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The Show Must Go On. Classic Rock Magazin 4/2000 |
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...Or must it? Twenty years on, Pink Floyd are releasing 'Is There Anybody Out There?', an anniversary live double album of their conceptual masterpiece 'The Wall'. Besides being the brainchild of bassist Roger Waters, 'The Wall' transpired to be the culmination of years of internal friction. Durings its creation, power struggles and skullduggery abounded as members were sacked, opinions raged and egos imploded. Jerry Ewing speaks to Waters, guitarist David Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason and hears a tale that has everything from low self-esteem and bust-ups with movie producers to shifty calls from phone boxes... In the early part of 1979, the four members of Pink Floyd convened in Miravel in the South of France. They had spent much of '78 working on different projects having completed a world tour for the previous year's 'Animals' album. Drummer Nick Mason was busy producing such polar opposites as The Damned and Steve Hillage. Keyboard player Rick Wright was working on 'Wet Dreams', his debut solo release, and guitarist David Gilmour issued his own eponymous solo album. Only bassist Roger Waters was conspicuous by his absence. The reasons for this would soon become apparent as the four hit the Riviera. Although justifiably one of the rock bands of the '70's; their last three albums, 1973's Dark Side Of The Moon', '75's 'Wish You Were Here' and the aforementioned 'Animals' all cemented the band's position as true greats, they had never quite tackled a project of the enormity that Waters would present to them. Like their work throughout the decade, 'The Wall' was a conceptual piece. Using a central character by the name of Pink Floyd, it was a loosely based autobiographical tale by Waters in which he rallied against the establishment and painted a bleak picture of rock stardom. Released in November 1979, it was reported to have shifted 1.2 million copies by the following January, and rightly so. Perhaps the greatest Floyd album of all time, it is a fascinating double set that, despite its themes of isolation and alienation, draws the listener in with some stunning rock music, not least the menacing 'Comfortably Numb'. As a result, 'The Wall' rocketed Floyd to the forefront of rock, placing them at the dawn of a new decade. It was also the last time these four particular superstars would ever work together as a fully functioning unit. What the success of 'The Wall' did was avert attention from the fractious nature of the band that had clearly existed since 'Dark Side Of The Moon'. Ruminations had already began to filter through to the press. Never the most communicative of bands with the media and public ("The less one is recognised the better as far as I'm concerned," Roger Waters says), the friction that existed was overshadowed by their massive commercial success, gargantuan tours and the public belief that all bands are mates together. During the making of 'The Wall', Roger Waters' increased his hands-on approach to the band's work - indeed, Gilmour gets just three co - writing credits, Mason and Wright none - and the frayed ends finally began to split. Rick Wright was sacked, although not in blaze of publicity. He toured as a hired hand and the absence of his name from 1983's 'The Final Cut' alerted the fans that something strange was gong on behind the scenes. Yet the publicity-shy Floyd animal ensured that the myth of Pink Floyd would remain intact - for the time being at least. Even press assertion that 'The Final Cut' was more of a Waters solo album that a fully-blown Floyd album did little to dampen fans' enthusiasm. In a burst of typical post-album Floydian activity, Gilmour subsequently offered his own 'About Face' record; Wright joined forces with ex-Fashion member Dee Harris for the ill-advised Zee; and Waters released 'The Pros And Cons Of Hitch Hiking', featuring Eric Clapton on guitar. Then, in December 1985, the news filtered through that Waters had actually quit the band. Not so the rest. Less than a year later, on 11th November, an official statement revealed that although Waters quit, 'the group have no intention of disbanding. On the contrary, David Gilmour and Nick Mason with Rick Wright and Bob Ezrin, are currently recording a new album. Since then we've had '87's 'A Momentary Lapse Of Reason' (pretty good) and '94's 'The Division Bell' (very good), a couple of live albums and some spectacularly successful world tours from Pink Floyd. We've had '87's 'Radio KAOS' (great), '90's 'The Wall - Live In Berlin' (not great) and '93's 'Amused To Death' (jury still out) from Roger Waters. We've had a bitter war of words, recriminations flying, sullying the band's name with insinuations that all was definitely not as it seemed. It might be fair to say that in most Floyd fans' eyes, Gilmour is the good guy, Waters the bad, Mason and Wright the other two. This is certainly the general feeling one gets from the way the Floyd saga has been played out over the last few years. But what is the real story? With the release of 'Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live' set for release in February - 20 years after the first of the 28 shows of 'The Wall' took place at Nassau Coliseum, in New York - the time seems right to explore what has gone on over the last two decades in the story of the most engaging, infuriating and, ultimately, self-mythologising of all English rock bands. Was Roger Waters really the megalomaniac that so many have painted him as? Is Gilmour the affable, laidback nice guy, or does a steelier, ruthless streak run through him? And what of Mason and Wright? What indeed? The interviews that