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 Interviews : Pink Floyd Band » The Inside Story - Rolling Stone, November 1987 |
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Rolling Stone, November 1987
By D. Fricke
They simply refused to leave. The houselights were up, and the ushers were counting
the minutes before they could knock off for the night. But even after three full hours
of lasers in the face, trippy sound-in-the-round, brain-frying special effects and all
those FM-radio classics -- One Of These Days, Time, Us And Them, Welcome To The Machine,
Comfortably Numb -- the 15,000 kids in the Montreal Forum would not budge. For nearly
twenty minutes, they stood at their seats, screaming themselves hoarse, determined not
to move an inch until Pink Floyd came back onstage.
That this wasn't quite the same Pink Floyd -- Roger Waters, the band's bassist, singer
and dominant songwriter, was absent -- that had transfixed potheads in the early,
spacey Seventies did not faze this audience, or the other two SRO crowds during the
group's three-night stand in Montreal. Hell, they'd just seen the humongous inflatable
pig from the '77 Animals tour and the crashing airplane from the old Dark Side Of The Moon shows.
And when the silvery chime of David Gilmour's guitar skated over Rick Wright's
burbling Hammond organ and Nick Mason's heartbeat drumming in Echoes, with Gilmour's
and Wright's voices gliding together in feathery harmony, it definitely sounded like
Pink Floyd. Veteran Floyd freaks had waited for this a long time, a whole decade since
the full quartet's last major tour. Novices were here because of the Great Floyd Mystique,
the tales of concert wonder passed down by elder brothers and old hippie uncles. And the
crowd wasn't going to leave until it got one more shot.
Eventually, the Floyd relented, returning with its seven-member troupe of extra musicians
and singers for a stab at Shine On You Crazy Diamond, which they'd tested only a
couple of times in rehearsal.
David: It was extraordinary, the people were on their feet cheering so loudly that at
a couple of points I couldn't even hear what I was playing.
Rick: There were a few mistakes (laughs) but we got through it. And the song is so Floydian.
It was a perfect way to end the evening.
Gilmour had announced the song with peals of church-bell guitar over icy keyboards and a
slow blues pulse, heightening the chill of the absent Waters' reflection on the eclipsing
of genius by madness. Later, as the fans filed out, one of the big sellers at the merchandise
stands was a T-shirt that said, on the front, PINK FLOYD, and, on the back, STILL FIRST
IN SPACE. Two weeks later, in the Oakland Coliseum, Roger Waters wasn't settling for second
place. He didn't have the pig or the airplane. But as usual, he had a couple of heavy axes
to grind, among them the threat of nuclear self-destruction and the potential of communications
technology as a means to bring people together, two themes central to his latest album,
Radio K.A.O.S. Not surprisingly, Waters ground those axes with the same black humor,
theatrical ingenuity and apocalyptic urgency that he brought to the staging of his musical
autobiography The Wall, incorporating striking computer graphics, newsreel footage of
Armageddon in the making and fictional telephone exchanges between a young spastic boy
named Billy and a KAOS DJ, played by real-life radio pro Jim Ladd.
But there was also a matter of honor at stake here. When Waters poignantly reprised old
songs like Welcome To The Machine, Money, and Another Brick In The Wall, he wasn't just
doing the best of Floyd. Those were his songs, "the words and music of Roger Waters,"
as Ladd declared at the end of an extended Floyd medley in the first half. The implication,
of course, was unmistakable: anyone else out there playing these songs, claiming to be Floyd,
is bogus.
"I would be terribly happy for you to like what I'm doing and to like what he's doing,"
Waters said sharply the next day, referring to Gilmour, "if it wasn't for the fact that
he was calling himself Pink Floyd. He isn't. If one of us was going to be called Pink
Floyd, it's me."
Even the old props in the current Floyd show, Waters insisted, were originally his idea.
"That's my pig up there," he said. "That's my plane crashing." He snickered and added,
"It's their dry ice."
