Pink Floyd is the Best. (1 Viewer)

[Daniel J.S.]

Well, Waters was all for "The Final Cut" being a solo album, but in Waters words, Gilmour and Mason knew "songs don't grow on trees. They wanted this to be a Floyd record." And yes, I feel the Gilmour albums were fake Floyd; those records have dozens of session musicians and song doctors on them, not to mention that Mason barely played on AMLOR, yet this was still supposed to be Pink Floyd? Funny how in the old days with Waters, they played most everything themselves, but once Gilmour needed to prove they were still Floyd, in came the legions of hired help.

 

[Philip Hamm]

And yes, I feel the Gilmour albums were fake Floyd; those records have dozens of session musicians and song doctors on them, not to mention that Mason barely played on AMLOR, yet this was still supposed to be Pink Floyd? Funny how in the old days with Waters, they played most everything themselves, but once Gilmour needed to prove they were still Floyd, in came the legions of hired help.

You're suggesting that Pink Floyd didn't extensively use studio musicians previous to the post-Waters albums? That's ridiculous. If anything you're supporting my argument, since "Cut" was -hugely- performend by hired hands.

 

[Daniel J.S.]

I consider "The Final Cut" a Waters album in all but name (of course IMO, his solo albums wipe the floor with the Gilmour Floyd albums). To get really technical, "Animals" was the last true Floyd album (before Waters left); only Gilmour and Waters are present throughout the entirety of "The Wall" as Wright had beed ousted and Mason only sporadically played on the record. However, since all four played it at the live shows, I'll accept it as a Floyd work rather than a Waters/Gilmour album.

When I complain about studio musicians, I refer to the ones who are doing the instruments that the band normally plays, not the string players and whatnot (I have to assume that there aren't a lot of phantom session players on the classic records). On AMLOR and TDB, I see that almost a dozen guitarists, bassists, drummers, keyboardists were used and I wonder how this can still be Pink Floyd. Those records are listenable at best, but it just strikes me as so much cashing in on the brand name. Anyway, Waters won the war in the end; Floyd is pretty much dead while his last tour was playing to sold out arenas. I wonder how Gilmour felt about that.

 

[Philip Hamm]

Anyway, Waters won the war in the end; Floyd is pretty much dead while his last tour was playing to sold out arenas. I wonder how Gilmour felt about that.

Neither Waters nor Gilmour are petty enough to really give a crap about your so-called "war". Waters was a little misffed about them singing his songs in concert, but they minimized that as much as they could in the situation. They played co-written songs for the most part, only playing Waters-penned songs which were big hits that they knew that fans would want to hear. If Gilmour, Wright, and Mason decided to tour again under the name Pink Floyd they would have no problems selling tickets.

 

[Daniel J.S.]

^^^Oh, I think both are still petty enough to care, especially Waters, given how long he tends to hold a grudge. What offended Waters the most when Floyd toured was that they played songs from "The Wall", which was in part an attack on stadium rock, in huge stadiums. He saw that as a betrayal of one of the things the album stood for (of course Waters himself ignored his message when he did the show in Berlin, but I'll forgive it since it was for charity).

 

[JordanS]

Daniel J. S.,

You are clearly mistaken about "The Division Bell" and "AMLOR" having dozens of session musicians. AMLOR was 99.99 percent David Jon Gilmour. Even Jon Carin, said this as well. There are a few great songs on AMLOR and one amazing tune (Sorrow---especially on PULSE) and TDB didn't have very many session musicians at all. As a matter of fact, you can email the webmaster at www.pinkfloyd-co.com and ask them if you'd like, considering they have had a relationship with one of the members for 30 plus years.

The Division Bell is really a great album. "Cluster One", "Marooned", "Wearing The Inside Out" and "High Hopes" are some of the best Pink Floyd songs ever.

As far as people doubting DG's lyrical ability, yes, he isn't close to the greatness that is Roger Waters. But, the lyrics on The Division Bell, excluding one song, are all his. His wife, Polly Samson, was credited for revenue purposes and only helped David with a word here and there when he was stuck. This is from an extremely solid source.

Good day.

 

[michael_mo]

[I hope you all aren't Yes fans, the semantics would be absolutely ridiculous.]

ROTFLMAO

 

[Daniel J.S.]

