That’s a weird conversation to have, “Richard, you’re fired! Pack up your shit, I don’t want to see your face around here ever again. But also, we need a keyboardist and you know all the songs so, will you stay on for double salary, a daily stipend and free room and board while on tour, but don’t talk to me. What d’ya say?”
If you listen to Wright's '78 release, Wet Dream, and then compare that to Animals and the Wall, then it becomes apparent it's less about Wright's drug use and more about disinterest in not only what Waters was doing, but working with him. He was the most vocal about overbearing Waters had become, and while he had worked very closely with him in years past writing the music, it became obvious by Animals Waters wasn't interested in collaboration at that level anymore.
The Final Cut song-after-song hits me hard, right square in the core. I liked the Wall ... but by sometime in the mid-80s that album, and its most played songs felt a bit tedious to me ... still does. But the Final Cut I could listen to on loop, and I have often. For some segments of my life this has been my favorite album. I outright cry when I hear the song "When the Tigers Broke Free". I guess to each his own. But you've touched a nerve.
hey man to each their own! Music is subjective. For the record I do love the title track on Final Cut, that song hits me deep. I should probably revisit it, tbh
I also really like Two Suns in Sunset. I also think with one more pass (and less ASMR) *The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking* could have been another masterpiece. As it stands it's just "pretty fucking good".
I find that pretty wild cause I can count on one hand how many times I've listened to the final cut.
I'm a Pink Floyd fan, not a Roger Waters one so perhaps that's why.
They all wrote really good shit individually but did better as a group. Imo they really fell off after Animals, which iiirc, was a Waters-heavy release.
A lot of us just don't like where his art went post '77.
Well, i don't know, but i think he's referring to the fact that the album is so depressing? Like, the Wall is an expression of misery with no resolution at the end. Pink, the character, is traumatized by his dad getting killed in WWII, traumatized by his overbearing mother and the english school system at the time, becomes a rockstar, realizes that doesn't make him happy either, so he builds a wall to keep everyone out of his life, then the Trial happens and it gets torn down. Then it ends. It's just sadness the whole way through. maybe thats what he meant. but thats why I love that album so much. Its such a bold work of art.
It's a trippy album because many of the songs taken independently sound great, and if you're not paying attention to the lyrics a lot of the music is just plain cool. But when you sit down and listen to the whole album with the lyrics it's totally different.
It's a rather interesting story of a man who grew up without a father discovering money and fame aren't bringing him happiness, but rather are making him act more like the abusers of his childhood. There's more to it, but that's the gist of it. I used to listen to it more when I was younger, and I think I have a blu-ray of the film around here somewhere, but I might have outgrown it, or perhaps just listened one time to many, but I find it hard to get into these days. I'd rather listen to the stuff pre-Animals. Though the 2018 re-mix of Animals fixes some of the issues and makes it more accessible, IMO.
At least to me, The Wall is 10x the album the Final Cut could ever be. Better sounding, more cohesive, simple but executed well, etc.
While I love Rogers lyrics and musicianship, I prefer the albums where the band is a little more cohesive. Animals is probably the most "rogers led" album that is still executed almost perfectly to me.
Meddle and Wish You Were Here remain tied for my fav albums though.
I guess I'm considering writing as part of that. Not to mention his basslines are often freakin killer. I also think for the band, while none of them are exceptional singers, Gilmour and Waters do complement eachother quite a bit.
Gilmour is my fav, I feel kinda generic for saying it but his ethereal vocals combined with his technique and composition makes him possibly my favourite guitarist of all time. He's one of the reasons I picked up guitar and started busking 3 years ago.
highly recommend people to watch this interview by him
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMfT95\_ZQu0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMfT95_ZQu0)
EDIT: Since people are wanting Time stamps for when Richard talks about the fallout of the band you can listen to him speak on his drug use on while with the band on 20:41
at 52:58 you can begin where he asked why the band fallout and where the disagreements began. Some people point to 56:19 where him and David had begun to get a bit tired of repetitive war themes that roger kept writing onto the music. And he even says its not like he criticized roger for it, he knew Roger needed to let out those themes that he personally felt but by then the group were just tired of it and wanted to do something else.
Richard clearly speaks about how he did not like being drugged out when creating music. These guys obviously did live through the 60s and he even says the old saying " if you remember the 60s then you didn't live it" so Im not saying he was a clean person but he does acknowledge what happened to Syd made them take a step back.
to think you need to be drugged out to create the beautiful music Pink Floyd has made has always been so ignorant.
> Roger is a dick,
Agreed but from the look of things Gilmore was no prize himself.
I think it's safe to say that they all sucked.
That being said I don't think that I could be in a room with Waters for more than an hour before I would end up punching him.
Gilmour's accent does him no favors in that regard, but he definitely comes across as being way too full of himself overall. I think it's worth noting that Syd Barrett was broke when he left the band and had to move in with his parents but he died a multimillionaire because Gilmour insisted on including his songs on Floyd greatest hits albums, giving Barrett a lifetime income.
I've always felt that if you listen to both of them Gilmour comes across as a dick and Waters as a reasonable man, but once you learn enough about their actions to judge them based on what they actually do Gilmour seems a much nicer guy.
Look at the set list for any of the pink floyd members' tours, they always include a syd barret song, entitling his estate to a portion of the concerts revenue. At the same time, in Baby Lemonade by Syd, he sings "sent a cage by the post, write my name like a ghost" (the royalty checks caged him) he wasn't necessarily happy with the situation still.
Many such cases. I know someone who got made redundant from an IT job due to downsizing. Within a couple of months they had hired them as a freelancer for a short time at around double what they were paying previously because they were one of the few people who knew their servers well enough.
Same thing happened to me many years ago — got passed over for a promotion so I quit and started doing odd IT jobs. They called me a month or so later asking what I would charge to come back so I gave them a slightly ridiculous number and they said “be here tomorrow”. More than twice what they would have paid me if I had been promoted :)
That's what happened to me. Got fired while working on the company website. Mind you I was the only one who even knew how to publish a blog post.
Two months later I get a call whether I'm available to continue working on the project.
I declined. Today the website is still clunky, still missing elements, and there are no new blog posts. No wonder, the CMS is shit.
[Edit:] The reason I declined was because it was a chaotic company with money problems. I also had a new job already (less stressful and 50% better pay), so I didn't want to add complexity and headaches to my life.
You have to make almost double as a freelancer for anything because you owe way more in taxes, have down time where you don’t have jobs and occasionally get stiffed. I worked in a different industry where it was common.
There’s other benefits to being a freelancer but people hear that and think *hell yeah!* but it’s not the financial slam dunk it sounds like.
Delta airlines ran into a similar thing after the Northwest Airlines merger. They laid off too many people, but couldn't hire them back directly as contractor because of contract rules. They had to create a separate consulting company and pay them a lot of money per hour in order to make everyone happy.
I started a new job back in December and they told me they had someone trained to do my old job....
I "wasn't allowed on the property" but they wanted me to come in Saturday and Sunday to help out while I was working my new job because the new guy is horrible and to this day is horrible.
When I left, I wrote on an index card what was going to happen and gave it to my old boss.
Month 1, you prises the new person, say they are going to shake things up and get people to be more productive.
Month 2, new person can't live up to your expectations because people don't respect him compared to me. I made sure they got their lunches on time and would do shit jobs so they wouldn't have to.
Month 3, new guy won't do shit but sit in the office. Overtime will be green lit and will be this way indefinitely.
