PINK FLOYD'S POST-PARTUM PARITY

6:30 PM (Apparently He Was Driving To Chicago)

In a car, on the way to see Pink Floyd. Almost. It isn’t Pink Floyd anymore. It’s Roger Waters. He played bass and stuff. It’s taking a long time.

6:30 PM (Apparently He Was Talking To David Gilmour)

So what’s the status of Pink Floyd?

“There just isn’t really a status, you know? No one’s made any decisions, no one’s really decided to quit, completely, but we haven’t made any plans to do anything. Rick’s left, of course, but as far as the other three of us are concerned, we just haven’t got any plans at the moment. And when and if that situation changes, we’ll do something.”

6:30 PM (Apparently He Broke Down Over His Word Processor)

Good lord, machine, you sit there while I pound these words out and you do not react. You do not react when I write about Pink Floyd because to you those words are not words but numbers that take up 10 character spaces on the viewscreen. You do not know that this band no longer has a status even though I just typed that. And if you wanted to know about Pink Floyd, I could pull out the appropriate discs but you could never fit them in your drive. So you will have to trust me.

6:35 PM (Apparently He Was Still Driving)

Saw David Gilmour a few weeks ago. Liked him. Like his new album, too. But it took a while. Had to hear Roger Waters’s album, in fact. That was when I decided I liked Gilmour’s. Driving to Chicago to see if Waters’s new album will be any better when I see it “performed” onstage. Huh?

6:35 PM (Apparently He Took A Lot Of Drugs)

There are vast, cosmic links within the Pink Floyd framework. Once I saw them in Detroit, doing Dark Side Of The Moon. Towards the end, it got psychedelic. The mixture of lights, smoke and the crowd provided an odd hallucination: I thought I saw a covered wagon—on its side, with one of its wheels spinning—floating in the middle of Cobo Arena. Said I: “Wow!”

Years later, Pink Floyd performed The Wall in New York. I was there. An animated sequence by Gerald Scarfe was projected on the actual ‘‘wall” itself, and suddenly Scarfe zoomed in on a tricycle, laying on its side, with one of its wheels spinning wildly. Said I: “Wow!”

And now I look at the cover of David Gilmour’s album, About Face. He’s got his thumb out. And Roger Waters’s new album is called The Pros And Cons Of Hitch Hiking. And it’s got a naked girl on the cover. Sure wish she’d turn around so we could see what she looks like, don’t you? And hey—David Gilmour’s new album is called About Face, so maybe he wants to see her, too! And...both records are on the same record label! Say I: ‘‘Wow!”

What goes up, must come down—and isn’t it too cosmic!

6:40 PM (Apparently He Was Asking Gilmour Personal Questions)

Did Pink Floyd reach the point where you were so big there was no need to talk to one another unless it was time to record?

“It’s not much to do with being big— we’ve never really been close personal friends. They started a group together, because they wanted to be in a group together—and it was before my time—not because they were real close friends. And when you start that sort of thing up, you get the people who can do the best possible job at that moment, because you have ambitions. You don’t have friends in who can’t play for no reason. I mean, some people do, but I don’t think the Floyd was ever started off that way. And we are, really, about as friendly as we’ve ever been.”

You’re saying you’ve never fought?

‘‘We fight all the time! I mean, myself and Roger have huge arguments, and we’ve practically come to blows sometimes, because we disagree about what we’re doing and we both believe in what we’re doing. To the extent where if I think he’s doing something wrong and I’m trying to dissuade him from doing it—or vice-versa— then it can become fairly heated, because we want it to be right. And the great thing about being in a band like that is that some of the great things that happen happen because of compromise, because one person wants it one way, the other wants it another, and you reach some sort of compromise.

“And sometimes some things don’t work because of compromise.”

6:40 PM (Apparently Morons Are Digging Up 1-94)

Slow going to Chicago. Odd how Pink Floyd have petered out. They say they haven’t, but they have. Egos. Hard to figure who would really care at this point. I’ll stick on the tape of the Roger Waters album. That ought to cheer me up.

6:40 PM (Apparently The Word Processor Barked)

Eat type, machine! Could you care that a band that once probed the deepest of psychic truths has now splintered into two disparate factions? Do you fully comprehend the ramifications of the Cosmic Battle Of The Bands? Have you ever heard Black Bolt scream? Do you resent me for wasting your memory on this crap?