The "which one's Pink?" debate has been a legal football kicked around by lawyers since
last fall, when Waters sued Gilmour and Mason in an attempt to prevent them from using
the name, claiming the group was "a spent force creatively." (Rick Wright, who quietly
left the group in 1980 after the Wall shows, has unofficially returned for the new Floyd
album and tour.) Both camps, however, have now taken their cases to the people in a
vindictive press war. Floyd fans are, in a sense, getting two state-of-the-art rock
shows and records -- Waters' Radio K.A.O.S., the Floyd's Momentary Lapse of Reason
-- for the price of one band. But the price has been disastrously high. In their fight
to determine who is the rightful heir to the Pink Floyd throne and the continuing fortune
it's worth, Waters, Gilmour and Mason have destroyed whatever personal friendship, band
camaraderie and musical unity first bonded them two decades ago. The musicians who
created The Wall are now up against a wall of their own -- the one separating them from one another.
When asked about the barrage of charges and countercharges flying between the other
Floyd's and him, Roger Waters quotes a lyric from Don Henley's Long Way Home:
"There's three sides to every story/ Yours and mine and the cold, hard truth.
" And in Waters vs. Floyd, the cold, hard truth is that they can't stand each
other. They resent what each has done to the other, what each has said publicly
about the other, what each has exacted from the other emotionally, artistically
and financially.
If you believe half of what Gilmour and Mason say about their former bassist,
Waters is an arrogant, dictatorial egomaniac hungry for all the credit and the
subsequent rewards. If you believe half of what Waters says of the surviving
Floyd's, they are lazy, greedy bastards hacking out a record and sleepwalking
through a tour to build up a multimillion-dollar retirement nest egg using,
in Waters' words, "the good will and the name Pink Floyd." It's as if they
lived in parallel universes, each battling visions of the other's monstrosity.
The fans, of course, are happy to be getting any Floyd, any Waters, at all.
Twenty years of reclusive media silence and infrequent tours and albums have
only increased the rock public's hunger for all things Floyd. Unfortunately,
the public's joy and approval can't always be heard over the din of accusations
and allegations and the brittle snap of lawyers' briefcases opening and closing.
David Gilmour, 41, has heard the snap of those briefcases a lot during the past
year. While recording A Momentary Lapse of Reason and preparing for the current
Floyd tour, he was either in conference or on the phone with lawyers nearly
every day, planning responses to Waters' suit. Reclining on a hotel-room sofa
one morning after one of the Montreal gigs, Gilmour talks about the Floyd feud
with a combination of resignation and stubbornness. Rumors of the group's demise
following the release of Waters' strident antiwar epic The Final Cut, in 1983,
were premature, he claims. Waters' decision to hit the solo trail was not the
end of the band, at least as Gilmour and Mason knew it.
David: We never assumed that it was defunct, but the growing tide of rumors
and Roger's vocal output combined made it almost like an avalanche. We couldn't
keep issuing press releases saying, 'No, we haven't split up.' It wasn't worth
the bother. Our assumption -- my assumption, anyway -- was that we would do
another record.
According to Gilmour and Mason, Waters officially announced his leaving in a
letter to the Floyd's record companies, Columbia in America, EMI in the U.K.,
in December 1985.
Nick: We had discussions. We sort of knew something was up.
Gilmour and Mason say that Waters thought his exit would mean the de facto end of the group.
David: We'd been having these meetings in which Roger said, 'I'm not working
with you guys again,' He'd say to me, 'Are you going to carry on?' And I'd say,
quite honestly, 'I don't know. But when we're good and ready, I'll tell everyone
what the plan is. And we'll get on with it.' I think partly his letter was to
gear us up into doing something.
Nick: Because he believed very strongly that we wouldn't do it.
David: Or couldn't do it. I remember meetings in which he said, 'You'll never
fucking do it.' That's precisely what was said. Exactly that term...(laughs)...except
slightly harder.
Waters and the other Floyd's, particularly Gilmour, had been on a collision
course for years, as far back as the making of The Dark Side of the Moon, in
1972. Producer Chris Thomas was brought in to supervise the mixing of that album,
Gilmour says, because he and Waters were having "a radical argument" over how
the record should sound. Later, as Waters assumed greater responsibility for
the group's conceptual direction and music, the acrimony increased.