follow were all conducted over two weeks in November this year. Waters, in Paris, was an intense, thoughtful interviewee who answered everything thrown at him. Gilmour a blend of relaxed cool and edgy tetchiness; and Mason one of the most charming and humourous men one could have the good fortune to speak to. As for Rick Wright, well, once more when it comes to 'The Wall' he was not around. A polite "I think he's somewhere in France" met our requests to talk to him. Whether the fact that he was removed from the band during the original album meant that Pink Floyd Music Ltd., the company that administers all pre-Waters departure Floyd business, decided he should keep a low profile this time around is something that we'll have to wait for him to tell us himself one day. Old wounds still evidently cause certain members some discomfort. Waters can barely comprehend the commercial failure of 'Amused To Death' and his bitterness is still evident. Gilmour and Mason are certainly diplomatic about their ex-colleague whilst vague about their own future. Ladies and gentlemen, some 20 years after the curtain first rose on 'The Wall', we are back in the land of Pink Floyd. This may not be the final cut... Roger Waters How did your solo tour of the US go this year? ROGER WATERS: It was immensely energising. It all started when I did one gig in 1992 for Don Henley's Walden Woods Project and we did an evening at the Universal Amphitheatre in LA. There were four of us, I did some tunes, Don did some tunes (Henley supplied vocals for 'Comfortably Numb'), Neil Young and John Fogerty did some tunes. The atmosphere was wonderful and the response I got to my few tunes was very gratifying. It was your first full-blown tour for 12 years. Were you nervous? ROGER WATERS: No. It's much smaller than most of the things I've done. I had a certain trepidation as to whether anybody would come or not. My last experience of touring was with 'Radio KAOS' and was very much in the shadow of my past in that Gilmour and the boys were doing football stadiums at the same time. That was quite character forming. But this is what I do, and I know how to do this and I'm good at it. What involvement have you had with the live version of 'The Wall'? ROGER WATERS: I didn't even know about it until around six weeks ago. Having found out that it was coming out I have had some input. For instance, James Guthrie, who's mixing it, is sending me the mixes. We've had discussions about the title. If it was gong to be called anything other than 'Pink Floyd - The Wall Live' then it was 'Is There Anybody Out There...' I've only heard the first four mixes and they sound pretty good. They're very different to the record. It will turn out to be not only an interesting document for the longstanding fans, but a valid performance. Gerald Scarfe's artwork was so synonymous with 'The Wall', yet Storm Thorgerson handles 'Is There Anybody Out There...'. Why? ROGER WATERS: Much against my better judgement. But my judgement isn't often taken into consideration on these matters because I get out-voted by the board of Pink Floyd Music Ltd. Storm is technically proficient, but I don't personally like the work he's done recently at all. But I am happy to say that I'm being consulted to a large extent about that as well so I'm trying to trim the worst of his excesses. Trying to leave as much of a) what Gerry did alone and b) to use as much of the photos of the shows from which the record comes. There are millions of photos and some of them are stunning. You and Thorgerson fell out, did you not? ROGER WATERS: He wasn't used for any Pink Floyd artwork while I was involved after 'Wish You Were Here', and I have to say I love that sleeve. They (Thorgerson's company, Hipgnosis) came up with a load of ideas for Animals, none of which I liked, and I don't think the rest of the boys thought they were that brilliant either. And there was a feeling of, "Well, if you don't like it, do something better." So I peddled round South London on my bicycle with my camera and took some photos of Battersea Power Station and then I got somebody to make a pig and got a mock up and said, "There's my idea." I rather fell out with Storm when he included that sleeve in a book of their album designs, because it had nothing to do with them. Except that they called me up and said, "No hard feelings, but you are gong to need lots of photographers for the day when you put the balloon up in the sky, would you like us to organise the photographers for you?" So when subsequently they tried to take the whole thing over I was kind of pissed off about that. But the cover of 'The Wall', after we'd made the album, was very clear to me. And I'd done a lot of work in the animation with Gerry Scarfe. I did 'The Final Cut' album cover as well. Over the years, Floyd's visual side has become almost as important as the music contained within. You must be quite proud of that. ROGER WATERS: By and large. Some of them didn't work. Some were good ideas that came out wrong. 'Meddle' for instance, but that was produced in England when we were in Japan. But it's not a big problem. Some of them like 'Dark Side Of The Moon', 'Animals', 'Wish You Were Here' and 'The Wall' were fantastic. Do you think 'The Wall', which was panned upon release in the UK, has eventually received the critical acclaim it deserved? ROGER WATERS: I don't know. It's received a lot of acclaim, but how much does anything deserve? A lot of people have bought it and continue to buy it and it's taken very seriously. You famously fell out with director Alan Parker during the filming of 'The Wall' (starring Bob Geldof). What do you think of the film now? ROGER WATERS: I once had this quite heated conversation with him, where he said that the perfect film is made up of 100 perfect minutes. That was when I realised why we were having problems. There's got to be lots and lots of imperfect minutes to make a perfect 100. And that's the kind of feeling I got from the movie. Every minute was trying to be so full of interest and action, I find it a bit difficult to watch at a sitting. I've become kind of numbed by it. Having said that, a lot of what he did was really great as well. I've actually grown fond of it. I very much regretted that there's no humour in it, but that's my fault. I don't think I was in a particularly jolly state. I've been re-working it, in a desultory fashion, as a stage play. When I do that, there are a lot of laughs and that will be my chief motivating factor for putting it on the stage. 