6:45 PM (Apparently David Gilmour Figured “What The Heck”)

If your album does better than Roger’s—and I think it will—do you think you will have proved a point you couldn’t prove in Pink Floyd?

“Of course. To a certain extent there’s an air of competition between us. Roger does think—and has said—that he is the Pink Floyd. That he is the reason for what Pink Floyd is.”

He’s said that?

“He has said that to people.”

What do you say to that?

“I just say that he’s not, you know? I mean that is a basic bone of contention, obviously. We all have our—every person has their own ‘shortsightedness,’ ormyopia in life. I have my shortsightedness and Roger has his. My shortsightedness may be that I think I’m a vital, essential ingredient to what the Pink Floyd has done all the way through. And Roger’s myopia to me seems to be that he thinks, at this juncture, that I’m not.

“I mean, he’s saying he is it—I’ve never thought or believed that I am it. I’m a vital part of it, that’s what I’ve always believed. And to me—and I don’t want to get this into a huge fight or argument between myself and Roger—the Final Cut album is really his own work. I don’t like it. I think it shouldn’t have been out like that as a Pink Floyd record. But that’s one of those things that we fight about and argue about and disagree on and cause a bit of bad feeling at the time. But we get over these things.

“Obviously, I would like my album to do well. I’d like it to do better than Roger’s. I don’t know whether it will, and it doesn’t really matter terribly much. But I think I have something that is musical, and valuable, and is a vital part of it.”

6:45 PM (Apparently Roger Waters Was Performing In A Very Large Barn)

My kind of town. My kind of aircraft hangar. My kind of seats—so intimate you can’t help being thrilled when the first three members of the audience you see, each weighing in at over 300 lbs. apiece, check their ticket stubs and then look over at you. There aren’t even any arms on the seats. What the heck is that stuff on the stage? Stay away, tubs!

6:45 PM (Apparently He Attempted Putting Things In Perspective)

So on one hand you’ve got David Gilmour with a new solo album and Roger Waters with his new solo album, and each one is touring America. David Gilmour’s got Mick Ralphs playing guitar; Roger Waters has Eric Clapton. David Gilmour is talking to the press; Rogers is being “selective.” David Gilmour’s new album is filled with nice melodies, fine guitar playing, and surprisingly astute lyrics; Roger Waters’s new album is just, urn, filled.

6:50 PM (Apparently He Would Wear No Funny Hats)

Five years ago, if someone plopped your album and Roger’s on the turntable and asked me to guess which one was Pink Floyd’s, it wouldn’t have been his.

“Well, you know, it’s one of those things where in this point of our lives, I suppose we’ve both got a little something to prove. I’m sort of not happy about the way Pink Floyd has gone after The Wall...”

What do you mean?

“Well, I don’t like the Final Cut album—I don’t like the way we got into it, and I just don’t think it’s a good enough album. I quite simply think there are three good tracks oh it and the rest of it is not good enough. It’s substandard to me.”

6:50 PM (Apparently The Word Processor Sobbed)

You will have to take my word for it, machine, that David Gilmour is entirely correct. The Final Cut was substandard. Shall we talk about Roger Waters?

6:50 PM (Apparently The Show Was To Begin)

That zany Roger! The curtain behind the stage looks like a living room. He can’t stay away from those special effects.

Gimme a program. Wow, nice. Bet these rake in the bucks in five years. Check out these tunes listed: first half of the set is old

TURN TO PAGE 58 Pink Floyd stuff, second half is “The Pros And Cons Of Hitch Hiking.”

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 31

Hmm.

6:55 PM (Apparently He Would Stroll Down Memory Lane)

The common rap on Pink Floyd. if I may, is that since Dark Side Of The Moon, there’s been a certain self-consciousness on the band's part in following up such an incredibly huge success. I saw you performing stuff from Animals long before it came out, and when it finally did, I was glad —but I wondered why it had taken so long. Was that self-consciousness a part of it?

“No, actually the difficult part after Dark Side Of The Moon was doing the follow-up album, Wish You Were Here, which didn’t feel so good. Our feelings weren’t so good during the making of it. But I like the album a lot. I think it’s got certain things on it that Dark Side Of The Moon hasn’t got. And I think that Animals has got certain things that Dark Side Of The Moon hasn’t got.

