There are at least two fun ironies in the rather ugly dispute that has separated leader-songwriter Roger Waters from his erstwhile teammates in the greatest dinosaur rock band of them all, Pink Floyd. The first is that Pink Floyd wasn’t really Roger Waters’s group at all: it was the conception and (originally) the execution of Syd Barrett, an alleged genius and extravagant acidhead who is generally credited with inventing Brit psychedelia and, by extension, creating the progressive rock movement. It’s a lot to answer for, but it’s hard to hold Barrett personally responsible: he quickly became one of the first major LSD casualties, and has, since 1968 or so, been said to be under the care of his mother, though in the last decade or so he’s put out an album or two and made a couple of catatonic live appearances. After Barrett’s breakdown bassist Waters, keyboardist Richard Wright, and drummer Nick Mason hired David Gilmour as guitarist and lead singer, and the reconstituted group began the inchoate experimentation that would produce Meddle and The Dark Side of the Moon in the early 70s. That Pink Floyd was a much different animal from Barrett’s, but the members displayed few qualms at continuing with the (financially established) original group name. In this context, Waters’s current complaints about the group pressing on without him but with the now platinum-plated name come across as a tad disingenuous.
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The answer is that there are, or have been, four Pink Floyds. The first was Barrett’s, and was informed primarily by the very weird but very real pop sensibility that created the group’s original string of British hit singles: “Arnold Layne,” “See Emily Play,” “Apples and Oranges”–little bits of oddly structured but somehow engaging radio confection that resembled at times Peter Townshend bizzarities like “I’m a Boy” or “Happy Jack.” But the debilitated Barrett’s contribution to the group’s second album, A Saucerful of Secrets, was nearly nil.
The reconstituted band–the second Pink Floyd–retreated into the group’s other strength: a charming and original infatuation with sonic experimentation. Now, to paraphrase Goebbels, when I hear the words “sonic experimentation” I reach for my revolver, and indeed today it takes a near-herculean effort to listen to, much less appreciate, efforts like Atom Heart Mother and Ummagumma. The technology and instrumentation are woefully dated, and the depths of thought that produced song titles like “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving With a Pict [i.e., a Celt]” are better left unplumbed. Even the production is so rough edged that the contributions of Gilmour, who had become the instrumental heart of the band, sound cluttered, even clunky.
Despite instances of crystalline, elemental brilliance rhythmically and instrumentally, Waters was falling into the psychological traps he’d been limning so effectively in the establishment figures he railed against: he was arrogant and unleashable; he confused his terrors, his problems, with those of the world generally; and he started forgetting the past–i.e., the teamwork that had produced the group’s best music.
Gilmour, seconded by Mason and with Wright returned as a second-class member, put out A Momentary Lapse of Reason a few months ago. It’s easily the worst album in the Pink Floyd oeuvre, and it completes the sad cycle we’ve seen so many other rock bands go through. Sure Waters was an egotistical jerk, and sure Gilmour was an essential part of the Pink Floyd sound; that doesn’t mean that what is essentially a Gilmour solo album is going to be compelling. “Dogs of War” is about–surprise!–mercenaries, the fall-back subject of choice for every overly testosteroned rock musician since the Creation. The thing was recorded at seven different studios and with about 50 supporting musicians. Gilmour’s lyrics can be charitably said to be a bit weak: when he waxes supremely poetic, he’s liable to start talking about “silence that speaks so much louder than words.” The unique and valuable Pink Floyd sound has been reduced to funny synth noises.