'The Wall' seems an incredibly personal statement to make. Was it a difficult project to see to fruition? ROGER WATERS: Yeah. Work like that's always hard, but rewarding. Whether it's autobiographical or not is beside the point. Except, I suppose, in as much as one might be fighting against the demons of shame and fear of exposing oneself. I don't remember that was in the process. I remember the energy working with Bob Ezrin. The kind of batting to and fro of ideas. I like working with other people in team situations. That's why I like working with bands, although I don't particularly like working in a committee. That was one of the problems from 'Dark Side Of The Moon' onwards. People tend to see 'The Wall' as the first major indication of you artistically overshadowing the other members of the band. Were you aware of any cracks in inter-band relations while making the album? ROGER WATERS: The whole thing had fallen to pieces during 'Wish You Were Here'.Dave wanted to make a completely different record. So we had a struggle about that, which I won eventually. But after 'Dark Side Of The Moon' it was always a problem. In fact, during 'Wish You Were Here', Nick Sedgewick - who produced 'Wish You Were Here' - came on tour with us and started to write the definitive book on the experience in Pink Floyd. You sacked Rick Wright during the making of 'The Wall'. Why? ROGER WATERS: The real beginning of the end was when I brought Bob Ezrin in as a producer. I needed help to produce this record, it was a big project. Up until then we'd always had 'Produced by Pink Floyd', and most of the work in production had been by me and Dave. So I put it to Nick and Rick that Bob Ezrin would be producing the record with me and Dave, but with all due respect to those guys they wouldn't because they never had. We thought it was fair that we got a point, one per cent, and that would come off the top and then we'd divvy up the rest of the deal four ways. Nick went, "Fine, no problem." But Rick went, "But I can produce the record, I can help." "I don't think you can Rick, you never have in the past." "Yes I have." So I said, "Okay, let's do this. Let's make the record and if you're seen to be producing the record too then you can have a point, too. We'll split it four ways. Is that fair?" So after we'd been working for a few weeks, Rick would be in the studio all the time, from the moment we'd start in the morning to when we'd finish at night. This was not usual. One day Bob Ezrin asked me why. And I said, "Don't you get it? He thinks he's producing the record." He replied "Don't be ridiculous," and I said, "He does, he wants the point. Have you noticed how he occasionally goes...." - and Rick's not hugely articulate - "Uh, uh, uh, I don't like that." Ezrin says, "Yes, it's rather irritating." I said, "He thinks that's record producing, you ask him." He came back and said, "You're absolutely right. Well, I told him he's not." And after that Rick never came in, unless we needed a keyboard part. He'd got the hump. He played less and less and less and generally he just wasn't interested, really. If he'd thought he'd written a good keyboard part, he'd hoard it and put it on one of his awful solo albums. He didn't want to share anything with anybody, he just got really anal. Anyway, we were in the South of France making the record and I'd re-negotiated a deal with Sony to get a few more points, but their end of the deal was that they'd definitely get the record at the end of October. We all took a holiday in August. I wrote out a schedule for when we reconvened on September 5. I realised that it was impossible. I asked Ezrin if he'd be in to do the rest of the keyboard parts for the week starting August 28. He went, "Oh my God, okay." I got (Floyd manager) Steve O'Rourke to call him. A couple of days later, O'Rourke had found Rick in Greece. The message was, "Tell Roger to fuck off!" So I gave him an ultimatum to do as he was told and finish the record, keep your full share and leave quietly afterwards, or I'd see him in court. He very wisely accepted the former proposal. In any event, I wasn't working with him anymore. And it was at this point that I had a meeting with Dave where he famously - or infamously - said, "Why don't we get rid of Nick, too?" And I was like, "Dave, Nick's my mate." Why did you get Jeff Pocaro to play on "Mother"? ROGER WATERS: It's got 5/4 bars in it. Nick, to his great credit, has no pretence about that, it was quite clear he couldn't play it. He said, "I can't play that." Or maybe somebody said to him, "Nick, maybe you should get somebody else in to play this because you're struggling." It was the same thing on 'The Final Cut' with 'Two Suns In The Sunset'. It was in 5/4, so (former Sly Stone and David Bowie drummer) Andy Newmark played that. Was 'The Final Cut' essentially a Roger Waters solo album? ROGER WATERS: Yes. And I spent a number of occasions whilst making that album thinking it was becoming ridiculous and saying "Look, why don't I just make this a solo album?" The