And I like all those albums—I love the Wall album, myself—I think the period of Pink Floyd time that I really love the best is from Meddle through to The Wall. I’m not interested in the stuff earlier than that, really.”

Even Ummagumma?

“It hasn’t withstood the test of time for me. I liked it at the time, but now I’m not really interested in listening to it anymore.”

6:55 PM (Apparently Other People Are)

Roger Waters’s first song of the night: “Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun.” You can find the live version on Ummagumma. If you look.

7:00 PM (Apparently They Would Sit Around Completely Satisfied)

I've always thought that of all the Pink Floyd members, you were the one who’d rather be producing and being more prolific than you’ve been. Did it bother you to sit around waiting to produce one album every three years or so?

“I get moments of frustration about the time we've taken to do things, but no—I’m entirely happy with the general progress of what we’ve done. I mean, when Dark Side Of The Moon came out, I was 27, I suppose. Roger was 30, we were all married, we all had families on the way, all that sort of stuff.

“And we didn’t want to be doing it the way you do it when you’re 18 or 20, touring around the world. We wanted to be able to take a little bit more time doing things, we wanted to get things right when we did them, and we wanted to be able to take some time off and have holidays. You can’t do that sort of stuff when you’re just starting out—you have to slog until you’re completely established and safe. You can’t afford to take a minute off, really, you’ve got to just keep at it. And as soon as we felt we could take life a little easier, we wanted to do so.

“I mean, music isn’t everything in life. There’s a lot of other stuff to it. I have never thought music was everything—I see a lot of young kids say music is everything in their life, and I’ve just never been like that. There’s always been other things in my life. It’s a part of my life—and a vital and important part of my life that I love and couldn’t do without—but it’s a part.”

7:00 PM (Apparently He Was Supposed To Be Having The Time Of His Life)

OK. Roger Waters runs through his hits, ihe bulk of them from Wish You Were Here onward. Neat to see Eric Clapton jamming down with the Floydian sound—but not the real thing.

Question: Waters and Gilmour both do “Money” in their stage shows. Which one’s better?

Answer: Who cares? Bring on the new stuff. 7:00 PM (Apparently Sex And Violence Were All He Could Now Relate To)

You could not know, word processor, that what was once grand psychedelia has now become a nut-house circus of sex, blood and death, the bulk of which is emanating from Roger Waters, who never needs to write another song again in his life to live the comfortable life of a millionaire. Shall we give him our thanks, therefore, that he feels the need to provide a multi-screen stage show that offers us rape, murder by chainsaw, terrorism, sexual humiliation, vomit, drug abuse, alcoholism, depression, and a “happy” ending? Shall we look out at the eager audience and wonder how much of the spectacle is on the stage and how much of it is lying in the back of Roger Waters’s mind, waiting for his next gala production? Shall we wonder why the 300-lb. boy in front of me is standing on his chair and cheering when masked terrorists break into the house on the screens onstage and rev up their chainsaws?

Maybe he wanted some peanuts or something. 7:05 PM (Apparently The Show Must Go On)

Personally, I think you have a much more highlyevolved melodic sense than Roger does...

“Me too.”

...and 1 like your lyrics very much. But it seems to me that the combination of the two of you together offers more than either of your own albums does...

“I couldn’t agree more. I couldn’t agree more.” Do you envision him agreeing, as well?

“I don’t have expectations. I’m not going to sit around and wait for him to call. And if I get to the point where that’s the next thing I want to do, then I’ll give him a call. I don’t know.”

7:06 PM (Apparently The Circus Was Over)

Last tune of the night in Chicago: “Brain Damage.”

7:06::30 PM (Apparently The Machine Demanded A Sacrifice)

So you’re fully confident, then?

“I think for the first time, last year, when I started to write, I started to actually believe that I could write a lyric. And I’m still very slow, and I’m quite hard on myself. I think I have to be. And I discard an enormous amount of stuff. I mean, each song that I wrote had like 30 or 40 full scrap sheets of paper I threw away.

“I mean, I think I’ll get a word processor next time.”

7:06::30.5 PM (HOLD AND SCAN)

“I think I’ll get a word processor next time.”

“I think I’ll get a word processor next time.”

“I think I’ll get a word processor next time.” 7:06::31 PM (The Moment Of Clarity)

Fucking-A. I’m done.