David: He forced his way to become the central figure...that's what he really
wanted, to be that central figure. I felt, and I'm sure Nick did too, that it
was not the best thing to happen. As productive as we were, we could have been
making better records if Roger had been willing to back off a little, to be
more open to other peoples' input. It wasn't like we were all there leaning
on him to look after us. It was a question of him having forced his way to
that position, of him being very tough and having more energy for that sort of fighting.
Bob Ezrin, who functioned as both coproducer and referee during the making of
The Wall (he and Gilmour co-produced the new Floyd album as well), says the
verbal brawling never escalated to fisticuffs.
Ezrin: It was all done under that English smiling, left-handed, adversarial
stance they take, with the smiles on their faces and soft voices. But basically
they were saying, 'I hate you, and I'm going to kill you.' The war that existed
between those two guys was unbelievable.
They dropped the pretense of politeness, however, during the recording of The
Final Cut, Waters' album-length meditation on the death of his father in World War II.
Waters was, understandably, very possessive of the piece; it was a highly personal
exorcism of his obsession with his loss as well as an expression of unbridled
outrage at the politicians and generals who casually demand such pointless
sacrifices. Gilmour didn't share Waters' enthusiasm for the record. He
complained that some of the songs weren't up to snuff, pointing out that they
were in fact rejects from the original Wall demos.
David: Basically, he felt and says that I was being willfully obstructive...
(visibly bristles)...which is absolutely not true. My criticisms and objections
were constructive in the best possible way. They are the sort of constructive
criticisms that made other albums, like The Wall.
Waters didn't see it that way, Gilmour says. He threatened to scrap the whole
record if the guitarist would not relinquish his position as co-producer.
Gilmour agreed but refused to give up the extra producer's royalties that
would have been due him.
Dave: That's how it ended up, very miserable. Even Roger says what a miserable
period it was. And he was the one who entirely made it miserable, in my opinion.
Relaxing by the hotel pool under a bright, warm California sun the day after his
Oakland show, Waters calmly but firmly refutes Gilmour's version of the Final
Cut clashes. The album, he admits, was originally supposed to be songs left over
from the movie version of The Wall.
Roger: Then I got on a roll, and started writing this piece about my father.
I was on a roll, and I was gone. The fact of the matter is that I was making
this record. And Dave didn't like it. And he said so.
But Waters, 43, dismisses as "absolute bollocks" the notion that he forced
The Final Cut on Gilmour and Mason.
Roger: I said, 'Perhaps this should be a solo record. I'll pay you guys the
money we've spent, and I'll make this a solo album.' (smirks) No, they didn't
want that, because they know songs don't grow on trees. They wanted it to
be a Floyd record.
The record came out as a Floyd effort. Any illusion, though, that this trio
ever would or ever could work together again was shattered. Waters would
have nothing else to do with Gilmour. Gilmour refused to be a mere session
man in a Waters-led Floyd. Even Nick Mason, who had maintained a personal
friendship with Waters and shared his interest in theatrical presentation,
allied himself with Gilmour.
Nick: Dave found himself particularly picked on during 'The Final Cut'.
I found myself feeling that this was not fair.
That was over three years ago. But the stage was set for the current legal
imbroglio. Waters insisted that Pink Floyd as a band, as a musical partnership,
was finished. Gilmour's position was that just because Waters said it was
finished didn't make it so. Ironically, though, it wasn't the Pink Floyd name
game that set the whole ugly mess in motion, but a tangentially related business
matter. Waters' version of what happened is this:
In early 1985, he terminated his management deal with Steve O'Rourke, Pink
Floyd's longtime manager, over a dispute regarding contractual obligations
for future Pink Floyd product -- how could there be future Pink Floyd records
if there was no group? -- and resultant royalty penalties if those commitments
were not filled. Waters insisted he gave O'Rourke six months' notice, as
called for in his deal. O'Rourke says he was terminated illegally. Waters
then offered Gilmour a series of compromise deals in which he essentially
would let them have the name Pink Floyd if they ratified his dismissal of
O'Rourke. In doing so, Waters was taking a calculated risk that Gilmour
and Mason would not continue as the Floyd.
Roger: Don't ask me why they never took that deal.
In June 1986, O'Rourke prepared to sue Waters over the management deal and
back royalties. At that point, Waters claims, he told the other Floyd's,
"Listen, guys, if those papers come through my door, we all go to court.