answer would always be no, despite the fact that they were never there. Rick had gone by that time and Dave wasn't interested. But as individuals none of you were particularly busy on other things. So why not all get involved? ROGER WATERS: Absolutely, but if you want to be a band, to go on making the money and being superstars, you have to have songs. Go back to 1970 and you'll find that almost all of the songs came from me. I wrote lots of albums during this period of time, lots and lots of songs, so you can see that it's very difficult for them to say, "Yeah, okay, we don't like this. Why don't you go ahead and make it as a solo album?" People who have been in rock 'n' roll bands absolutely understand that without a writer you're fucked, basically. Has 'The Final Cut' been assessed fairly? ROGER WATERS: Well, it's biggest critic has been Gilmour. Hi didn't like it's politics, he didn't like this, he didn't;t like that. All he liked about it was his extra percentage for pretending to be a producer on it. Maybe that's being a bit unkind (ponders for a moment) - no it's not. That's the way it was. If he'd have had any kind of integrity then he'd have said, "I don't want to have anything to do with this record, I don't like it." But he needed to compromise because he didn't have any songs of his own! Not one. And so what do you do? Unless you write the songs, you can't make the record. And that's what most bands flounder on, they run out of creative energy. Was quitting the band a difficult decision for you? ROGER WATERS: It was. Because I'd much have preferred that we stopped. I was forced to quit because they were threatening me with all sorts of things. The ensuing debacle was very painful for quite some time. But in retrospect, it was the right thing to do. I can view those times now without rancour. You said of 'A Momentary Lapse Of Reason' that it was a pretty fair forgery. Do you still view Floyd like that? ROGER WATERS: Yeah. They got half way through it and then scrapped it because the record company said, "You can't get away with this. You've got to make something that at least sounds like a Pink Floyd record." So they started again. And that's exactly what they were doing, trying to forge a Pink Floyd record. Do you have to attend business meetings with the others? ROGER WATERS: I don;'t attend meetings. But, yes, Pink Floyd Music is a limited company. And it administers part of the catalogue that I was involved in. They have another company that administers the stuff after I left. But I don't have anything to do with the company because I can be out-voted on the board. That must be annoying? ROGER WATERS: From time to time. But so what? There was a hell of a lot of good things and we did some good work together, of which I'm very proud. And I didn't do it all on my own. Everybody had a part in it, and so you could say that it's a shame we weren't all St. Francis of Assisi, but maybe if we had been we'd have had a home for sick animals somewhere and not made any records. Do you have any kind of relationship with any of the members of Pink Floyd? ROGER WATERS: No. Strangely enough, Rick came to one of the shows on the last tour. I think he'd had a couple of drinks. He was all sort of smiles and a bit nervous. But he was much more mealy mouthed out the front apparently, which has been reported by people that met him. In front of the stage he was still finding ways to criticise me. Have you been painted as the bad guy in this? ROGER WATERS: No question. I've always not co-operated with anyone who was writing a book because I don't want to authorise anything. As soon as you start to co-operate, a lot of the vision starts to come from other people. By and large I think they've got it completely wrong. I did an interview with David Fricke of Rolling Stone when I was on the road and he interviewed Dave Gilmour as well. They printed this kind of Floyd-wars kind of article without a single word of anything I'd told him. A decision had obviously been made not to print any of the story about 'Momentary Lapse Of Reason' and how it was made and what was actually going on. You can't have been happy that 'Amused To Death' was not received well by the critics? ROGER WATERS: It's a stunning piece of work, but there we are. It's not something I feel bitter about or have sleepless nights over. The work is there and it stands by itself and I can prop it in the corner of the room and know that Pat Leonard and I and all the other people that worked on it did a great job. It's a really wonderful piece of work with some amazing songs. Dave Gilmour recently said he'd invited you to play 'Dark Side Of The Moon' with the band at Earl's Court and you declined? ROGER WATERS: Yeah. I don't think we'd get through the first half an hour of rehearsal. I know if I stood on a stage I'd feel, "Ugh, I don't like this. I don;t want to be here doing this, it does not feel good." There's too much history. We've made our decisions, gone our separate paths. If I'm going to be on stage playing music, even 'Dark Side Of The Moon', I want it to be with people that I love. What would you say is your finest musical achievement so far? ROGER WATERS: To date, I would have to say 'The Wall'.Unleashing the dogs of peace Roger Waters' last solo album was 1992's less-than-well received 'Amused To Death'. When can we expect the next one? ROGER WATERS: "The first piece of music has already appeared," says Waters of the first fruits of his next solo endeavour. "I did a new song on the last gig of the last American tour. I'm going into the studio in February to start work on a new record. It's a song that I started writing at least ten years ago now, when an Italian journalist sent me a poem that had been written by a South American who had been