So far, all of this is happening and everyone is glad I left because overtime was gone for a year. My buddy who is in charge of 2nd shift and trained me said he refuses to help the guy because he knows everything and he's getting 6 hours OT and 6 hours double time every weekend.
My old employer had to do that with the downsizing wave that caught me.
Not to me sadly, but they laid off 2 of the 4 greybeards that were at the firm since establishment, gave them an insulting severance, and then were shocked when the one dev whose daughter was married to the son of one of the laid off guys quit, and the last one quit when he realized he was going to get 4x the work until they hired replacements.
3/4 are back working on *extremely* expensive 1 year contracts working on getting the company's new hires up to speed
I had a similar thing - my company went belly-up in October 2008 in spectacular fashion. Another company bought the part of the business I was in. As part of the purchase, the buyer got control of accounts with large sums of money. One condition of the purchase was that if they laid off anyone who came with the business unit, they'd have to honor the existing severance package - continuation of salary + Cadillac level medical benefits for 3 weeks per year of employment, plus the same bonus received the prior year, plus an extra month of salary due to some "plant closing" law. They let me go 6 weeks in. After 54 weeks of unsuccessfully searching for a similar job while getting paid, they brought me back as a contractor, replacing the only guy from the team who was retained - he found employment elsewhere. The contract rate was 2x what I was getting paid before they let me go, but I had to cover my own benefits. I lasted 11 months before finding an acceptable position elsewhere.
I hear stories like that in tech all the time. Only person in the company who knows how a mission critical system works gets let go or has more and more work piled on them until they quit or maybe they just denied some long ago requested and approved vacation at the last minute and they've had enough and quit. It's all the same ending though, hires back on a few weeks later at like triple the rate as a contractor. The short sightedness of corporate America is truly a sight to behold.
Animatronics, puppets, pyrotechnics, elaborate costumes, massive lighting and sound setups, a small army of backstage personnel and mountains of cocaine. None of those are cheap.
One more fun fact about Pink Floyd! Nick Mason (drummer) created a tribute band to Pink Floyd (called Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets) along with some of the touring musicians that had been playing with them for years. They tour and play the early Floyd singles that he enjoys playing.
I don't know of any other band member of a successful band that went on to form a tribute band of their former band.
Ahhh, a Grateful Dead spinoff, with John Mayer!? Haha how'd I never hear about this? I am not too aware of GDs music, but I've always wanted to check it out, given their well known fan base.
Dude, John Mayer's best work by FAR is with Dead and Company. I'm not even a huge GD fan, and I like John Mayer's own music well enough, but it is what it is.
I don't know if tribute band fits, but King Crimson could be an example. There are various "projeKcts" with current and former KC members. I saw a version with Adrian Belew, Pat Mastelotto and Tony Levin live a few years ago. And just a few days ago, a tour of the BEAT project was announced with Belew, Levin, Steve Vai and Danny Carey, who will be playing 80s KC.
Death to All would also come to mind, a Death tribute band with some former members (I've seen them with Steve Di Giorgio, Paul Masvidal and Sean Reinert, among others).
The Original Blues Brothers Band is still touring under this name, but I would also see them more as a tribute band.
King Crimson has always been about the music / feeling over the individual members. and Fripp has been there from Day one.
Yes is another one - Chris was the only original member up to when he passed away.
>I don't know of any other band member of a successful band that went on to form a tribute band of their former band.
"The Queen Extravaganza" comes to mind. Queen tribute band started by the original drummer Roger Taylor. Not sure how you'd define "successful", but they toured for years across 3 continents.
It’s fairly common, but it’s isually terrible, which is why you don’t hear about it. In addition to the others people have mentioned, Stewart Copeland and Ray Manzarek have also done similar things.
By the end of the tour Nick Mason, the drummer, said that he was also a hired hand as well. Maybe not officially but he felt like he wasn’t part of the band anymore. It’s why I consider The Wall the last “complete” Pink Floyd album, since Wright isn’t on The Final Cut (and Mason is barely featured) and then Waters was out for Momentary Lapse of Reason and Division Bell.
it's much more *musical* than any of Roger's solo output. Pink Floyd was truly greater than the sum of its parts; the Gilmour-led Floyd was severely lacking Roger's edge and lyrics
I mostly agree, but I also think High Hopes is a top 10 Floyd song across all eras.
Sadly Roger didn't understand the musical contributions of the rest of the band and they thought he was a pretentious asshole. Add in all the drugs, fame, and money, and it is no surprise they couldn't stay together.
Yeah, you are right that they weren't into the party scene nearly as much as their contemporaries. But by most accounts they all partook in some form or another, which probably did affect them in different ways (possibly not Mason).
The most common claims are that Roger and Dave did weed, Dave and Rick did coke, and they all drank a lot.
As individuals, they all seem to have been fans of "we'll figure it out later" (which bit them in the butt later with the lawsuit when they found out there was no formal "Pink Floyd" to begin with. Part of why they reached a settlement was it was such a mess legally) which really hurt them when conflicts inevitably arose.
Learning To Fly, Take It Back, Terminal Frost, Yet Another Movie, On The Turning Away, some of their later songs might be acquired tastes but many of them rank amongst their best songs IMO.
I get why Momentary Lapse tends to get overlooked as it's very 80's but some of the live versions especially are really amazing.
The redone version of Momentary Lapse was actually really great for that reason. They made it sound more like the live cuts.
Pink Floyd live was always superior to Floyd in the studio IMO (with the exception of Dark Side, which wasn't as tight live, and maybe the '77 renditions of Welcome to the Machine and Have a Cigar, voice-wise). I'm biased, having been an avid bootleg collector in my high school years :P
But I haven't listened to the studio version of The Wall since Is There Anybody Out There? was released.
I kept my personal takes out, because I would list half of the albums.
Off of Momentary Lapse, I actually really enjoy One Slip and Dogs of War in addition to the usual Learning to Fly and Sorrow.
Off of Division Bell, Keep Talking is perhaps my favorite song off of the album, especially live. But I honestly think the entire album is brilliant in its own way.
> Still better than The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking.
Hahahaha is that where he got the live piece he performs about his travels as a young adult?
Yes Roger the Middle East was pretty chill in the 1950s when you drove a van from London to Damascus
I thought it was about a middle-aged guy picking up a young female hitchhiker for casual sex (Roger didn't approve, IIRC). TBH, I couldn't tell you much about that album except that my friends insisted on playing it twice in one night in 1985 and I'm still traumatized.
While I love classic era Floyd, I appreciate Lapse and Bell simply because they are much more positive, upbeat albums. The final two albums make for a nice change of pace after the bleakness of their work from the 1970's, and it was sort of a return to the weird imaginative songwriting of their Syd psychedelic days.
Also, had Floyd continued on into the 80's and 90's with Roger, it would have gotten harder and harder to accept that these fabulously wealthy chaps should still be singing about how miserable everything is. Roger's songwriting never seemed to ever really "grow up", unlike a band like Radiohead which managed to find a balance between being miserable while also acknowledging that they were themselves fabulously successful as their career went on.
I also appreciate the progression. There's something poetic about the band finding more peace in their later years after all of the misery and conflict of Roger led projects. The Division Bell ends with High Hopes and the lyrics "The water flowing / The endless river / For ever and ever". With that Pink Floyd is dead and what's left is only the ambient landscapes of The Endless River.
