{"id":512960,"date":"2026-04-04T18:20:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T18:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/512960\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T18:20:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T18:20:10","slug":"the-real-reason-david-gilmour-and-roger-waters-were-never-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/512960\/","title":{"rendered":"The real reason David Gilmour and Roger Waters were “never friends”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"David<\/p>\n

(Credits: Alamy)<\/p>\n

Sat 4 April 2026 16:30, UK <\/p>\n

There are still legions of Pink Floyd fans who are holding out hope that maybe\u00a0David Gilmour<\/a>\u00a0and Roger Waters can put the past aside and find the time to work together again.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They had already been through lawsuits and countless headaches to get away from each other back in the 1980s, and yet they still found time to reunite with each other when they played Live 8 in 2005. The potential seemed there for them to rekindle their relationship all over again, but given how much mudslinging has gone back and forth, you\u2019d have to wonder if they were really friends at all after one too many sparring sessions.<\/p>\n

Because if you think about it, they were more collaborators than friends half the time. Gilmour was only brought in to replace Syd Barrett when he first joined the group, and even if he blossomed into one of the greatest guitarists to have ever walked the Earth, there were bound to be some tensions when Waters decided that he was going to become the main mouthpiece of the band whenever they put out a record.<\/p>\n

At first, that seemed fine, but around the time of The Wall, Waters had already stepped over quite a few lines. He had already fired Richard Wright and would eventually end up trying to end the band altogether after The Final Cut<\/a>, but Gilmour didn\u2019t do all that work just to throw everything out later. He wanted to keep the band going, and after Waters walked away with only the rights to use The Wall in his own solo tours, he was the first to say that he and Gilmour were never really that friendly with each other to begin with.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to imagine that the best bands in the world are nothing but the best of friends with each other, but Waters argued the opposite from the first time that they started working together, saying<\/a>, \u201cI was estranged for quite some time from Nick Mason after the schism in the band, but we\u2019re now very good friends again and I see him a lot. David and I were never really good friends and we\u2019re not good friends now, but we\u2019re not enemies. We have very little in common so don\u2019t see each other socially.\u201d<\/p>\n

And given their history of working together, it\u2019s not exactly hard to see why. Gilmour was more prone to coming up with ideas in the studio that would make Waters\u2019s ears perk up every now and again, but aside from being able to spot his talent, it was never about trying to hang out once the session was over. They had their separate lives, and it wasn\u2019t like Gilmour felt that he was missing out by not jamming with his friend.<\/p>\n

He had grown completely comfortable with writing his own stuff later down the line, and even when he found perfect ideas for songs, it normally took them a while before they were good enough to fit into whatever concept that Waters was looking for whenever putting together Wish You Were Here or Animals. Which makes their performance at Live 8 a little bit more questionable from his perspective.<\/p>\n

Sure, Waters could have simply done the whole thing for a good cause and grinned and bore it throughout the entire concert, but the fact that he was talking about the camaraderie that he felt onstage looks very performative after a quote like that. Even when he coaxes Gilmour over for a curtain call at the end of the show, you can tell that the guitarist isn\u2019t altogether comfortable with being in the same vicinity as his old bandmate.<\/p>\n

Knowing that the best musicians in any band don\u2019t want to be around each other is like any fan\u2019s equivalent of watching their parents fight, but Waters wasn\u2019t about to bullshit his audience after one too many times of faking his enthusiasm. He knew that he was never going to be a major part of Gilmour\u2019s life, and considering all of the back-and-forth that they have said about each other since then, it seems like every single bridge they had has been completely fried at this point. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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