very valid point. Waters may have left the band years ago but he wrote or co-wrote the majority of their material and in my view wrote or co-wrote their best work by some way.
I don’t look at the Pink Floyd web to see Polly and David, sorry but that’s not Pink Floyd and if I wanted to I could watch them instead on Instagram easily enough- same as I do with Waters.
Water’s recent ‘Mother’ post was just awesome and to me what Pink Floyd was/is all about. If that’s not Pink Floyd what is?

ought to be renamed “Mummy”

He got the attention desired – nice work

The fans who follow Pink Floyd’s website and social media are aware of Roger Waters. If they want to, said fans are perfectly capable of following Roger Water’s site and social media. By choosing which to follow, clearly, said fans have already spoken on this matter.

So, grumpy old man is grumpy, still.
Is there anybody still alive he hasn’t made an enemy yet?

Uh Rog. You left the band. Remember.
J

Never mind all this tedious soap opera tartuffery…where in piggin’ hell is the Animals 5.1 release?

Mr Waters, this thing called Karma gets everybody eventually, no exceptions.
Yeas ago you made a public announcement to the world that you wanted to pursue your solo career and wanted nothing more to do with the band.
In doing so, i do not believe that you had given a moments consideration to your Pink Floyd fans all around the world who were devastated by your decision.
However, what indeed came over you to attempt to stop the other band members from carrying on the Pink Floyd name was quite unjust. Live and let live.
And now you claim Mr Gilmour has banned you from the Pink Floyd website in which you would like to promote your recordings.
Get over it man is all i’m thinking.
My two cents would tell you that another public announcement is long overdue – in which you make a public apology to Mr Gilmour and the rest of the band.

Unfortunately for Mr Waters I think it’s a classic case of ” You reap what You sow ” !

I agree with the view that this argument going on for 35 years is very tiresome. I’m sure the majority of PF fans give a little sigh every time this bickering gets resurrected. One point I would make is that for many years Roger has had every opportunity to promote himself on-line but I’ve always been very disappointed in how consistently poor his own website is – it tends to focus only on whatever current tour he is working on. There’s so much that Roger could do for fans of his music by improving his own site – both covering the Floyd aspect as well as what he has done since and is currently doing. It seems strange that his usual principle is not to speak directly to PF fans but he now wants to do a U-turn on that and be included in the official website?? Fair play to him for attempting to patch things up recently but it looks clear from that meeting that there’s little hope he and David will ever reconcile. Resorting to digs at the other’s missus isn’t going to help.

I am always moved by the appalling slings and arrows that befall multi millionaire Rock stars .
To think that tens of thousands are dying from covid 19,and yet,there is poor Roger , excluded from a website and seemingly powerless to right this profoundly modern first world injustice.
My dear chap , I’m so glad I can remember you when you were worth it.
Times have changed.

If you look at the albums that Roger Waters did with Pink Floyd you will notice that he wrote almost 90% of the lyrics and is also creditted with writing more than 80% of the music! Go through each album one by one and you’ll see for yourself.

It is therefore fair to say that his contribution was pivotol. He made those records among the best selling of all time and firmly established the Pink Floyd “brand”. If he is difficult to work with and a perfectionist, then perhaps that’s what it too/takes to create these records.

When David Gilmour resumed the name – he did so knowingly that following his poorly attended 1984 tour he was unlikely to get far as a solo artist. His solo material has since become increasingly pedestrian and uninspiring. Resuming the “brand” Pink Floyd tapped into a pre-existing and highly expecxtant fan base and offered a commercially more viable approach than continuing as a solo artist would have done.

Since resuming the band in 1986 Gilmour’s Floyd have released 3 studio albums, only one of which (TDB) desrves to be called a Pink Floyd album. Since that time they have been endlessly rebranding and selling the same (largely Waters written) material.

Waters has released considerably more material, but it is material of quality that bears many hallmarks of Pink Floyd. Amused To Death in particular stands tall.

I don’t necessarily agree with some of his political stances but I think his call to be included on a Pink Floyd website is fair, and his exclusion is unfair.

He could have done it better though.
Since

Waters left Floyd nearly 40 years ago. He tried to sue to stop the rest calling themselves Pink Floyd and lost. This seems an odd argument to still be having. It’s like Fish demanding access to the Marillion website, or Peter Gabriel the Genesis site. (Both of them have more sense…)

Waters has his own promotional channels, and those who are interested in his post-Floyd output follow those channels.

As for the argument over whether Floyd went downhill after Waters left, I’d suggest that they’d already past their peak two albums before he left. The decline after Wish You Were Here seems pretty clear to me…

74 and 76 years old, still butting heads. Nothing embarrassing about that.

This doesn’t come across very well under the current circumstances (more important things to be worried about, etc), and yeah… having a go at somebody’s partner is always going to make things exponentially worse as it just feels petty and provocative.

It’s such a shame when old comrades can’t put the work in to bury the hatchet (a la New Order and Pink Floyd), particularly when it leads to public mud-slinging.

As we used to hear so often (and perhaps need to hear a little more nowadays) – if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.

After some what 35 years, Roger still doesn’t get it.

People respect Roger, understand his songwriting genius and what he did in Pink Floyd…
But in general, people don’t like him, he’s not a likeable guy, I’ve always myself kind of found him someone to be wary of, fearful even – on the other hand, not only is David likable, people down right LOVE him, his singing, his guitar playing says more to people souls than Roger’s lyrics ever did.

The general public/Floyd fans I think have made it pretty obvious from the day Roger left the band – they want to follow David and there is a genuine love for the man that Roger has never or will have.

It’s that simple, really.

I think there’s a concern on Gilmour’s part that Waters would flood the site with his often political content once he is allowed to post. Putting an editorial touch on Waters’ creativity would be very difficult, too. Thus, my guess is that Gilmour thinks that it is best that he and Waters remain apart in every possible way. If so, I cannot blame him.

Roger, Jesus, get over it. The world is in a spot right now. Petty bickering doesn’t make either you or David look better. Be the better man.

Personal taste, of course. Floyd without Water was/is horrible. Their albums post Waters were dire. Gilmour is a great guitarist, but without Water to bounce off, he’s mediocre. Even his solo albums have been poor. It’s a shame, but even I have to pick a side, I’m with Waters.

It is always argued in sport, that being dropped or injured before a team loses will always make you look good, by default. By default not many bands will be turning out “Classics” 20 years into their history. Even If Floyd had stayed together their output will have dwindled, pretty much like it did, their quality would have slowly dropped, pretty much like it did. So by ducking out in 1985 it creates the false argument that “everything they did after I left was poor”. It might not have been so poor (and then not everyone agrees unanimously that it was poor) but I don’t think even a fully functioning 25 / 30 year old band would be pulling crackers out of their backsides. It had already been a few years since they had really created something outstanding rather than just OK or good.

I just don’t buy the argument that Floyd fell apart when Waters left, it had already happened and his leaving didn’t make much difference.
Did Genesis “get better” because PG left? Answers on a postcard to BBC Television Centre, London W1A 1AA

For goodness sake at this time more than any other you would have thought they could put their differences behind them for the good of humanity. How about releasing the wall live on vinyl for starters!

Whatever your views on character the music still stands. Watch ‘Mother’ just released on Rodger’s YouTube channel instead.

in the words of Lars Ulrich…”He Fookin Left the band!!!”

Does someone know if the the us+them tour will be available on vinyl? Hope so!