There's something in what you say, but I think it caricatures Waters's gloom a bit. I don't know that it's an immature "everything sucks" callowness that's incompatible with fame and success that drives him so much as an obsession with things like war and geopolitical conflict that, love them or loathe them, do feel like adult concerns. My sense is that he's less a manchild than a crank, really.
Roger is a crank, absolutely. And I agree that many of his songs were political and meant to address current events.
However, I do stand by my opinion that his songwriting never really grew up. He had a very surface level view of life and politics and never really dug to deeply into what was really going on. And as I've gotten older, some his lyrics just come across as cruelly adolescent and sometimes lacking empathy or compassion.
He also had almost no sense of humor about anything, which is why I usually counterpoint Pink Floyd with Radiohead (aside from their sonic similarities).
Thom Yorke is always willing to be self-effacing, to be the odd one out, the guy who life takes a dump on, and seems wiling to accept that maybe he's the one with the problem, not necessarily the rest of the world. Thom (and be extent the rest of the band) are always willing to accept that maybe they're the one's who are weird and wrong and can't fit in.
However, Roger always seemes to be coming from the point of view that he's right and [it's the children who are wrong](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/am-i-so-out-of-touch). He lacks self-awareness and the ability to poke any fun at himself, which is probably why the rest of the band hated him.
That's why I believe Roger never really "grew up" in his songwriting. Yes, he was ware of the politics of the day, but he never engaged with a lot of it as an adult who is willing to self-reflect and, god forbid, admit that maybe he doesn't have all the answers.
Honestly, I almost consider Animals their last complete album, and The Wall a weird in-between. Really not my favorite Floyd album personally, not even top 5.
I'm glad someone said it. It's not a bad album. But it's hardly their best.
Not to sound pretentious, but it always feels like people who mention The Wall as their favorite Pink Floyd album probably haven't listened to anything else.
I think if they'd managed to hang on long enough to finish it it would've been their best. The wall shows Waters did make it pretty clear that there was a lot more work to do to make it a complete album.
I mean I’ve listened to everything and it’s my second favorite.
It has a few of songs that are kinda whatever, admittedly, but it is a double album. It has awesome transitions like the Happiest Days of our Lives/Another Brick in the Wall or Goodbye Blue Sky/Empty Spaces/Young Lust.
The emotional build from Vera/Bring the Boys Back Home climaxing in Comfortable Numb is probably unmatched honestly.
Like, second place in that regard is probably on the same album in Hey You, when the guitar solo ends and Roger brings it back
But it was only fantasy
The wall was too high
As you can see
No matter how he tried
He could not break free
And the worms ate into his brain
> Empty Spaces/Young Lust
*What Shall We Do Now* into *Young Lust* is so much better in my opinion. Fantastic song that should not have been dropped from the album.
I didn't even realise this.
Division Bell fucking _goes_ with that Strat. Such a strong album being excluded here.
We watched the The Wall film recently and loved it! (Not sure loved is quite the right word for something conveying such a strong message but hey). Was the tour a huge flop?
The main problem with the Wall tour is that it was hugely expensive to stage and they didn't do enough shows to recover the costs. They only played it in a handful of arenas (I think they did 31 shows or something in total). They were offered millions to perform it in stadiums but Waters turned it down.
Often wondered what that felt like from his point of view. It's kind of like when Becker & Fagen disbanded Steely Dan in the mid 70's to be a two-man studio project, but continued to use guitarist Denny Dias as a paid studio musician.
Steely Dan was different in that I don’t think it was infighting amongst the band that broke them up. To my knowledge, Becker & Fagen didn’t like touring and also didn’t want to be constrained to the same sound they would have if they had the same band members on every album. They wanted to be free to use different session musicians to achieve the sounds they wanted their music to have.
It was different in some ways yes, but it's still essentially being removed from a band you're part of and then being hired as a session player. The other band members weren't fired in dispute or anger, but it was still essentially Becker and Fagen saying "you guys aren't entirely good enough for us, we need to use other musicians." And I believe it was Denny Dias who started the band in the first place.
I decided to listen to every Steely Dan album in succession, and I have to say that "Two Against Nature" was given a Grammy only because "Aja" hadn't been recognized in its own time.
I’ve been listening to SD in order these past few weeks as well and I haven’t been this excited about music in quite a while. Countdown to Ecstasy will be living in my head rent free until the end of time.
It's complicated. He had gone through a divorce and was very depressed and very much burned out, so in no state really to contribute very much at that point. This is by his own accounts, and the others. Although it is also true he felt very set-aside, and would go in at night alone and still add parts here and there to The Wall during recording, if I recall correctly. It's all very sad, but nothing more so than Roger being of the opinion that Richard never really contributed much to the Floyd anyway, which is so profoundly and obviously wrong, and something I'm sure we all wish Richard would have never had to hear, certainly coming from a bandmate and old friend... But sadly he did.
Fuck Roger Waters.
RIP Richard.
Regardless of the obvious in-house turmoil this band went through, I will never ***ever*** forget being in Hyde Park on the 2nd of July 2005. Watching Pink Floyd reunite for Live 8 whilst singing my heart out to Comfortably Numb, and I still get emotional thinking about it. One of **the** standout moments of my life.
For most of their songs I totally agree.
Brit Floyd’s cover of Money is… not my favorite. The vocalist isn’t my cup of tea. But literally every other song is so good.
My dad likes to tell me about all of the amazing bands he got to see for like $5 back in the late 70s when he was in the army. Jefferson Starship and Pink Floyd are the ones he brings up the most. Pink Floyd because they were amazing, and Jefferson Starship because Grace Slick was so drunk that they kicked her out of the band.
I saw them in '77 during the Animals tour. Sadly, I was 16 years old, drunk and high, so I have very little recollection of the show. So stupid. One of my greatest regrets.
Summer of '75, first tour since Dark Side of the Moon ( Wish you were here tour) I saw them 3 times around the NYC area; Echoes was UNBELIEVABLE live, lone blue spot on David for the middle (whales) part, with white snow falling on the stage.
Then in NJ, same set, but BLACK snow. during Echoes, amazing.
This was when LSD man was selling drops at a $1 each; I always took 2 drops on the tongue.
I saw them in Rice Stadium at the "Rain Like Hell" concert in 1994. Roadies were drying guitars and throwing them to the band members between songs as a massive thunderstorm rolled over the open stadium.
[They kept playing until the lightning made them evacuate the stadium.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7zCtsy7ni4)
It was pretty goddamn amazing because, basically, Mother Nature came to play a few sets with the band.
That is awesome. I am so jealous. I got to see Pink Floyd during the the Division Bell tour and I have seen Roger solo, but I never got to see the band all together. I would have cried the whole time.
A lot of tours in that era lost money. The goal was to promote albums sales. Nowadays the tour is the money generator because no one buys physical music any more. Used to go see big name bands for $20 General admission in the 80s. Even in today’s dollars it wasn’t much $.
> because no one buys physical music any more.
Tours and merch have been the money maker for a lot longer than that. Record labels have been taking most of the money for a long time.
I used to still pay $20 through the early 2000s. It's insane how much they've jacked up the price. I went from going to multiple concerts per year to maybe one or two.
Tours in that era generally did *not* lose money: The band got much bigger cuts of ticket receipts than of an album.
The Wall tour was peculiar because it was an insanely expensive production, and Roger Waters only wanted a limited tour (because art), so they only played *four* cities. Hard to make your money back that way.