tortured. He wrote this very moving stanza about torture. So I set that to music and then I came up with this image of a candle alight in the dark and that stayed with me over the years." In keeping with most of Waters' work, this, his fourth solo album if you include 'Music From The Body' - his collaboration with Ron Geesin from 1970 - is based around a conceptual idea. "Then I read an article in The Times about the story of a Serbian soldier leaving his platoon because he'd seen some old Albanian woman in trouble in a bombed out building. I thought, 'My God, it's a good Samaritan.' Reading about it - the act and the fact that it had been reported to me - I realised that I didn't have to know about the rest of it. It was enough that I could attach myself to that small candle lighting that corner of that piece of darkness. And so the shroud of not knowing, of quandary, fell from my shoulders in that moment. SO I wrote a couple of verses about that incident and it's become the new album's first song. But the idea that when the good in each of us blossoms or lights up or flares however briefly and lights that particular corner wherever the darkness is, there's something about the inter-connectedness of those moments that provides us with the opportunity to touch our spirituality. I'm interested in using the Internet to get the record together - the idea of connecting those flickerings of light. It's one of the things that's exciting about the access to technology. It's what I describe in 'The Tide Is Turning', where I talk about 'resting technology stored in the hands of the warlords'. Having come through the quagmire of consumerism gone mad of the '80's, I find myself in an optimistic frame of mind. I'm hoping the Internet and new technologies will have unleashed the dogs of peace." The absence of a new Roger Waters solo album can be explained by the fact that he's spent the last ten years working on a French opera, the mysterious 'Ca Ira'. "A friend of mine in France, Etienne Roda-Gil, wrote the libretto in '88-'89, just before the Bicentennial celebrations here and asked me if I would set it to music," Waters explains. "I thought about that long and hard but it's a beautiful piece of work, and it's also extraordinarily illustrated by his wife. It's something different, so why not? I worked on my own and with an engineer for six weeks with a multi-track and a piano and discovered that I'd mapped the whole thing out. I sent a demo over to France and everybody listened to it, including Francois Mitterand, who wrote a letter to Pierre Berge, who was the then director of the Paris Opera, urging him to make the piece part of the celebrations of the Bicentennial. "It all got a bit over excited, but that plan floundered on French chauvinism. The fact that I was a)English and b) from a rock group rather stuck in their gullet. So it never happened. Then sadly Etienne's wife died, so the whole thing was shelved. A few years ago I decided to resurrect it. Since then I've been working with an English orchestra and Sony Classics became interested in it. We did a deal and it's now nearly finished. Well, 80 minutes of it. I hope to have the energy in the future to orchestrate the rest and put on a production." Waters is looking to release 'Ca Ira' next year, and also at the idea of a live performance, although he concedes that this won't happen "for a couple of years." Why are you releasing a live version of 'The Wall' now? DAVID GILMOUR: Well, there's been a lot of fan interest. And the tapes have been sitting there for all these years. We didn't, at the time, want to bring out another album - I don't think the record company would have let us bring out another album in competition with the original studio album. But life moves on, we were making 'The Wall' film, we were making 'The Final Cut', Roger's leaving, and we're continuing the Floyd without him... Life goes on and that kind of stuff gets forgotten about because it's not right at the forefront of what's important. We listened to one or two of the tapes at the time when we were making 'The Wall' film because we were going to use some of the live tracks in the film instead of the studio versions - which we did, in fact. The band was very tight, it was really good exciting stuff and we had it all properly recorded on multi-track analogue recorders. And it's always been sitting there waiting to be put out. It's now got to the point where everyone agrees it's a good idea to do it and wants it, so it's finally being done. How major were those shows for you? Did it feel big? DAVID GILMOUR: It did. It was kind of iconic, wasn't it? A fantastic thing, this bloody great wall onstage. We knew when we were making it that it was a great record, and that it would make a fantastic show. What are your memories of the shows themselves? DAVID GILMOUR: Hard work. Very, very technically demanding. At the beginning, I had great piles of cue sheets hanging over my amps because every different song needed different settings for four different people on the stage. There were a number of different cueing systems, I had to have a click coming up through my monitor speaker and I was having to make sure that everyone on stage knew when to do what. At the beginning and end of every number everyone was looking at me waiting for their next cue. To be a musician, a guitar player, singer and to keep ahead of all that technology was not an easy job. My memory is of being nervous and hoping that everything would go right. But I loved the shows. What was it like appearing on top of the wall for 'Comfortably Numb'? DAVID GILMOUR: What do you think? Fantastic. The whole audience is down there focusing on Roger and suddenly this goes on. I was sitting up there already in the pitch black and could see