I am not going to be hung out to dry in court for years and years while
you guys are calling yourselves Pink Floyd."
The following October 31st, Waters made good his threat, filing suit in London
against Gilmour and Mason to prevent them from using the name Pink Floyd.
Waters admits there is a certain inconsistency in his current stand against
Gilmour and Mason's use of the Floyd name and his earlier willingness to let
them have the name. But it was, he contends, "for the sake of a quiet life."
Roger: This was two years ago. Believe me, my life has been anything but quiet
for the last two years. I thought it was wrong. I still think it's completely
wrong. I don't think they should be called Pink Floyd. It's taken me two years
to make some fundamental connections. There is the legal issue, which is the
only thing that can be resolved in court. And that is, who owns the piece of
property that is the name Pink Floyd? That is a legal issue; you go to court
and fight over it.
The other issue is completely separate, the whole issue about what is or
isn't a rock group. What is the Beatles? Are Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr
the Beatles? My view now is they're not, any more than the Firm should
have been called Led Zeppelin, even if John Paul Jones had been there.
Gilmour counters Waters' logic with a very simple statement.
David: I had an awful lot of time invested in the group. It was an intolerable
situation, but I was damned if I was going to be forced out. I am an extremely
stubborn person, and I will not be forced out of something I consider to be partly mine.
As to whether he and Mason do or do not qualify as Pink Floyd without Waters,
Gilmour says "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" is all the proof he needs.
David: We never sat down at any point during this record and said, 'It doesn't
sound Floyd enough. Make this more Floyd.' We just worked on the songs until
they sounded right. When they sounded great and right, that's when it became Pink Floyd.
It's unlikely that any judge or jury, if the suit comes to trial, will decide
the rightful ownership of the name Pink Floyd by listening to a record.
And both Waters and Gilmour realize that, legally or otherwise, any settlement
or judgment will probably fall short of their demands.
Roger: The ideal settlement would have happened years ago when we could have
all shaken hands," says Waters. "I've finally understood that no court in the
world is interested in this airy-fairy nonsense of what is or isn't Pink Floyd.
All I'm likely to get out of it -- or could possibly get out of it -- is a slice.
David: It will never be solved to everyone's satisfaction...but it will be
solved to the point of reality. And soon, I hope.
In the beginning, there was Syd Barrett, and in London's paisley underground
of 1966-67, it was commonly accepted that he was Pink. An art student from
Cambridge, he cofounded Pink Floyd in late '65 with Waters, a schoolboy chum
from Cambridge who was studying architecture in London, and two other architecture
students, Rick Wright and Nick Mason. It was Barrett who named the group
(combining the names of two old bluesmen, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council);
he also sang most of the songs and gave the group its charisma. Driven by his
eccentric muse and regular excursions on LSD, he steeped the fledgling Floyd
in a heady synthesis of English teapot whimsy, riveting melodic invention and
freak-rock tumult, all captured vividly for posterity on the group's 1967 debut
album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
Another surviving artifact of Barrett's errant genius is a captivating 1967
black-and-white promo video of the original Floyd cavorting to its first single,
Arnold Layne, a film clip Waters shows in his Radio K.A.O.S. concerts every night,
always announcing at the end, "The great Syd Barrett, lest we forget." Waters
says he still likes to sing old Barrett gems like Bike and Dark Globe in the bath.
Roger: What was so stunning about Syd's songs was, through the whimsy and the
crazy juxtaposition of ideas and words, there was a very powerful grasp of
humanity. They were quintessentially human songs. And that is what I've always
attempted to aspire to. In that sense, I feel a strong connection to him.
That connection took a darker turn toward the end of '67 as Barrett -- unable
to shoulder the burdens of fame and his own acid- accelerated mental instability
-- withdrew into a debilitating madness. He never recovered. David Gilmour,
also from Cambridge, was soon recruited to pick up Syd's guitar and vocal duties.
At that point, despite two English hits (Arnold Layne and See Emily Play),
the Floyd was at its lowest ebb, adrift without a songwriter or a direction.
David: It was an open page...my initial ambition was just to get the band into
some sort of shape. It seems ridiculous now, but I thought the band was awfully
bad at the time when I joined. The gigs I'd seen with Syd were incredibly undisciplined.