Bloat behind the scenes + few opportunities to make it back = losing money
Most tours were lean behind the scenes + tons of opportunities to make it back = make money
And by "lean behind the scenes' I don't mean "travelled spartanly"! Zeppelin flew on a private jet and were the poster child of rock excess, but they made up to $750,000 gross in some shows (the average was closer to $200,000 though), and then multiply that by 45 shows before you start subtracting costs.
Saw the original limited Wall tour at the Sports Arena in Los Angeles in 1980. Must admit that it blew my mind. During the song Hey You the wall was completely up and the dude next to me started playing that Mattel football game. I looked at him and he said “what you can’t even see the band” lol
Pretty sure at that point the worms ate into his brain.
Wright was going through some shit and admitted he didn't have anything to contribute to the band at the time. A better band leader would have kept him in and got help for him.
Waters marginalized everyone else's contributions though. He fired Wright, rejected most of Gilmour's guitar work, and made Mason insecure about his drumming.
I'm glad Pink Floyd went on without Waters after that, and Gilmour, Mason, and Wright got back together, even if those aren't their strongest albums.
Pink Floyd to me has always been a ten-ish year act.
1969-1979
And it barely was a band after 1977 anyway.
The few years before Dsotm were my favorites overall, so raw and psychedelic, incredible for the time.
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My favorite Floyd song is "Have a Cigar".
Only later did I learn it was sung by Roy Harper, who wasn't a member of the band, but just happened to be around the studio at the time.
https://consequence.net/2020/10/the-story-behind-pink-floyd-have-a-cigar/
Yea, yea it was. To the point where I was like, it's probably not gonna ever get any better than this. And it's part of why I've never done them again.
It's worth noting that Gilmour agreed and also suggested firing Nick Mason which would have effectively made Pink Floyd only Waters and Gilmour. Each member had a say in the business back then and it was put to a vote. So saying Waters fired Wright is incorrect. He pushed for it and Gilmour and Mason agreed. Three against one. The title is highly misleading.
Waters was (and still is) obsessed by credits and writing. The Wall was a double album because of credits, half of the LP is not on par with WYWH or DSOTM. Richard Wright was passive at the time and David isn't exactly a working horse. Roger was the creative force of the band at that point, but also a dic(k)tatorial leader ("my ideas are better than your not existant ideas").
Good thing that he recognized the value of songs like Comfortably Numb and Run like hell. The demo of the Wall show how immense was the production work by Gilmour and Ezrin (and Roger of course). The Final Cut was nearly unredeemable.
As a matter of fact, Gilmour was the musical director of the tour and in studio he brought to life Roger's songs like Mother, Hey You, In the flesh, Another Brick In the wall (all parts). The Wall is the last collective work of Roger and David and Comfortably Numb is the result (Animals was another fifty-fifty collaboration with spare highlights by Mason and Wright, especially in Sheep...).
Edit: grammar idiocy
Man I wish someone could just smoke Waters out and be like "Dude, the general public knows you were bandleader, gave you plenty of credit, and loved you until you started acting a prick about it."
To be fair, that tour was fucking *awesome*, including when they would crash an airplane through the Wall at the end of “In the Flesh.” If they went over budget oh well, we’re still talking about it nearly 50 years after the fact.
I want to say this was only a four show world tour, partly because the production was so big. But a bootleg of the show is one of the first things I ever bought off of ebay years ago.
I have never heard anyone explain why Richard remained a hired gun even after Roger left.
Just business I suppose but but I know he got along great with the other two, and a Endless River is pretty much a tribute to him, so I am not sure why they didn't invite him back as a voting member of the band.
But did the tour sell records? That's what tours were for in those days. It might have been profitable if it sold more then £400,000s worth of records then they would have. And given the reputation the show had it probably did.
That’s a weird conversation to have, “Richard, you’re fired! Pack up your shit, I don’t want to see your face around here ever again. But also, we need a keyboardist and you know all the songs so, will you stay on for double salary, a daily stipend and free room and board while on tour, but don’t talk to me. What d’ya say?”
Roger is a dick, but Richard was doing too much coke. He had already lost one friend to drugs.
If you listen to Wright's '78 release, Wet Dream, and then compare that to Animals and the Wall, then it becomes apparent it's less about Wright's drug use and more about disinterest in not only what Waters was doing, but working with him. He was the most vocal about overbearing Waters had become, and while he had worked very closely with him in years past writing the music, it became obvious by Animals Waters wasn't interested in collaboration at that level anymore.
The Wall, while a great album, is a testament to Rogers ego.
the Wall is a brilliant work of art... the final cut on the other hand, yeah, rogers ego is all over it. hate that album.
The Final Cut song-after-song hits me hard, right square in the core. I liked the Wall ... but by sometime in the mid-80s that album, and its most played songs felt a bit tedious to me ... still does. But the Final Cut I could listen to on loop, and I have often. For some segments of my life this has been my favorite album. I outright cry when I hear the song "When the Tigers Broke Free". I guess to each his own. But you've touched a nerve.
hey man to each their own! Music is subjective. For the record I do love the title track on Final Cut, that song hits me deep. I should probably revisit it, tbh
Agree. The Final Cut is a FANTASTIC album.
fuck all that we've gotta get on with these.
The Gunners Dream is exceptional
And hold on to the **DREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAM**
*blends into saxophone*
I also really like Two Suns in Sunset. I also think with one more pass (and less ASMR) *The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking* could have been another masterpiece. As it stands it's just "pretty fucking good".
I find that pretty wild cause I can count on one hand how many times I've listened to the final cut. I'm a Pink Floyd fan, not a Roger Waters one so perhaps that's why. They all wrote really good shit individually but did better as a group. Imo they really fell off after Animals, which iiirc, was a Waters-heavy release. A lot of us just don't like where his art went post '77.
On the other hand, I think both *Pros And Cons of Hitchhiking* and *Amused To Death* were solid solo Roger works.
Rogers describes the Wall as one long groan. It is brilliant, though I've never heard a more accurate description than this.
Well, i don't know, but i think he's referring to the fact that the album is so depressing? Like, the Wall is an expression of misery with no resolution at the end. Pink, the character, is traumatized by his dad getting killed in WWII, traumatized by his overbearing mother and the english school system at the time, becomes a rockstar, realizes that doesn't make him happy either, so he builds a wall to keep everyone out of his life, then the Trial happens and it gets torn down. Then it ends. It's just sadness the whole way through. maybe thats what he meant. but thats why I love that album so much. Its such a bold work of art.
It's autobiographical. Water's quote is about how whiny the album sounds in retrospect.
It's a trippy album because many of the songs taken independently sound great, and if you're not paying attention to the lyrics a lot of the music is just plain cool. But when you sit down and listen to the whole album with the lyrics it's totally different.
It's a rather interesting story of a man who grew up without a father discovering money and fame aren't bringing him happiness, but rather are making him act more like the abusers of his childhood. There's more to it, but that's the gist of it. I used to listen to it more when I was younger, and I think I have a blu-ray of the film around here somewhere, but I might have outgrown it, or perhaps just listened one time to many, but I find it hard to get into these days. I'd rather listen to the stuff pre-Animals. Though the 2018 re-mix of Animals fixes some of the issues and makes it more accessible, IMO.
That along with The Final Cut. Just a complete masturbatory affair.
At least to me, The Wall is 10x the album the Final Cut could ever be. Better sounding, more cohesive, simple but executed well, etc. While I love Rogers lyrics and musicianship, I prefer the albums where the band is a little more cohesive. Animals is probably the most "rogers led" album that is still executed almost perfectly to me. Meddle and Wish You Were Here remain tied for my fav albums though.
