Roger Waters berates David Gilmour in video message: 'He thinks he owns Pink Floyd'
He takes aim at his former band mate
Last updated 20th May 2020
Roger Waters has posted a video message to YouTube criticising his ex-bandmate David Gilmour for allegedly banning him Pink Floyd’s website and social media platforms.
Posted yesterday (19th May) under the title ‘ANNOUNCEMENT’, Roger Water captioned the video: “An announcement from me… and when I mention the Pink Floyd website, I also mean the Facebook page and all the rest.”
The five-and-a-half-minute clip then begins with Roger thanking his fans for their positive reaction to a version of Pink Floyd classic ‘Mother’ he recently recorded in isolation with his band, saying the response “warms my heart.”
Addressing the camera, Roger then says: “It does bring up the question of why is this video not available on a website that calls itself the Pink Floyd website?
“Well, the answer to that is because nothing from me is on the website. I am banned by David Gilmour from the website. About a year ago, I convened a sort of Camp David for the surviving members of Pink Floyd at a hotel at the airport in London, where I proposed all kinds of measures to get past this awful impasse that we have and predicament that we find ourselves in. It bore no fruit, I’m sorry to say.”
Explaining further, Roger continues: “I suggested that because whoever the 30 million of you are who subscribe to the web page, that you do that because of the body of work that the five of us created.
“That’s Syd (Barrett), me, Rick (Wright), Nick (Mason) and David, over a number of years. And in consequence, it seems to me that it would be fair and correct if we should have equal access to you all and share our projects.”
Taking aim at David Gilmour, Roger continues: “David thinks he owns it. I think he thinks that because I left the band in 1985, that he owns Pink Floyd, that he is Pink Floyd, that I’m irrelevant and I should just keep my mouth shut.
“We’re all welcome to our opinions. But there have been rumblings and grumblings in the ranks I’m told by friends of mine who follow these things, and some of the questions being asked are: ‘Why do we have to sit and watch Polly Samson (Gilmour’s wife) for year after year, month after month, day after day, and the von Trapps reading us excerpts from their novels to get us to go to sleep at night?’ And that’s a very good question. ‘And yet we don’t get to hear about anything that Roger’s doing or about ‘This is Not a Drill’ (Waters’ postponed tour), or when he makes a piece of work, it’s not shown, and so on and so forth. And none of his work is publicized. The fact that his and Sean Evans’ film ‘Us and Them,’ which has just gone out digitally for streaming everywhere, is not mentioned.”
Roger added: “This is wrong. We should rise up. Or, just change the name of the band to Spinal Tap, and then everything will be hunky dory.”
Watch Roger Waters slam David Gilmour:
Concluding the video message, Roger Waters berated President Trump for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Stay safe, all of you,” Roger said. “We live in dire, dire, desperate times and we need to find ways to communicate with one another so that we can act cooperatively to stop the man destroying this fragile planet that we all come home. That is the elephant in the room.”
Speaking in December 2018, Nick Mason expressed his disappointment that Roger Waters and David Gilmour are “still at loggerheads” with each other.
Reflecting upon the tensions between the pair, Nick said: “It’s a really odd thing in my opinion.
“But I think the problem is Roger doesn’t really respect David. He feels that writing is everything, and that guitar playing and the singing are something that, I won’t say anyone can do, but that everything should be judged on the writing rather than the playing.”
Also citing David’s decision to continue with Pink Floyd in 1985 after Roger quit as one of the sources of the contention, Nick added: “I think it rankles with Roger that he made a sort of error in a way that he left the band assuming that without him it would fold.
“It’s a constant irritation, really, that he’s still going back to it. I’m hesitant to get too stuck into this one, just because it’s between the two of them rather than me. I actually get along with both of them, and I think it’s really disappointing that these rather elderly gentlemen are still at loggerheads.”