David Gilmour, Roger Waters Discuss the Dark Side of Pink Floyd

David Gilmour, Roger Waters and Nick Mason, the three surviving members of Pink Floyd, are speaking out in regards to their history together, the making of ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ and the current state of their relationships with one another.

With Pink Floyd recently re-releasing their entire catalog, Rolling Stone magazine interviewed each member, probing them to talk about the past, present and future state of the band. Though Waters and Gilmour have played together three times over the past six years, their relationship isn’t as chummy as one might think. “It’s almost nonexistent,” admits Gilmour. “I played on Roger’s 'Wall' show here one night a few months ago and I haven’t heard a word from him since.”

After 24 years of the fans pining at the thought of a reunion, it finally did happen in 2005 at Live 8 in London -- but that probably won’t happen again anytime soon. “Roger spent a lot of time afterwards saying how he would roll over gracefully for that one occasion, but it wouldn’t happen again,” says Gilmour. The guitarist also admits that he’s selfish in his thinking and that he wants to enjoy life in his declining years and doesn’t see Pink Floyd being a part of that.

Waters talks about how his bandmates pushed him not to sing on ‘Dark Side of the Moon.’ They were determined to point out that he couldn’t sing and that he was tone-deaf. It’s also been reported that Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright used to have to tune Water’s bass. “Maybe their way of keeping me from being totally overwhelming was to point out that I might have vocal and instrumental inadequacies,” wonders Waters.

Though both Waters and Gilmour have carried on with their own incarnations of Pink Floyd, both members seem to struggle in the memory department (often remembering things differently than one other) and lest we forget the problems associated with ego.

Gilmour claims, “The greatness that we did together is a collaborative achievement between four people who have ego problems, all of them. In every single one of us there’s a slight difference between the reality and our perceptions of ourselves.” To that, Waters replies: “I don’t think there’s any more or less ego involved in the band than in most bands.”

When it comes to the darker side of this Pink Floyd, one can only hope that these two brilliant songwriters can be civil with one another, moving forward creatively, simply agreeing to disagree.