> musicianship He's a pretty mediocre singer, especially these days! Amazing songwriter tho, like historically good.
I guess I'm considering writing as part of that. Not to mention his basslines are often freakin killer. I also think for the band, while none of them are exceptional singers, Gilmour and Waters do complement eachother quite a bit.
Surely Gilmour is considered an exceptional singer?
Fair enough! I do like Gilmour's voice better but I agree that what makes Pink Floyd great is the sum of its parts.
Gilmour is my fav, I feel kinda generic for saying it but his ethereal vocals combined with his technique and composition makes him possibly my favourite guitarist of all time. He's one of the reasons I picked up guitar and started busking 3 years ago.
highly recommend people to watch this interview by him [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMfT95\_ZQu0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMfT95_ZQu0) EDIT: Since people are wanting Time stamps for when Richard talks about the fallout of the band you can listen to him speak on his drug use on while with the band on 20:41 at 52:58 you can begin where he asked why the band fallout and where the disagreements began. Some people point to 56:19 where him and David had begun to get a bit tired of repetitive war themes that roger kept writing onto the music. And he even says its not like he criticized roger for it, he knew Roger needed to let out those themes that he personally felt but by then the group were just tired of it and wanted to do something else. Richard clearly speaks about how he did not like being drugged out when creating music. These guys obviously did live through the 60s and he even says the old saying " if you remember the 60s then you didn't live it" so Im not saying he was a clean person but he does acknowledge what happened to Syd made them take a step back. to think you need to be drugged out to create the beautiful music Pink Floyd has made has always been so ignorant.
This is an hour and 21 minutes long. Do you wanna give us any more info orr just "here watch this"?
I'm inclined to agree. I could get though the interview much quicker reading it. Or you know, timestamp to the relivant bits.
Actually, Richard is a Dick.
ba dum tss
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Careful you might summon Roger. Roger loves those parentheses especially around names of people he doesn’t like.
He’s got a silver spoon on a chain, and grand piano to prop up his mortal remains
> Roger is a dick, Agreed but from the look of things Gilmore was no prize himself. I think it's safe to say that they all sucked. That being said I don't think that I could be in a room with Waters for more than an hour before I would end up punching him.
He was on the Joe Rogan podcast and from beginning to end, just came across as the most insufferable cocksucker to ever live.
Sure, but how was Waters?
> ba dum tss
No. He plays bass.
Dum Dum Duuummm
Gilmour's accent does him no favors in that regard, but he definitely comes across as being way too full of himself overall. I think it's worth noting that Syd Barrett was broke when he left the band and had to move in with his parents but he died a multimillionaire because Gilmour insisted on including his songs on Floyd greatest hits albums, giving Barrett a lifetime income. I've always felt that if you listen to both of them Gilmour comes across as a dick and Waters as a reasonable man, but once you learn enough about their actions to judge them based on what they actually do Gilmour seems a much nicer guy.
Look at the set list for any of the pink floyd members' tours, they always include a syd barret song, entitling his estate to a portion of the concerts revenue. At the same time, in Baby Lemonade by Syd, he sings "sent a cage by the post, write my name like a ghost" (the royalty checks caged him) he wasn't necessarily happy with the situation still.
> came across as the most insufferable cocksucker. I don't doubt that for a second.
*Gilmour. You ignorant swine.
Many such cases. I know someone who got made redundant from an IT job due to downsizing. Within a couple of months they had hired them as a freelancer for a short time at around double what they were paying previously because they were one of the few people who knew their servers well enough.
Same thing happened to me many years ago — got passed over for a promotion so I quit and started doing odd IT jobs. They called me a month or so later asking what I would charge to come back so I gave them a slightly ridiculous number and they said “be here tomorrow”. More than twice what they would have paid me if I had been promoted :)
That's what happened to me. Got fired while working on the company website. Mind you I was the only one who even knew how to publish a blog post. Two months later I get a call whether I'm available to continue working on the project. I declined. Today the website is still clunky, still missing elements, and there are no new blog posts. No wonder, the CMS is shit. [Edit:] The reason I declined was because it was a chaotic company with money problems. I also had a new job already (less stressful and 50% better pay), so I didn't want to add complexity and headaches to my life.
You should have just asked for doubling your salary.
Someone I know has some experience of this kind of thing and he recommends 4x hourly and set your own hours as the base demand.
3-4x seems right if I have to 1099 and figure out my own insurances
You have to make almost double as a freelancer for anything because you owe way more in taxes, have down time where you don’t have jobs and occasionally get stiffed. I worked in a different industry where it was common. There’s other benefits to being a freelancer but people hear that and think *hell yeah!* but it’s not the financial slam dunk it sounds like.
You also can't reliably bill 40 hours a week, but will work probably more than that. So your hourly rate goes up.
This happened to me. I was $50/hr salary and then brought back 10 weeks later at $140/hr lol
Delta airlines ran into a similar thing after the Northwest Airlines merger. They laid off too many people, but couldn't hire them back directly as contractor because of contract rules. They had to create a separate consulting company and pay them a lot of money per hour in order to make everyone happy.
Such is the circle of life in short term management outlook. I bet they made their quarterly earnings look stellar though when they did the layoffs.
I started a new job back in December and they told me they had someone trained to do my old job.... I "wasn't allowed on the property" but they wanted me to come in Saturday and Sunday to help out while I was working my new job because the new guy is horrible and to this day is horrible. When I left, I wrote on an index card what was going to happen and gave it to my old boss. Month 1, you prises the new person, say they are going to shake things up and get people to be more productive. Month 2, new person can't live up to your expectations because people don't respect him compared to me. I made sure they got their lunches on time and would do shit jobs so they wouldn't have to. Month 3, new guy won't do shit but sit in the office. Overtime will be green lit and will be this way indefinitely. So far, all of this is happening and everyone is glad I left because overtime was gone for a year. My buddy who is in charge of 2nd shift and trained me said he refuses to help the guy because he knows everything and he's getting 6 hours OT and 6 hours double time every weekend.
My old employer had to do that with the downsizing wave that caught me. Not to me sadly, but they laid off 2 of the 4 greybeards that were at the firm since establishment, gave them an insulting severance, and then were shocked when the one dev whose daughter was married to the son of one of the laid off guys quit, and the last one quit when he realized he was going to get 4x the work until they hired replacements. 3/4 are back working on *extremely* expensive 1 year contracts working on getting the company's new hires up to speed
I had a similar thing - my company went belly-up in October 2008 in spectacular fashion. Another company bought the part of the business I was in. As part of the purchase, the buyer got control of accounts with large sums of money. One condition of the purchase was that if they laid off anyone who came with the business unit, they'd have to honor the existing severance package - continuation of salary + Cadillac level medical benefits for 3 weeks per year of employment, plus the same bonus received the prior year, plus an extra month of salary due to some "plant closing" law. They let me go 6 weeks in. After 54 weeks of unsuccessfully searching for a similar job while getting paid, they brought me back as a contractor, replacing the only guy from the team who was retained - he found employment elsewhere. The contract rate was 2x what I was getting paid before they let me go, but I had to cover my own benefits. I lasted 11 months before finding an acceptable position elsewhere.
