(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Fri 13 March 2026 15:45, UK
Roger Waters hasn’t necessarily been known as the most empathetic member of the rock and roll community.
He does have his moments where he can reach out to help those who are feeling the same pain that he felt when making albums like The Wall, but a lot of his swipes in the media make him appear a lot more vicious about his beliefs rather than preaching from a pulpit. It’s one thing to level a few cheap shots at bands that weren’t necessarily his favourite, but things were about to get ugly when Pink Floyd decided to part ways with Waters during the mid-1980s.
But by the time that Waters left, it was almost like he wanted to move on. Floyd had run their course as far as he was concerned, and while The Final Cut was far from the best album they had ever made, he felt content to leave the legacy where it was rather than trying to outdo the last few records he had done. Then again, just because one person leaves a group doesn’t mean that everyone else needs to be sent packing, either. David Gilmour wanted to carry on, and so began one of the biggest pissing contests in rock and roll.
In Waters’s mind, he was Pink Floyd, and no matter how much Gilmour added to their classics, there was no point in them trying to carry on as a band without him. But since Waters wrote most of the lyrics for all of their classics, it’s hard to negate the contributions from the rest of the band, especially on Dark Side of the Moon, where nearly everyone added their touch to make each song sound fantastic.
By the time that The Wall started, though, Waters was already growing tired of Richard Wright. You can’t really blame Wright for wanting to enjoy his holiday when Waters called him back into work, so Waters’s decision to let him go after convincing the rest of the band that he wasn’t contributing enough was one of the worst decisions he could have made. Wright was central to the band, but as far as Waters could tell, he was just a liability to them after one too many sessions where he couldn’t think of anything.
Even when Gilmour welcomed him back into the band as a salaried musician on A Momentary Lapse of Reason, Waters couldn’t help but throw in a few backhanded compliments to him, saying, “Rick Wright is merely on a wage on this entire Pink Floyd world tour. Rick has been burnt out since 1979, when Gilmour, Ezrin and myself unanimously decided to fire him.” But Waters had even harsher words for Nick Mason when talking about him still being a full-time member of the band.
Mason did give them their signature pulse, but Waters felt that there was no reason for him to deserve the status of a full-time member, saying, “At least Rick knows it’s just a payday. Nick Mason goes around acting like Pink Floyd might really be a functioning tour band. And once again, I invite and urge you to go to Wright and Mason and repeat all these charges.” And if we’re being completely transparent, it’s not like Waters doesn’t have a small point looking at where the band were at the time.
A Momentary Lapse of Reason might as well have been a David Gilmour solo record, and while Mason did stick around for the tour, even he wasn’t going to be giving it his all on the album proper, considering that most of his drumming performances were done by musicians and from hired session musicians that had to capture what they were looking for since he was out of practice.
But even if Waters didn’t like the idea of certain members getting more recognition over him as one of the main members of Floyd, you can’t deny that every member helped make the band what they were in the early days. There was eventually the day where the stars aligned and all of them made up to put on their Live 8 concert, but for a good decade or so, it was like Waters was going out of his way to burn every single bridge he had with his former bandmates.