The leader figure was falling apart, and so was the band.
Pink Floyd spent the next four years in space, so to speak. On transitional
records like A Saucerful of Secrets, Ummagumma, Atom Heart Mother and Meddle,
the band developed a compositional style based on long exploratory jams from
which melodic themes and pivotal riffs would emerge and, in turn, be spread
across lengthy suitelike canvases.
Although the band's vigorously antipop aesthetic and imaginative sonic
architecture was in large part responsible for the rise of English progressive
rock in the Seventies, Waters -- who gradually assumed responsibility for
writing the band's lyrics after Barrett's psychological collapse -- scoffs
at the "space music" tag frequently applied to the Floyd records of that period.
Roger: The space thing was a joke. None of those pieces were about outer space.
They were about inner space. That's all it's ever been about -- human beings
and their insides, whether it was Syd's writing or mine. They were both about the same thing.
The group's exploration of inner space reached its artistic and commercial
apex in 1973 with the release of The Dark Side of the Moon, one of the biggest-selling
LPs of all time; as of this writing, it has spent 698 weeks on the "Billboard"
album charts. Conceptually unified, immaculately recorded, The Dark Side of the
Moon found the Floyd grafting the rigors of formal songwriting onto its muralistic
style of composition -- and succeeding beyond its wildest expectations. It was
also one of the last genuinely collaborative Floyd records, highlighted not just
by Waters' incisive observations of alienation, schizophrenia and death but by
the strong instrumental brushstrokes of Gilmour and Wright, particularly the
latter's love of jazzy minor-seventh and flatted- second chord changes.
(Wright's chorus for Time was based, in part, on So What, from Miles Davis's album Kind of Blue.)
Rick: Occasionally, people would come in with a complete song. For example,
Us and Them was a little piano piece I had worked out. I played it for them;
they like it. Roger went into another room and started working on the lyrics.
Whereas things like Echoes [on Meddle] would be all of us in a rehearsal room,
just sitting there thinking, playing, working out ideas to see if they went
anywhere. It's a nice way to work, and I think, in a way, the most Floydian
material we ever did came about that way.
The Dark Side of the Moon had two important effects on Pink Floyd. One was
stardom; overnight they went from being highly respected psychedelic artisans
and FM-radio cult heroes to being the objects of fanatic adolescent-male adoration.
Roger: It took me until ten years ago to stop being upset that people whistled
through the quiet numbers. I used to stop and go, 'Right! Who's whistling? C'mon, be quiet!
The other major consequence was Water's increased interest in narrative
songwriting, big themes and grand theatrical gestures, culminating in The
Wall and The Final Cut.
Roger: I was always trying to push the band into more specific areas of
subject matter...always trying to be more direct. Visually, I was always
trying to get away from the blobs. I wanted to work with visual material
that meant something, where there isn't much left for you to interpret.
David: I don't think any of us differed all the way through on the subjects
Roger approached...we were pretty much of a like mind. On 'The Wall',
although I didn't agree with that part of the concept -- the wall between
us and the audience -- I still thought it was a good subject to do. My
father didn't go off to the war and get killed in it. So that area of it
did not apply to me. But I could get into it as fiction.
Which is about as far as Waters would let any of the other Floyd's get.
Roger: There wasn't any room for anyone else to be writing. If there were
chord sequences there, I would always use them. There was no point in Gilmour,
Mason or Wright trying to write lyrics. Because they'll never be as good
as mine. Gilmour's lyrics are very third-rate. They always will be. And in
comparison with what I do, I'm sure he'd agree. He's just not as good. I
didn't play the guitar solos; he didn't write any lyrics.
In short, Pink Floyd was now, as Bob Ezrin put it, "Roger Waters Presents".
He wrote the material, ran the rehearsals, worked on the concert presentations
and judged the contributions of the others by the same rigid artistic standards
he applied to his own work. He also took the initiative in firing Rick Wright,
during the recording of The Wall. Not surprisingly, there are differing accounts
of Wright's exit from the group.
Roger: The story that gets out is that it was a personal whim of mine, which is absolute bollocks.