everything going on looking down over them. When I opened my mouth to start singing and the lights hit the whole audience gasps upwards going, "Ooh!" It was fantastic. The making of 'The Wall' wasn't the most comfortable of times. No, it was fine. There's a lot of misconception about the start of major hostilities between myself and Roger. We had a highly productive working relationship that operated pretty well through 'The Wall'. There were some pretty major arguments, but they were arguments on artistic disagreements. The intention behind 'The Wall' was to make the best record we could. Roger talks of a power struggle from 'Wish You Were Here' onwards between yourself and him. That's life. There was a power struggle all the way through. It had been going on for years. Roger wanted to be the leader and the boss and in charge - which he, de facto, was. But that didn't prevent me, who did not want to be the leader, from thinking that I had a better knowledge of music sense in musical terms than he did. A better musical judgement. So my side of the supposed power struggle was to stubbornly try to cling on to certain musical values through all of this. But that obviously presented difficulties all the way through. But it certainly didn't become an unworkable relationship. Rick's relationship with all of us, but certainly Roger, did become impossible during the making of 'The Wall'. Roger claims you suggested that Floyd should also drop Nick when Rick was fired - true? DAVID GILMOUR: Roger and I used to have lots of discussions because we used to drive to the studio together in France. Rick had been asked if he had any ideas or if there was anything that he wanted to do. We would leave in the evening and he basically had the whole night to come up with stuff, but I think he was going through some other other traumas throughout his life at the time and he didn't contribute anything really, just sat there and drove us fairly mad. Nick was working very hard. He learnt how to read drum music and was putting down the tracks with Bob Ezrin and doing a very good job. Nick has his limitations as a drummer, Roger says that, but I don't have any memory of that apart from joking about off-loading and getting on with it. Later, in Los Angeles, Rick asked me to go out for a drink. He said, "What do you think about all this?" And I replied, "Well, you haven't pulled you finger out at all, you haven't really done anything to say why you should stay inside this band. You're a founder member of it and as far as I'm concerned it's a sacrosanct right for you to stay in it as long as you want to be in it, but you have to make up your own mind about this." He said, "Do you still want me to be in the band?" I said, "Not particularly, because you're not doing anything, but I'll support your right to be in it till the end." I was never part of a movement to throw Rick out, or Nick. It's not my position. So there was no rift between you and Roger during 'The Wall'? DAVID GILMOUR: I can tell you categorically that's not true. We had arguments, the worst of which was about 'Comfortably Numb'. There was one just a drums and bass backing track that Roger and Bob really liked. I thought it was too loose, too sloppy. We did another one, done to the same click track and guide track and I thought it was better. Both Roger and Bob had dug their heels in and didn't think it was as good. We argued about this. All these tapes went off to Los Angeles and we went out and had dinner in an Italian restaurant. Me, Bob Ezrin and Roger shouted at each other all night about the fucking stupid point that I don't think I could tell the difference today. We wound up making some feeble compromise. You get over-obsessed by ridiculous things at times. It was quite a major argument we had over that. But the point where Roger and my relationship became unworkable was during the making of 'The Wall' film, some considerable time later. What happened there? DAVID GILMOUR: That was due to Alan Parker and Roger rowing so badly during the making of the film that Alan Parker walked out. We had to persuade Alan Parker to come back onto it, there was very big money invested in this thing, and as the entire film company worked at Pinewood they were going to remain loyal to Alan Parker because he's a film maker, not to Roger Waters. What do you think of the film? DAVID GILMOUR: Well, really the film is the least successful of the three ways of telling that particular story; the album and the shows are the other two. Roger might have been right in as much as it wasn't going as well as it should have done but that doesn't alter the fact that it was unworkable to stop it and for Roger to take over making the rest of the film. Did you have more to offer 'The Final Cut' than Roger would allow you to put into it? DAVID GILMOUR: Um, Roger thought that the opinions I expressed about some of the material were driven by something other than musical integrity. He felt that I was just being obstructive to what he wanted to do. My view of it is that, as always, my views on what should and should not be done were for what was best for the making of a record. At the same time, there were all sorts of arguments over political issues - the Falklands War. Roger was a pacifist and I didn't share his political views. But I never, never wanted to stand in the way of him expressing his story of 'The Final Cut' or any other album, I just didn't think some of the music was up to it. What do you think of 'The Final Cut' now? DAVID GILMOUR: Troll out the usual answer - three great tracks, the rest of it not so great. Which are the three tracks you like? DAVID GILMOUR: 'The Final Cut', 'The Fletcher Memorial Home' and, um...I can't remember now. It's been a long time since I listened to it. There's two