Features
Waters Over The Moon
A couple of U.K. tabloids made so much of Pink Floyd denying rumours of a revival tour that some of their readers must have begun to think there might even have been a remote chance of it happening.
Meanwhile,
First to announce a show was Denmark’s Roskilde, the largest festival in northern Europe. It has Waters heading a June 29 to July 2 bill that already has
The U.K. papers’ “rumour denied” stories look to have been a reaction to a Sunday Mirror piece that said the act would be playing at least a couple of shows at London’s
A March 6 interview in The Guardian suggested the rift between the two is still too wide. Gilmour said all sides tried to put aside their differences for Live 8, but it wasn’t an easy task.
“Within two minutes the old dynamic was there. Roger was being bossy. I don’t say that in a disparaging way; people just have their own natural personalities. And Roger just is the way he is and he can’t help it any more than I can help the way I am. So the first meeting was pretty stilted and cagey.”
A day earlier, he told The Sunday Times that the final working days of Floyd were also pretty tetchy.
“That was the phoney war for us. Roger had left in all but name, and he’d sit in the back of the studio and piss us off. We’d just got through this terrible period of The Wall film and The Final Cut album. Nightmare.”
While Gilmour was claiming certain sections of the media have deliberately “misled fans,” the reunion stories were “fabricated” and the quotes attributed to the band were “invented,” Andrew Zweck from Live Nation’s Sensible Events was already confirming shows for Waters to perform the classic Dark Side of the Moon album in full for the first time in nearly 25 years.
Zweck said he doesn’t know if a Floyd reunion is ever likely to happen because Waters is the only one of the four he represents, but said it wouldn’t have been this year because Gilmour is working on a new solo album.
Since the band’s acrimonious breakup in ’83, the other three members have toured as Pink Floyd, but in 2002, Waters put out an album of new versions and did a 50-date world tour in what he described as his bid to “reclaim the songs.”
Despite their differences, which have led to more than a decade of internal legal wrangles, the rumours of a reunion were bound to re-emerge after all four members played together at last year’s Live 8 with a performance many critics regarded as the highlight of the event.
Other Waters shows already confirmed include Lisbon Rock In Rio June 2, Berlin Whulheide June 8, Arnhem Arrow Rock Festival June 10, Oslo Norwegian Wood Festival June 12 and Rome Curva Olympico Stadium June 16. The run could stretch to about 20 shows.
– John Gammon