Speaking in the latest issue of MOJO, David Gilmour has opened up about the ongoing feud between him and his former Pink Floyd bandmate, Roger Waters.
Waters left Pink Floyd acrimoniously in 1985, with Gilmour assuming leadership of the group for 1987’s A Momentary Lapse Of Reason and The Division Bell in 1994.
While Waters remained estranged from his former bandmates and was openly scathing about the contemporary work of the group he formed with Syd Barrett in Cambridge in the 1960s, the band’s classic lineup of Gilmour, Waters, drummer Nick Mason and keyboardist Richard Wright did reunite for a one-off performance at Live 8 in 2005 before Wright’s death from lung cancer in 2008.
In spring 2022, Gilmour and Mason revived the Pink Floyd name for a single, Hey, Hey, Rise Up!, recorded with singer and military reservist Andriy Khlyvnyuk in protest at the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Speaking in an interview with the German newspaper, Berliner Zeitung in 2023, Waters dismissed the song as “content-less… flag waving”
Gilmour’s wife and co-writer Polly Samson responded with a post on Twitter condemning Waters as a “Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy megalomaniac.” “Every word demonstrably true,” stated Gilmour in a follow-up tweet.
“That tweet was boiling up,” Gilmour tells Mark Blake in the latest issue of MOJO. “It had to come out – and I have no regrets about it. No regrets whatsoever.”
In June this year, Waters denied he was antisemitic during an interview with Piers Morgan on Talk TV and replied, “No comment, it’s private,” when asked to elaborate on his thoughts about the tweet.
Speaking to MOJO, Gilmour states that he didn’t watch Waters’ interview with Morgan, nor has he listened to his former bandmate's recent, semi-spoken word remake of Pink Floyd classic 1973 album, The Dark Side Of The Moon, and finds being asked about his relationship with Waters “wearisome”.
“Do you know what decade of my life I was in when Roger left our pop group? My thirties. I am now 78,” says the guitarist. “Where’s the relevance?”
Elsewhere in the interview, which hits UK newsstands tomorrow, Gilmour discusses the making of his new album Luck And Strange, his third solo LP to reach the top of the UK charts; his touring plans for the record and how he might incorporate Pink Floyd material with his solo work live.
“There are songs from the past that I no longer feel comfortable singing,” Gilmour says. “I love Run Like Hell [from 1982’s The Wall]. I loved the music I created for it, but all that (sings) ‘You’d better run, run, run…’ I now find that all rather, I don’t know… a bit terrifying and violent.”
“Another Brick In The Wall is another one I shan’t be doing,” states the guitarist. “I don’t think I’ve done that with my own band, but I certainly did it in the post-Roger Pink Floyd, against my better judgement. The same with Money. I won’t be doing that. I’m going to be sticking with the ones that are essentially my music, and I feel some ownership of. Comfortably Numb, Wish You Were Here, Shine On You Crazy Diamond, maybe…”
“I needed to be kicked out of my comfort zone…” Get the latest issue of MOJO to read our exclusive interview with David Gilmour in full. More info and to order a copy HERE!
Photo: Roger Waters and David Gilmour attend a benefit evening for The Hoping Foundation on July 10, 2010. Credit: Dave M. Benett/CI Getty Images Entertainment.