of them there anyway. What happened when Roger quit? DAVID GILMOUR: He sent a letter to the record company. Ever since the end of 'The Final Cut', Roger had been saying, "Let's call it a day. Let's pack it in, and say we've had a jolly good run, fantastic." And I'd say, "I don't wanna pack it in, I haven't had enough." He went on like this, getting more and more frustrated and we would discuss different scenarios. He said, "You'll never fucking get it together to make a record." And I said, "We will make a record, we'll do something." He said, "Well, I'm not leaving. I will just sit at the back of the studio and criticise," and stuff like that. But my absolutely consistent response was that I was not prepared to quit. I think he got so frustrated with my stubbornness he decided to see of he could force the issue by sending this notice of resignation to the record companies. What you do when you do that is that you invoke the leaving members clause which is what allows you to take up a solo artist's career under a section of the same record contract. Frankly, for the rest of us, having him leave was a relief. It meant that we could get on with plans. That was impossible with Roger sort of in it and sort of not. He could have held us off from doing anything for years simply by saying he wasn't leaving. This must have been a particularly hard time for you? DAVID GILMOUR: Well, the start of the work on 'A Momentary Lapse Of Reason' was, because the phone would be going every five minutes with this lawyer and that lawyer wanting to know this and that. It was very tricky. With Nick, there was a period from the end of 'The Wall' to 'The Final Cut' where he was very dispirited. We were all made to feel like very value-less people and that affected Nick and Rick, who wasn't even in it then to a very major degree. They were practically catatonic and unable to take much part in the start of the recording, so it was damn hard work starting to put all that stuff together, which we mostly did with computers and sequencers on the boat. In fact when we got to Los Angeles to do drums, it was fantastic because office hours are not even in sync, so the lawyers couldn't call me in the middle of recording unless they were calling in the middle of the night. At what point did you decide to bring Rick back into the fold? DAVID GILMOUR: I might have some trouble with the time scale, but I was in Greece before we even started and I think I had a visit from Rick's then wife saying, "I hear you're starting a new album, please, please, please can Rick be a part of it?" I left it for a while during the early part of recording before I asked him down because I wanted to be sure that I knew what I was doing before I got anyone's hopes too high. The first month was just me and Ezrin mucking about with a lot of demos. It was really only at Christmas of '86 that I realised it was going to work. What was it like for you, as reluctant leader, to take that role? DAVID GILMOUR: Difficult, you know? It's tough not having Roger there to talk to, to say shall we do this or this? I had Bob Ezrin there who'd taken a large part in 'The Wall' album - but it was a slow process. Each day that you'd do something that sounded good it would build your confidence. How pleased are you with 'A Momentary Lapse Of Reason'? DAVID GILMOUR: It's got some really good stuff on it. I like it. When we started the rehearsals, I'd got these extra guys in. A keyboard player to do Rick and another drummer largely to do Nick. On tour, it was such fun. Even through the rehearsals they needed that support. There was a point in the first two months of the tour where suddenly Rick and Nick, with a lot of praise and stuff, started getting back their confidence, and the second drummer could become a percussion player again. There were some moments where it really became apparent that this was turning back into something good. I remember you looking emphatically pleased at the end of the Wembley show in August 1987. It's understandable. The press and everything we were doing, even within our own management and record company there was not a huge amount of confidence that we would be able to achieve what we did achieve. And it did give us that feeling that we had succeeded in something that was an enormous amount of work. I'm very pleased with it, I'm very proud of it. It's interesting to note that twice in Floyd's lifetime they have lost a major member and gone on to even greater commercial success. It's justification for their actions and the feeling that anyone's replaceable - even me! (Laughs.) Why the lack of new Floyd recordings of late, though? DAVID GILMOUR: Um, you know, I mean...We like to spend a long time in between things. To be honest, I just don't know myself what I want to do and I'm afraid the others will just have to wait for me. It's a bit unfair, but that's life really. Do you find it difficult to motivate yourself into a Floyd frame of mind? DAVID GILMOUR: It's quite hard. It's a lumbering great behemoth to rouse from it's torpor. 'The Division Bell' was better than 'A Momentary Lapse...', and it had Rick and Nick working properly together again, and the jam sessions we did in '93 were fantastic. All that stuff worked out really well. Maybe that's proved all I needed to prove, I dunno. I don't have any hard and fast ideas about it. I haven't got myself in the mood for doing another one yet. I don't know if I want to do all that again. Certainly I will make another record, but what it is, whether it's Pink Floyd or me, I don't know. Why did you ask Roger to perform 'Dark Side...' at Earl's Court? DAVID GILMOUR: I'm not a person who hold deep anger for many years and it would have been a good thing for the fans. There's a vast difference between having to sit in a studio and having someone come on as guest with a minimum of rehearsal and play a bit of bass and sing. There was the safety cushion of knowing that he wouldn't do it, but it was a genuine offer. What would you consider your finest achievements with the band? DAVID GILMOUR: I've got lots. Putting it all back together, making it al work and resurrecting Nick and Rick is what I'm proudest of. There are moments of 'A Momentary Lapse...' and 'The Division Bell' that I'm just as proud of as anything that went before. Every album that we've made since 'Meddle' has something to it that makes me very proud and happy to be a part of this. Is the forthcoming live album some kind of anniversary celebration?
