Brick by brick, the feud between Pink Floyd's Roger Waters and David Gilmour has become one of the great tragicomedies in rock history. This week, a quarrel that has raged on and off (mostly on) since the mid-Eighties took another lurid turn when Gilmour's wife, novelist and lyricist Polly Samson accused Rogers of being "a Putin apologist". Waters has been catching flak over his repeated calls for the West to stop arming Ukraine in its war with Russia - and for his claims that he's on a Ukrainian “kill list". Just so nobody was in any doubt where Gilmour stood, the guitarist later backed his wife, tweeting: "Every word demonstrably true."
Waters, who in 2020 accused Samson of using the Pink Floyd website as a platform for her literary career, hit back. "Roger Waters is aware of the incendiary and wildly inaccurate comments made about him on Twitter by Polly Samson which he refutes entirely," said a statement from his official Instagram. "He is currently taking advice as to his position." The whole thing is bizarre, appalling, grimly hilarious. It's Spinal Tap meets Shakespeare.
Pink Floyd never did things by halves, so it is horribly apt that the group should spawn one of the most embittered fallings-out in popular music. Indeed, the bad blood between these visionary talents has the larger-than-life quality of a rock opera. The sort with which the Floyd became synonymous in their late Seventies heyday. What a fantastic concept album you'd get out of it. Two musicians overcome ferocious odds to conquer the world - only for their relationship to flame out in a white heat of bitterness and pettiness. In old age, they cannot let go (Waters is 79, Gilmour 76). Finally, their hatred threatens to consume them.
This story is from the February 08, 2023 edition of The Independent.
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This story is from the February 08, 2023 edition of The Independent.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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