He argues that Wright's performance in the studio was substandard, that he was
making no musical contribution and hadn't been for years. (Wright had not been
listed in Floyd songwriting credits since 1975's Wish You Were Here.) Bob Ezrin
describes Wright as "a victim of Roger's almost Teutonic cruelty.
Ezrin: No matter what Rick did, it didn't seem to be good enough for Roger. It
was clear to me that Roger wasn't interested in his succeeding.
Wright diplomatically attributes the friction between Waters and him to "a heavy
personality problem" -- so heavy that Waters threatened to pull the Wall album
and make it into a solo effort if Wright was not dismissed after the conclusion of the project.
Rick: I wasn't particularly happy with the band anyway. The way it was going,
the feeling. I'm in no way trying to put this man down. I think he has great
ideas. But he is an extremely difficult man to work with.
By this time, Pink Floyd was an extremely difficult context to work within for
anybody, something even Waters does not deny.
Roger: I suppose it comes down to the fact that we are people in rock & roll bands,
and people in rock & roll bands are greedy for attention. We never managed to come
to a common view of the dynamic that existed within the band, of who did what and
whether or not it was right. It was an irritation to start with, and it became an
impossible irritation towards the end.
Waters has learned, to his chagrin, that many longtime Pink Floyd fans are also
mystified by the creative dynamic that existed within the band, a negative side
effect of the Floyd's shadowy public profile throughout the Seventies.
Roger: It is frustrating to find out how many people don't know who I am or what
I actually did in Pink Floyd. We get on a plane, and people ask what band we're
in. I tell 'em I'm Roger Waters, and it doesn't mean a thing to them. Then I
mention Pink Floyd, and they go, 'Yeah, Money. I love The Wall.'
Oh, I wanted anonymity. I treasured it. And somehow we made it big and stayed
private and anonymous. It was the best of both worlds. But now it's as if the
past twenty years have meant nothing.
Funny he should say that. Nick Mason did a phone interview with a reporter from
a daily newspaper recently in which he answered all the usual questions about
Waters, the lawsuit and the new Floyd album. In the course of this, he happened
to mention Syd Barrett.
"And this reporter said, 'Hold on a minute. Who's Syd Barrett?' It was quite
touching, actually. She had just started writing about pop music. She had no
idea about Syd or our early history."
Nick: Maybe in another twenty years" (says with tongue firmly in cheek),
"if we're still around, people will be asking, 'Who's Roger Waters?'
One of the titles David Gilmour considered for the first Waters- less Pink
Floyd album was "Delusions of Maturity". Waters would have like that. When
asked his opinion of the new Floyd record, he is characteristically blunt.
Roger: I think it's a very facile but quite clever forgery. If you don't
listen to it too closely, it does sound like Pink Floyd. It's got Dave
Gilmour playing guitar. And with the considered intention of setting out
to make something that sounds like everyone's conception of a Pink Floyd
record, it's inevitable that you will achieve that limited goal. I think
the songs are poor in general. The lyrics I can't believe. (chuckles
ironically) I'm sure it will do very well.
It is hardly an embarrassment to the Floyd's post-"Dark Side" chart tradition.
Within three weeks of release, A Momentary Lapse of Reason was in Billboard's
Top 10, while Waters' Radio K.A.O.S. was on the bottom rungs of the Top 100.
There is, of course, more to this than numbers. A healthy percentage of Momentary
Lapse's immediate sales are certainly attributable to the trust rock fans place
in the brand name Pink Floyd. The album was leaping off the racks before many
people had even heard a single note.
Nevertheless, in accepting the challenge of making a new record under the
Floyd banner, Gilmour and Mason were faced with the daunting task of measuring
up to public anticipation based in great part on the standards set by Waters.
That they made an album lacking the strident, pedagogical edge of The Wall or
The Final Cut is no surprise. That the album is aurally sumptuous and texturally
seductive will be reassuring to anyone who was spellbound by the glacial
grandeur of Meddle or the extended instrumental passages of Shine On You Crazy
Diamond. With On the Turning Away, the reconstituted Floyd may also have a hit
single of Money proportions on its hands. A caressing ballad with a glowing
chorus and climactic Gilmour guitar, it is more openly hopeful and loving than
anything Waters allowed himself to write for the Floyd.