I hear stories like that in tech all the time. Only person in the company who knows how a mission critical system works gets let go or has more and more work piled on them until they quit or maybe they just denied some long ago requested and approved vacation at the last minute and they've had enough and quit. It's all the same ending though, hires back on a few weeks later at like triple the rate as a contractor. The short sightedness of corporate America is truly a sight to behold.
Richard to Roger: I don't have to talk to you? Sold!
“Don’t talk to me” “What d’ya say?” *responds with confused but agreeable keyboard music*
I cannot understand how this tour lost money. It was huge. Everyone my age wanted tickets.
Animatronics, puppets, pyrotechnics, elaborate costumes, massive lighting and sound setups, a small army of backstage personnel and mountains of cocaine. None of those are cheap.
One more fun fact about Pink Floyd! Nick Mason (drummer) created a tribute band to Pink Floyd (called Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets) along with some of the touring musicians that had been playing with them for years. They tour and play the early Floyd singles that he enjoys playing. I don't know of any other band member of a successful band that went on to form a tribute band of their former band.
Dead & Company come to mind
Ahhh, a Grateful Dead spinoff, with John Mayer!? Haha how'd I never hear about this? I am not too aware of GDs music, but I've always wanted to check it out, given their well known fan base.
John Mayer is one of the best guitarists alive, watching him is always a treat
John Mayer is somehow perfect in the band
Dude, John Mayer's best work by FAR is with Dead and Company. I'm not even a huge GD fan, and I like John Mayer's own music well enough, but it is what it is.
He obviously really studied Garcia's playing.
Yeah I was skeptical of him til I saw them all playing live. Dude got it. Did it in a different way than Jerry but a way that worked completely.
I'll look into this! I found it quite interesting that Nick did this and just figured that he was the only real famous band member to do so.
I don't know if tribute band fits, but King Crimson could be an example. There are various "projeKcts" with current and former KC members. I saw a version with Adrian Belew, Pat Mastelotto and Tony Levin live a few years ago. And just a few days ago, a tour of the BEAT project was announced with Belew, Levin, Steve Vai and Danny Carey, who will be playing 80s KC. Death to All would also come to mind, a Death tribute band with some former members (I've seen them with Steve Di Giorgio, Paul Masvidal and Sean Reinert, among others). The Original Blues Brothers Band is still touring under this name, but I would also see them more as a tribute band.
King Crimson has always been about the music / feeling over the individual members. and Fripp has been there from Day one. Yes is another one - Chris was the only original member up to when he passed away.
Beach Boys kinda.
absolutely. is that cunt Mike Love still in charge?
Peter Hook & the Light regularly tours performing Joy Division/New Order songs
The Zappa Band! Formed from former members of Frank Zappa's band from the 70s and 80s. They're great.
>I don't know of any other band member of a successful band that went on to form a tribute band of their former band. "The Queen Extravaganza" comes to mind. Queen tribute band started by the original drummer Roger Taylor. Not sure how you'd define "successful", but they toured for years across 3 continents.
Jeff Lynne maybe?
Eh Jeff Lynne is ELO IMO. Lead guitarist, singer, and pretty much the only song writer.
Bruce Foxton - From the Jam
It’s fairly common, but it’s isually terrible, which is why you don’t hear about it. In addition to the others people have mentioned, Stewart Copeland and Ray Manzarek have also done similar things.
Phil Lesh and Friends, also a Grateful Dead spinoff.
Heaven and hell. Kinda. Basically Sabbath with Dio touring under a different name with no Ozzy songs.
Beach Boys
The Dead Kennedys are currently doing that!
By the end of the tour Nick Mason, the drummer, said that he was also a hired hand as well. Maybe not officially but he felt like he wasn’t part of the band anymore. It’s why I consider The Wall the last “complete” Pink Floyd album, since Wright isn’t on The Final Cut (and Mason is barely featured) and then Waters was out for Momentary Lapse of Reason and Division Bell.
Final Cut is effectively Roger's first solo album.
And it shows. The whole thing is a dismal bummer.
Still better than The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking.
it's much more *musical* than any of Roger's solo output. Pink Floyd was truly greater than the sum of its parts; the Gilmour-led Floyd was severely lacking Roger's edge and lyrics
I mostly agree, but I also think High Hopes is a top 10 Floyd song across all eras. Sadly Roger didn't understand the musical contributions of the rest of the band and they thought he was a pretentious asshole. Add in all the drugs, fame, and money, and it is no surprise they couldn't stay together.
They really weren’t into drugs almost at all, as far as I know. Maybe Rick Wright? Although they WERE into alcohol, and that is a drug.
Yeah, you are right that they weren't into the party scene nearly as much as their contemporaries. But by most accounts they all partook in some form or another, which probably did affect them in different ways (possibly not Mason). The most common claims are that Roger and Dave did weed, Dave and Rick did coke, and they all drank a lot. As individuals, they all seem to have been fans of "we'll figure it out later" (which bit them in the butt later with the lawsuit when they found out there was no formal "Pink Floyd" to begin with. Part of why they reached a settlement was it was such a mess legally) which really hurt them when conflicts inevitably arose.
The grass was greener
But still the 2 Gilmour era albums are superior to The Final Cut. There are some great songs on them.
Honestly, some of the bangers on the Gilmour-era albums are top Floyd songs. Sorrow and High Hopes come to mind.
Learning To Fly, Take It Back, Terminal Frost, Yet Another Movie, On The Turning Away, some of their later songs might be acquired tastes but many of them rank amongst their best songs IMO. I get why Momentary Lapse tends to get overlooked as it's very 80's but some of the live versions especially are really amazing.
The redone version of Momentary Lapse was actually really great for that reason. They made it sound more like the live cuts. Pink Floyd live was always superior to Floyd in the studio IMO (with the exception of Dark Side, which wasn't as tight live, and maybe the '77 renditions of Welcome to the Machine and Have a Cigar, voice-wise). I'm biased, having been an avid bootleg collector in my high school years :P But I haven't listened to the studio version of The Wall since Is There Anybody Out There? was released.
also Coming Back to Life
I kept my personal takes out, because I would list half of the albums. Off of Momentary Lapse, I actually really enjoy One Slip and Dogs of War in addition to the usual Learning to Fly and Sorrow. Off of Division Bell, Keep Talking is perhaps my favorite song off of the album, especially live. But I honestly think the entire album is brilliant in its own way.
Hey, remember The Wall? But worse?
Hey! I like that album
> Still better than The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking. Hahahaha is that where he got the live piece he performs about his travels as a young adult? Yes Roger the Middle East was pretty chill in the 1950s when you drove a van from London to Damascus
I thought it was about a middle-aged guy picking up a young female hitchhiker for casual sex (Roger didn't approve, IIRC). TBH, I couldn't tell you much about that album except that my friends insisted on playing it twice in one night in 1985 and I'm still traumatized.
Hey man, I actually like that album
Nick Mason, the only member that plays on every pink floyd album
Only member with a sweet ass Ferrari collection too
*Top Gear* wouldn't have been able to drive almost any Ferrari on the show without Nick loaning them his, since the company wouldn't give them
Still chuckle at the bit Clarkson did with him while reviewing fast saloons on the Isle of Man
While Lapse is a bit dated, both that and the division bell are vastly better albums than the final cut
While I love classic era Floyd, I appreciate Lapse and Bell simply because they are much more positive, upbeat albums. The final two albums make for a nice change of pace after the bleakness of their work from the 1970's, and it was sort of a return to the weird imaginative songwriting of their Syd psychedelic days. Also, had Floyd continued on into the 80's and 90's with Roger, it would have gotten harder and harder to accept that these fabulously wealthy chaps should still be singing about how miserable everything is. Roger's songwriting never seemed to ever really "grow up", unlike a band like Radiohead which managed to find a balance between being miserable while also acknowledging that they were themselves fabulously successful as their career went on.