I'm only going by what the credits in the liner notes say, and they have a noteworthy list of additional players. If they didn't play, did Gilmour credit them just for hanging around Brittania Row? And I beg to differ about TDB having some of their best work ever; some of it is listenable, enjoyable even, but it all sounds like a tired rehash of the classic albums. AMLOR at least has some things that the Floyd hadn't really done before, even if I find that set pretty toothless overall. As for the lyrics, I haven't looked at TDB's lyric sheet in a while, but I remember them being an improvement over the spectacular banality of "About Face" (although I thought "Cruise" has a really good lyric). I don't find them anything to brag about however.

 

[JordanS]

Going by the credits isn't accurate in this case. A lot of people were given credit for very, very little input on a song; pretty much the exact opposite of Roger Waters. I can't believe David Gilmour didn't get a credit for ABITW, Money, and Sheep. Hell, David wrote %40 percent of Sheep!


AMLOR was 99.99% David Gilmour. Go talk to Joe and Sandy at Pink Floyd Co..

www.pinkfloyd-co.com

 

[Daniel J.S.]

It always seemed to me like writing credits on Floyd songs were done the same way Led Zeppelin did them: whoever brought in the main ideas for the song (riffs, melody, chord changes, etc.) got the credit even if the rest of the band worked on it afterwards. That's why Waters got full credit on ABITW Part II: it was part of the demo Waters brought to the group. I'm guessing that for someone else to get a co-credit, an idea they came up with on their own was incorporated into the song.

 

[Jim Rakowiecki]

Like I said before I like the Division Bell, A Momentary Lapse of Reason and I also like The Final Cut.
I guess I would support the Idea that The Final Cut was Essentially a Roger Waters Solo album in all but name but I also believe the former are David Gilmour records.
I think what it comes down to for me is that Pink Floyd was a unit like Led Zeppelin. The whole was greater than the sum of all the parts and if you remove one of the parts what's left is broken. It's not bad but it isn't complete and to pretend it is complete is being less than honest.

 

[FeisalK]

michael_mo

haha I am a Yes fan (or was ABWH.. or Asia)

ROFLMAO!!

mind you Deep Purple had at least as many (if not more lineup changes)

 

[MartinTeller]

FYI, I've got a Pink Floyd song tournament going over in Polls. Come cast your votes!

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

Anyway, Waters won the war in the end; Floyd is pretty much dead while his last tour was playing to sold out arenas. I wonder how Gilmour felt about that.

Sure, Roger Waters toured most recently to sold out arenas. But the Roger Waters tour was only small arenas seating 10 or maybe 15 thousand people. The most recent Pink Floyd tour played to sold out stadiums seating 50,000+. I clearly recall that Pink Floyd was one of the top ten money earners in entertainment that year. And there is no doubt they could do it again if they wanted to, whether or not the tour is in support of a new album. When it comes to concert tours, Pink Floyd is on the same tier as the Rolling Stones, so don't dare to suggest that any modest success that Roger Waters has had in his cozy little venues more recently even compares to that.

I never hear songs from Roger Waters' solo albums on the radio, but I do hear about the first half of Momentary Lapse and about four songs from Division Bell. "Learning to Fly" is well known and accepted by many fans that are more casual than we are, they recognize it as Pink Floyd and (gasp!) do not really care that Roger Waters left the band.

But the fact of the matter is that Roger Waters did indeed leave the band. The band did not disband when Roger Waters left, neither by official agreement nor by Roger Waters declaring it so. The only thing official was that Roger officially left the band. He had hired a new manager for his solo career and he didn't want to have to keep paying his share of the salary for Pink Floyd's manager. So this is not a situation of Robert Plant restarting Led Zeppelin or Keith Richards doing a solo album and calling it the Rolling Stones. This is far more like the precedent already established by Pink Floyd itself when they decided to kick out Syd Barrett, who was their founder, songwriter, lead singer, and guitarist.

JordanS has it right regarding songwriting credits. Gilmour is far more generous than Waters in that respect. John Carin got a credit for "Learning to Fly" but he has said that he doesn't even remember playing for David Gilmour the particular chord sequence that ended up in the song.

Anyway, we could go round and round arguing about the politics of Pink Floyd with and without Roger Waters, and I don't think anybody's position on the subject will change. I'd rather just discuss the music. So on that note...

I highly recommend the David Gilmour In Concert DVD, if only to hear him play Shine On You Crazy Diamond on an acoustic guitar.

 

[FeisalK]

Anyway, we could go round and round arguing about the politics of Pink Floyd with and without Roger Waters, and I don't think anybody's position on the subject will change. I'd rather just discuss the music. So on that note...

I highly recommend the David Gilmour In Concert DVD, if only to hear him play Shine On You Crazy Diamond on an acoustic guitar.

I'll second that its a great DVD aside from the usual suspects, Sonnet#18 is rather nice