The question of just who is Pink Floyd is complicated by the fact that Gilmour
and Mason are out-numbered eighteen to two on this record by the assorted
session musicians, background singers and lyricists who were recruited to
make Lapse -- and that's not counting Rick Wright, who returned to contribute
keyboards partway through the recording of the album, and Bob Ezrin, who played
additional keyboards and percussion. But Gilmour does not try to disguise the
fact that he could not do it alone, that he needed and wanted help.
David: You can't go back...you have to find a new way of working, of operating
and getting on with it. We didn't make this remotely like we've made any other
Floyd record. It was different systems, everything.
For one thing, he dispensed with the idea of making a concept album early on.
David: We thought, 'Sod this, we don't have to make a concept album. If we work
on making everything great, then maybe it will show itself to have some sort of
linear form later.'
Ezrin: It's not our métier...we're not kidding ourselves. We're not Roger Waters.
But we do other things, and we do them very well. We decided the atmosphere was
the most important thing. The concept really just had to be a feeling that was
pervasive. The atmosphere of the album is best defined by the environment in
which we were working.
That environment was the river Thames, on the Astoria, Gilmour's lavish
turn-of-the-century houseboat, which he has turned into a recording studio.
Ezrin and the Floyd spent seven months on the Astoria, which is docked sixteen
miles outside of London, recording most of A Momentary Lapse.
Ezrin: The river became the motif. It came up in all the songs. The river
imposed itself.
Also imposing itself on the sessions was the specter of Waters and his repeated
assertions that a Gilmour-led Floyd was no Floyd at all.
Ezrin: It's like a challenge in public...by virtue of Roger saying, 'I did it
all, and if I leave, it doesn't exist,' basically what he's saying is that
David is a nonentity artistically. That's not fair. But if someone puts that
message across long enough and hard enough, then you have to prove yourself.
My perception was that Dave was torn between an angry posture that says,
'Goddamnit, I've been here for twenty years, and I have a right to be here,'
and having a little voice in there that says, 'Maybe I'm not good anymore.'
Waters suffered no such misgivings with Radio K.A.O.S., although he admits
that the K.A.O.S. stage production -- which incorporated pertinent old Floyd
songs and graphically illustrated the album's apocalyptic theme -- transmits
his message a lot more effectively than the album alone.
Roger: I accepted halfway through the record that as a narrative form, the
album was doomed to failure. You just get a taste of the narrative. I made
the decision to go with it anyway and allow the project to develop if it was
going or stop if it was not.
Unfortunately, Waters isn't exactly doing Floyd-like business on the road.
While Floyd is packing arenas and stadiums, he's having trouble selling out one-nighters.
Roger: The connections one makes in quality make up for the ones you make in
quantity. In Indianapolis and San Diego, we had like 4000 people in 12,000-seat
halls. And strangely enough, at those shows, I got a fantastic affirmation
from the audience, that not only did they want to grasp some of this stuff,
but that they actually do. And that helps me get over the moments, the knockers
who sit at their typewriters and say, 'This is all liberal airy- fairy bullshit.'
The affirmation of his audiences has been therapeutic during the War of the Floyd's.
Roger: This tour has really helped me to junk a lot of this...I feel like I'm
leaving a lot of this crap on the side of the road. And I'm very grateful for that.
Waters and the other Floyd's aren't exactly sitting around waiting to be declared
the victor. Waters was so heartened by the reaction to his K.A.O.S. road-show that
immediately after the first leg of the tour, he flew to Compass Point Studios,
in Nassau, the Bahamas, with his live band to cut songs for a K.A.O.S. II album.
The Gilmour-Mason-Wright Floyd will be on the road for nearly a year; plans
include a second swing through the U.S. in 1988. Yet both sides are haunted by
the loss of the spirit that united them once upon a time.
Nick: I can't tell you how sorry I am about this...it's so pointless. I'm
sorry that I've fallen out with a friend.
Roger: I regret Nick Mason, yeah...I feel very betrayed by him.
Meanwhile, the lawyers keep racking up those fees, and the fans shop and compare.
And when the dust finally settles, you can bet The Dark Side of the Moon will still be on the charts.
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