Who was the soul of Pink Floyd? Who really owes the genius and beauty of the albums? Meddle, Wish You Were Here Or Dark Side of the Moon ? Roger Waters or David Gilmour?
This tenacious question constitutes one of the most famous conflicts in the history of rock, and continues to animate the two main parties concerned, who have still not buried the hatchet and seem to have reached the point of no return, if we judge by their latest exchanges in the public arena.
PHOTO CARLOS GONZALEZ, THE NEW YORK TIMES ARCHIVES
Roger Waters, in concert at the Coachella festival, California, in 2016
This persistent question is also at the heart of the book. Pink Floyd – Gilmour vs. Waterswhich has just been published by French journalist Alexandre Higounet, who attempts to shed light on this long-standing debate.
What we understand from the start is that Waters the bassist and Gilmour the guitarist were never great mates, even though they both had a mutual friend in Syd Barrett, and they both grew up in Cambridge, UK. Already, the stars were misaligned.
We will not go back over the circumstances that led Gilmour to replace Barrett as the band’s guitarist. But it is clear that from 1968, Waters quickly established himself as the unofficial leader of the group, to which he would give a more political and “conceptual” direction. If Gilmour seemed for a moment to rebalance the power (Meddle, Atom Heart Mother), it was Waters who was the main songwriter for the albums The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals And The Wallwhich would lead him to appropriate the group’s success in the 1970s and 1980s.
PHOTO ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
Nick Mason, Syd Barrett, Roger Waters and Richard Wright, in 1967, before the arrival of David Gilmour
This pretension did not please Gilmour, and for good reason. Because if the guitarist signs fewer pieces in the Pink Floyd work, it is he (with the contribution of keyboardist Richard Wright) who “embellished” and fleshed out the relatively summary songs of a more musically limited Waters, bringing them to the level of sophistication that made the glory of the group’s masterpieces. In this sense, he was much more than a simple performer, but a fundamental stone of the Floydian edifice.
This ego trip, initially latent, has expressed itself more and more openly over the years, and even in some songs in the form of settling scores. Despite subsequent attempts at rapprochement, the gap has widened, until it has become unbridgeable, due to old, never-settled grudges that chronically surface, but also to Waters’ controversial anti-Zionist positions, which have become more radical since the start of the war in Gaza, and which Gilmour – with his wife Polly Samson – does not hesitate to criticize on social networks.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY SONY MUSIC
David Gilmour
Alexandre Higounet does not claim to untie this Gordian knot. He is content to present the facts, supported by a number of archival interviews, and to launch avenues of reflection by providing his own keys to understanding. The chapter on song analyses could have been shorter, which will mainly interest die-hard fans, however numerous they may be (particularly in Quebec!).
But the truth is that in the end, nothing is black or white here. And if this tension contributed to the breakup of the group, it was also probably the creative engine. Pink Floyd, for better or for worse…
Pink Floyd: Gilmour vs. Waters
The word and the rest
240 pages