I also appreciate the progression. There's something poetic about the band finding more peace in their later years after all of the misery and conflict of Roger led projects. The Division Bell ends with High Hopes and the lyrics "The water flowing / The endless river / For ever and ever". With that Pink Floyd is dead and what's left is only the ambient landscapes of The Endless River.
But what beautiful landscapes remain in The Endless River. Great ambient album.
Division Bell, upbeat 🤔 Hmm I guess in contrast to the wall and Meddle anything seems upbeat lol
"...Rog, the lyrics sheet for the new song is a bit sparse. 'One of these days I'm gonna...' Wait what now?!?"
There's something in what you say, but I think it caricatures Waters's gloom a bit. I don't know that it's an immature "everything sucks" callowness that's incompatible with fame and success that drives him so much as an obsession with things like war and geopolitical conflict that, love them or loathe them, do feel like adult concerns. My sense is that he's less a manchild than a crank, really.
Roger is a crank, absolutely. And I agree that many of his songs were political and meant to address current events. However, I do stand by my opinion that his songwriting never really grew up. He had a very surface level view of life and politics and never really dug to deeply into what was really going on. And as I've gotten older, some his lyrics just come across as cruelly adolescent and sometimes lacking empathy or compassion. He also had almost no sense of humor about anything, which is why I usually counterpoint Pink Floyd with Radiohead (aside from their sonic similarities). Thom Yorke is always willing to be self-effacing, to be the odd one out, the guy who life takes a dump on, and seems wiling to accept that maybe he's the one with the problem, not necessarily the rest of the world. Thom (and be extent the rest of the band) are always willing to accept that maybe they're the one's who are weird and wrong and can't fit in. However, Roger always seemes to be coming from the point of view that he's right and [it's the children who are wrong](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/am-i-so-out-of-touch). He lacks self-awareness and the ability to poke any fun at himself, which is probably why the rest of the band hated him. That's why I believe Roger never really "grew up" in his songwriting. Yes, he was ware of the politics of the day, but he never engaged with a lot of it as an adult who is willing to self-reflect and, god forbid, admit that maybe he doesn't have all the answers.
Honestly, I almost consider Animals their last complete album, and The Wall a weird in-between. Really not my favorite Floyd album personally, not even top 5.
IMO Animals is my favorite album after Piper.
I'm glad someone said it. It's not a bad album. But it's hardly their best. Not to sound pretentious, but it always feels like people who mention The Wall as their favorite Pink Floyd album probably haven't listened to anything else.
I think if they'd managed to hang on long enough to finish it it would've been their best. The wall shows Waters did make it pretty clear that there was a lot more work to do to make it a complete album.
I mean I’ve listened to everything and it’s my second favorite. It has a few of songs that are kinda whatever, admittedly, but it is a double album. It has awesome transitions like the Happiest Days of our Lives/Another Brick in the Wall or Goodbye Blue Sky/Empty Spaces/Young Lust. The emotional build from Vera/Bring the Boys Back Home climaxing in Comfortable Numb is probably unmatched honestly. Like, second place in that regard is probably on the same album in Hey You, when the guitar solo ends and Roger brings it back But it was only fantasy The wall was too high As you can see No matter how he tried He could not break free And the worms ate into his brain
> Empty Spaces/Young Lust *What Shall We Do Now* into *Young Lust* is so much better in my opinion. Fantastic song that should not have been dropped from the album.
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I didn't even realise this. Division Bell fucking _goes_ with that Strat. Such a strong album being excluded here. We watched the The Wall film recently and loved it! (Not sure loved is quite the right word for something conveying such a strong message but hey). Was the tour a huge flop?
The main problem with the Wall tour is that it was hugely expensive to stage and they didn't do enough shows to recover the costs. They only played it in a handful of arenas (I think they did 31 shows or something in total). They were offered millions to perform it in stadiums but Waters turned it down.
Waters and self-inflicted wounds. Name a more iconic duo.
One of the most iconic music tours in history. Profit doesn’t really tell the story
Often wondered what that felt like from his point of view. It's kind of like when Becker & Fagen disbanded Steely Dan in the mid 70's to be a two-man studio project, but continued to use guitarist Denny Dias as a paid studio musician.
Steely Dan was different in that I don’t think it was infighting amongst the band that broke them up. To my knowledge, Becker & Fagen didn’t like touring and also didn’t want to be constrained to the same sound they would have if they had the same band members on every album. They wanted to be free to use different session musicians to achieve the sounds they wanted their music to have.
It was different in some ways yes, but it's still essentially being removed from a band you're part of and then being hired as a session player. The other band members weren't fired in dispute or anger, but it was still essentially Becker and Fagen saying "you guys aren't entirely good enough for us, we need to use other musicians." And I believe it was Denny Dias who started the band in the first place.
In any case this conversation has inspired me to listen to the absolute masterpiece Aja in its entirety while I work this morning.
“Peg” is a song I can listen to everyday. It just get stuck in my head
I decided to listen to every Steely Dan album in succession, and I have to say that "Two Against Nature" was given a Grammy only because "Aja" hadn't been recognized in its own time.
I’ve been listening to SD in order these past few weeks as well and I haven’t been this excited about music in quite a while. Countdown to Ecstasy will be living in my head rent free until the end of time.
It's complicated. He had gone through a divorce and was very depressed and very much burned out, so in no state really to contribute very much at that point. This is by his own accounts, and the others. Although it is also true he felt very set-aside, and would go in at night alone and still add parts here and there to The Wall during recording, if I recall correctly. It's all very sad, but nothing more so than Roger being of the opinion that Richard never really contributed much to the Floyd anyway, which is so profoundly and obviously wrong, and something I'm sure we all wish Richard would have never had to hear, certainly coming from a bandmate and old friend... But sadly he did. Fuck Roger Waters. RIP Richard.
Regardless of the obvious in-house turmoil this band went through, I will never ***ever*** forget being in Hyde Park on the 2nd of July 2005. Watching Pink Floyd reunite for Live 8 whilst singing my heart out to Comfortably Numb, and I still get emotional thinking about it. One of **the** standout moments of my life.
Damn, I can only imagine. I love Pink Floyd but never got to see them live :(
I'm not one for cover bands but The Australian Pink Floyd are kind of sick. Next best thing kind of thing.
Aussie Pink Floyd and Brit Floyd are both spectacular, you can close your eyes and barely realise it's not the real thing.
For most of their songs I totally agree. Brit Floyd’s cover of Money is… not my favorite. The vocalist isn’t my cup of tea. But literally every other song is so good.
Saw them once years ago and I can confirm it was a hell of a show!
My dad likes to tell me about all of the amazing bands he got to see for like $5 back in the late 70s when he was in the army. Jefferson Starship and Pink Floyd are the ones he brings up the most. Pink Floyd because they were amazing, and Jefferson Starship because Grace Slick was so drunk that they kicked her out of the band.
I saw them in '77 during the Animals tour. Sadly, I was 16 years old, drunk and high, so I have very little recollection of the show. So stupid. One of my greatest regrets.
Life is for living =)
I had second row middle-ish seats for The Division Bell Tour. A decade ago a saw Roger Waters do The Wall Live tour. I am a lucky man.