NICK MASON: That coupled with guilt at providing no new music for the record company. And a feeling of not being bullied by the record company but actually saying, "Let's see if we can find something that we're happy with." It's very difficult to find things from the vaults. A while back the BBC wanted to release some Top Gear tapes, and they really weren't good enough. What are your memories of the shows? NICK MASON: I don;t have specific memories of different nights, and the reason for that, apart from Alzheimer's, is that it was by far the most rehearsed thing we'd ever done. It was remarkably smooth for something so complicated. What one tends to remember in a normal gig is when the audience responds and you know you're getting through. Here we couldn't see the audience, so there are moments of that but it's things like the Teacher puppet or The Wall being finished off. And strongest of all when the spotlight picks Dave out at the top. Even backstage you could feel the thrill. You're using Storm Thorgerson, who fell out with Roger, for the artwork. People may have expected Gerald Scarfe? NICK MASON: We fell out with Storm over everything and obviously with Gerry's artwork being such an integral part of 'The Wall' it had to be included in the artwork. But what's great about this is that it's the first time that the four of us have co - operated since 1986, and there has been an agreement to let Storm do this work. Storm has aligned himself with Dave and Me over the last couple of albums. Roger, quite reasonably, feels he's in the enemy camp, and it's quite nice that he's actually accepted that Storm could get involved. It wasn't the best of times making 'The Wall', was it? NICK MASON: No, but it wasn't as bad as it got afterwards. It's no problem, it's been 30 odd years and some of it's been great and some of it not so great. But I didn't suffer as much as Dave did. If anyone was not given sufficient credit it was Dave. I made my contribution and it was nothing like in the same league as Roger's. What was it like dealing with the Waters-Gilmour power struggle? NICK MASON: Virtually every band that's ever existed has been there. We need to dispel the myth that everything's like The Beatles' film Help. Life isn't like that and it's very difficult to disband a group or to have someone leave gracefully. Great credit to Genesis. I sometimes feel like the ship's cook. I see various commanders come and go and when it gets really rough, you just go back down to the galley. How did Rick leaving affect you? NICK MASON: If I was honest I'd say I still feel guilty about it. Roger carried out a brilliant campaign to get what he wanted by a certain amount of cajoling and threatening. I don't think, looking back on it now, I should have stuck up for Rick. But as it was I utterly failed to do so, and aligned myself with the forces of safety. It's a shame and looking back I feel guilty. The one thing about it was that Rick was the only one of us to make any money from 'The Wall' shows. We had to stand the cost of the shows and Rick as paid a fee for doing them. Jeff Pocaro came in to play 'Mother'. Did that bother you? NICK MASON: Most of the drum tracks were done earlier on, so whatever Jeff would have done was have been done in Los Angeles. If there's the odd thing that's done, it's not necessarily a bother. If something's right for a track and I can't do it then so be it. On 'Remember A Day', which was a single from 1903 or whenever, Norman Smith did the drum parts. You never got paid for the 'Relics' sleeve - is that true? NICK MASON: Yes, but don't worry. I've had over 20 years of enjoying bringing it up in interviews. Were you aware of the rumours of discussions about Floyd as a Waters/Gilmour duo after Rick was sacked? NICK MASON: Not directly, but I probably realised there was a sense of "Hang on, why don't we...?" I guess it would be the same thinking that Roger brought to bear on Rick, that if people weren't contributing sufficiently, then why bother? It's interesting that he'd see it as a duo rather than just as him, but I guess he wasn't ready to go solo. Roger talks of 'The Final Cut' as a solo album. NICK MASON: Roger's probably indicated correctly. He was very busy pushing people out. Testing it, you might say. There were some pretty unpleasant conversations. What was it like when Roger quit?
NICK MASON: It's a very curious piece of politics. Roger could have finished Pink Floyd off by never leaving. By remaining in it and never doing another stroke of work, nothing would have ever happened. He felt he as being held back by the existence of the band and the record company kept on saying, "Great solo album, where's the next Floyd album?" So, who are the duelling egos now? NICK MASON: Um, well, there aren't any. Which is why we can't seem to get back to work! This is the second time a major member has left and you've gone on to even greater things... NICK MASON: (Raises eyes skyward) Oh, as soon as I get rid of Dave, I tell you, such great plans (laughs). End |
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