Roger Waters Pink Floyd drama

[nfotiu]

It's always been interesting to follow the history of Pink Floyd from the Syd Barrett years to the Waters/Gilmour falling out.

I guess it is taking an even more ugly turn now with Waters more than doubling down on his pro Russian/Putin rhetoric. I've disagreed with a lot of what Waters has said over the years, but he's really reaching the point where he is pretty much destroying his legacy and being exposed as a pretty crappy person.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1622735222562226176

https://variety.com/2023/music/news/...856a1ce23541ee

[Elkyiv]

Waters is, has been, and will always be an a$$hole.

[PsYcNeT]

Not just a raging anti-Semite, but also a frequent visitor to Epstein Island.

[blankall]

Waters is POS. I also really don't get why anyone could possibly be pro Putin. You don't need to support either America or Putin. It's totally acceptable to say both have a lot of problems. Commenting one doesn't mean you automatically need to support the other.

Sounds like Waters had already dug himself in pretty deep with RT before all the Ukraine stuff went down.

[nfotiu]

It's funny, David Gilmour seems like a pretty decent guy from what I can tell. They really are polar opposites in every way from musical ability to everything else. It's hard to imagine them ever agreeing to being in a band together in the first place.

They did make some pretty special albums together though, and most of what Gilmour has done on his own sounds nice enough, but is really pretty dull.

[zamler]

Waters treated Rick Wright like total garbage not that he was nice to anyone in the band.

[Elkyiv]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

They did make some pretty special albums together though, and most of what Gilmour has done on his own sounds nice enough, but is really pretty dull.

To me, Gilmour's solo career is better than Waters'. Amused to Death is good; the other 3 aren't.

Dave has released 4 solid solo albums.

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by Elkyiv

To me, Gilmour's solo career is better than Waters'. Amused to Death is good; the other 3 aren't.

Dave has released 4 solid solo albums.

They're fine and definitely solid musically, but just a little boring to me. Agree that most of Waters aren't very listenable.

Neither of their solo works come close to most of their work together though.

[Cheese]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1622722279586111489

[TheIronMaiden]

I try my best to separate an author from their work. It is very difficult with folks who are so keen on making their entire identity and thus art about politics.

[zamler]

Waters totally lip syncs his shows now it's embarrassing. I guess not as embarrassing as him trying to sing.

[Ozy_Flame]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

I try my best to separate an author from their work. It is very difficult with folks who are so keen on making their entire identity and thus art about politics.

Waters isn't the first and won't be the last. JK Rowling immediately comes to mind.

[Elkyiv]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

Waters isn't the first and won't be the last. JK Rowling immediately comes to mind.

Polanski is an Oscar winner

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by zamler

Waters totally lip syncs his shows now it's embarrassing. I guess not as embarrassing as him trying to sing.

The guy has never been able to sing in the first place. He's barely in the spoken word category. He was only saved by Gilmour's guitar and vocals.

[Matata]

Some of his controversial statements:

He said that blame for the Ukraine war is a lot more on the US than we're being led to believe and that we shouldn't be blaming it all on Russia and to be careful about dehumanizing the Russian people. There's a lot of that I agree with, but I can't get with anything that's pro-Putin.

That the purpose of the state of Isreal is to instigate war in the middle east and enable the genocide of palistineans. I completely agree with this.

Waters being a complete a-hole, well, the books been out on that for 40 years. To be fair, Gilmour is only slightly less of an A-hole and I wouldn't take his statements as objective.

Seems like he's being roasted for being anti-war and a general a-hole. Hard stance to take when most of our institutions tend to be pro-war. The Epstein island stuff is super gross, everyone wants to hold on to the notion that the artists they like weren't that involved, but it's hard for me to think of anyone getting entangled in that world and coming out of it clean.

[zamler]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

The guy has never been able to sing in the first place. He's barely in the spoken word category. He was only saved by Gilmour's guitar and vocals.

In his prime he could sing but after around 1985 best he could do is talksing. During The Wall live tour Waters vocals were spot on. Gilmour's voice of course has held up much better.

I always try to separate artist from art but much of Waters says makes it damn near impossible.

[calumniate]

Roger hot waters

[zamler]

That's awful. I laughed.

[Yeah_Baby]

Yeah, for what it's worth, I think branding everyone who calls out apartheid in Israel as an anti-sematic is perpetuating Israeli propaganda. And It's hard to talk about the War in Ukraine and have a good faith discussion of the conditions that lead to it. Especially when Ukraine history with nationalism and anti-communism did see a lot of ideological support from Nazi Germany, and the entire discussion about the figures like Stepan Bandara. It also doesn't help that Russia corrupts these very real facts and downstream perspectives as a bonus excuse to engage in their own imperialism. Which the West, led by the US, pushed back as it's a threat to it's own order and so and and so on.

So yeah, Waters is an #######, but I think it's easy to be reductive and flatten the complexity of history and geopolitics.

[Hack&Lube]

Waters is also vehemently pro-Beijing if you can believe that.

He's gone on record saying Taiwan is part of China and anybody who doesn't know that hasn't done enough reading. He then praised China as not having murdered millions in foreign wars and when confronted with the counterpoint that they have killed and imprisoned millions of their own people, he declared bollocks.