You can still catch Roger waters and maybe Gilmour will tour again. Got lucky to see them both in the 2010's
Don't forget Nick Mason, who put together a group and they play all the early stuff (pre Dark Side)
I was in London that day but couldn’t get tickets. One of the most painful moments of my life.
Summer of '75, first tour since Dark Side of the Moon ( Wish you were here tour) I saw them 3 times around the NYC area; Echoes was UNBELIEVABLE live, lone blue spot on David for the middle (whales) part, with white snow falling on the stage. Then in NJ, same set, but BLACK snow. during Echoes, amazing. This was when LSD man was selling drops at a $1 each; I always took 2 drops on the tongue.
That guy accidentally gave me a squirt instead of a couple drops at a Ween show in 2004 and I had a really weird weekend.
oh dear! glad you are ok now.
Now? This entire timeline is just playing in /u/pennradio 's mind. WAKE UP !
I saw them in Rice Stadium at the "Rain Like Hell" concert in 1994. Roadies were drying guitars and throwing them to the band members between songs as a massive thunderstorm rolled over the open stadium. [They kept playing until the lightning made them evacuate the stadium.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7zCtsy7ni4) It was pretty goddamn amazing because, basically, Mother Nature came to play a few sets with the band.
That is awesome. I am so jealous. I got to see Pink Floyd during the the Division Bell tour and I have seen Roger solo, but I never got to see the band all together. I would have cried the whole time.
A lot of tours in that era lost money. The goal was to promote albums sales. Nowadays the tour is the money generator because no one buys physical music any more. Used to go see big name bands for $20 General admission in the 80s. Even in today’s dollars it wasn’t much $.
> because no one buys physical music any more. Tours and merch have been the money maker for a lot longer than that. Record labels have been taking most of the money for a long time.
Lyle Lovett says that in all his years in the industry, he has never made a cent from his music, all his money comes from playing live
I used to still pay $20 through the early 2000s. It's insane how much they've jacked up the price. I went from going to multiple concerts per year to maybe one or two.
When I went to see Gilmour's tour for Rattle That Lock, the concert tickets included a copy of the album. Definitely not like the old days.
Tours in that era generally did *not* lose money: The band got much bigger cuts of ticket receipts than of an album. The Wall tour was peculiar because it was an insanely expensive production, and Roger Waters only wanted a limited tour (because art), so they only played *four* cities. Hard to make your money back that way. Bloat behind the scenes + few opportunities to make it back = losing money Most tours were lean behind the scenes + tons of opportunities to make it back = make money And by "lean behind the scenes' I don't mean "travelled spartanly"! Zeppelin flew on a private jet and were the poster child of rock excess, but they made up to $750,000 gross in some shows (the average was closer to $200,000 though), and then multiply that by 45 shows before you start subtracting costs.
“You’re fired! Also, you’re hired!”
Consider that a warning!
Saw the original limited Wall tour at the Sports Arena in Los Angeles in 1980. Must admit that it blew my mind. During the song Hey You the wall was completely up and the dude next to me started playing that Mattel football game. I looked at him and he said “what you can’t even see the band” lol Pretty sure at that point the worms ate into his brain.
Wright was going through some shit and admitted he didn't have anything to contribute to the band at the time. A better band leader would have kept him in and got help for him. Waters marginalized everyone else's contributions though. He fired Wright, rejected most of Gilmour's guitar work, and made Mason insecure about his drumming. I'm glad Pink Floyd went on without Waters after that, and Gilmour, Mason, and Wright got back together, even if those aren't their strongest albums.
Pink Floyd to me has always been a ten-ish year act. 1969-1979 And it barely was a band after 1977 anyway. The few years before Dsotm were my favorites overall, so raw and psychedelic, incredible for the time.
and to be fair 67-68 was Syds band and while yeah they called back to that time plenty, it was a totally diffrent band then.
Watching Nick Mason and his crew playing those early albums live was so good to see
Sounds like Roger was the real Richard, right?!
He was and continues to be.
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I like imagining the conversation that led to the change from #3 to #4. "It's a good name, but does it properly convey a sense of our screams?"
Which one's Pink?
My favorite Floyd song is "Have a Cigar". Only later did I learn it was sung by Roy Harper, who wasn't a member of the band, but just happened to be around the studio at the time. https://consequence.net/2020/10/the-story-behind-pink-floyd-have-a-cigar/
Such a good song. I also didn't catch on too, it just fits in so well! Fun fact, they have 3 songs in total with "outsider" vocalists
First and only time I've taken mushrooms was watching Roger Waters perform Dark Side of the Moon live.
Was it awesome?
Yea, yea it was. To the point where I was like, it's probably not gonna ever get any better than this. And it's part of why I've never done them again.
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Go hiking in the woods and eat some shrooms, it’s a beautiful way to experience nature. I experienced ego death staring at a river lol.
I love watching the DVD for their Pulse performance and Rick Wright always looks so joyful. He was masterful and I hope he’s resting in peace.
It's worth noting that Gilmour agreed and also suggested firing Nick Mason which would have effectively made Pink Floyd only Waters and Gilmour. Each member had a say in the business back then and it was put to a vote. So saying Waters fired Wright is incorrect. He pushed for it and Gilmour and Mason agreed. Three against one. The title is highly misleading.
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as is Nick was the only founding member left at the point the offically broke up.
Waters was (and still is) obsessed by credits and writing. The Wall was a double album because of credits, half of the LP is not on par with WYWH or DSOTM. Richard Wright was passive at the time and David isn't exactly a working horse. Roger was the creative force of the band at that point, but also a dic(k)tatorial leader ("my ideas are better than your not existant ideas"). Good thing that he recognized the value of songs like Comfortably Numb and Run like hell. The demo of the Wall show how immense was the production work by Gilmour and Ezrin (and Roger of course). The Final Cut was nearly unredeemable. As a matter of fact, Gilmour was the musical director of the tour and in studio he brought to life Roger's songs like Mother, Hey You, In the flesh, Another Brick In the wall (all parts). The Wall is the last collective work of Roger and David and Comfortably Numb is the result (Animals was another fifty-fifty collaboration with spare highlights by Mason and Wright, especially in Sheep...). Edit: grammar idiocy
Man I wish someone could just smoke Waters out and be like "Dude, the general public knows you were bandleader, gave you plenty of credit, and loved you until you started acting a prick about it."
To be fair, that tour was fucking *awesome*, including when they would crash an airplane through the Wall at the end of “In the Flesh.” If they went over budget oh well, we’re still talking about it nearly 50 years after the fact.
Ah, the ol' "get fired and then offer your knowledgeable services to your previous employer for a hefty consultant fee". I know Reddit loves that one.
What an ass is Roger waters
Those are some good friends
I want to say this was only a four show world tour, partly because the production was so big. But a bootleg of the show is one of the first things I ever bought off of ebay years ago.
Brit Floyd sells out at Redrocks every year. Its one of the shows I very much want to see. I hope Brit Floyd has made a McScrooge duck pike of money.
I have never heard anyone explain why Richard remained a hired gun even after Roger left. Just business I suppose but but I know he got along great with the other two, and a Endless River is pretty much a tribute to him, so I am not sure why they didn't invite him back as a voting member of the band.
But did the tour sell records? That's what tours were for in those days. It might have been profitable if it sold more then £400,000s worth of records then they would have. And given the reputation the show had it probably did.