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Pink against Floyd: a fortune to close 35 years of conflict

2022-09-05T10:37:26.401Z


Waters and Gilmour, who dispute the legacy of the band, collide again, this time due to the war in the Ukraine. In parallel, they negotiate the sale of their catalog of songs for about 500 million


The last image of David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Rick Wright together, after Pink Floyd's performance at the Live 8 festival in London's Hyde Park on July 2, 2005.

Pink Floyd is music history, but it is not yet fully written.

A new song, a controversy about the war in Ukraine and a large financial operation in the making occupy the last lines.

The one who has been their leader in the last stage, the guitarist and singer David Gilmour, had announced the end of the band in 2014, by releasing the album

The Endless River,

which recovered unreleased recordings from 1994. Since the keyboardist Richard Wright had died in 2008, he and drummer Nick Mason were not going to follow.

That would be half Pink Floyd.

It was presented as the goodbye of the emblematic group of progressive rock, whose artistic ambition reached its peak in the seventies.

"Pink Floyd's time is over, we're done.

Doing it without Rick would be wrong”, Gilmour insisted last year in

Guitar Playe

r.

The fourth in discord had come out 35 years earlier: bassist and voice Roger Waters, who was a prolific and despotic leader from 1968, when founder Syd Barrett was fired for his mental problems, until 1986, when he broke up the band and a battle broke out legal for the mark that his companions win.

Gilmour and Waters now collide again over their political positions: one sings of the resistance in Ukraine and the other blames NATO for that conflict.

In parallel, an agreement is underway for the sale of its formidable catalog of songs for about 500 million dollars (a similar figure in euros).

A surprising plot twist to settle an enduring conflict.

Didn't Pink Floyd finish off those 1994 recordings?

No: Gilmour and Mason revived the name of the group last April to sign a song with the Ukrainian singer Andriy Khlyvnyuk, from the local group Boombox.

The song is called

Hey Hey Rise Up

(Hey, get up!) and it's

an explicit and passionate call to the resistance of the country invaded by Russia.

Gilmour thus expressed his sympathy for Ukraine, a country with which he has family ties (through his daughter-in-law, mother of his granddaughters).

The question is why they didn't do it with his own name.

He justified himself like this in

Rolling Stone:

“When I talked to Nick and he told me that he was willing to do it like Pink Floyd, it seemed obvious to us.

We want to spread this message of peace and we want to raise the morale of the people who defend their homeland there in Ukraine.

Then why not?".

On the other hand, Roger Waters got into a controversy last August from an interview on CNN in which he explained why he had shown the image of Joe Biden on his last tour under the slogan: “War criminal, just starting ”.

He explained that the US president was guilty of inflaming the conflict in Ukraine and not forcing Zelensky to negotiate.

And he added: "This war is basically about NATO action and reaction pushing to the Russian border, which they promised [Gorbachev] they would not do."

Earlier, when the invasion took place, Waters had described the attack on Ukraine as the "criminal mistake of a mobster", and defended negotiation instead of resistance.

He has also supported Russia's annexation of Crimea, and denounced Western "propaganda" against Russia.

In the interview, he stated with determination that Taiwan belongs to China, in the midst of the siege of the island due to the visit of Nancy Pelosi, the president of the US House of Representatives. At this point, he confronted the presenter: "You have to read more." .

A week later, during a concert, Waters addressed the audience to lament that CNN had edited his statements to make him "look like a jerk."

The full recording of the conversation, in any case, did not disprove any of his most controversial phrases.

Waters addressed the audience to express regret that CNN had edited his remarks to make him "look like a jerk."

The full recording of the conversation, in any case, did not disprove any of his most controversial phrases.

Waters addressed the audience to express regret that CNN had edited his remarks to make him "look like a jerk."

The full recording of the conversation, in any case, did not disprove any of his most controversial phrases.

The Ukrainian organization Myrotvorets has included Waters in its blacklist of enemies of the country, which is not official but points to it.

The musician declared to the Russian agency Tass that he was not worried about anything.

“It's just a futile effort by propagandists.

They tell them to sit down and write this nonsense about me because it's part of their job."

Gilmour has been terse in his opinion of Waters's political position: “Let's leave it at that I'm disappointed and move on.

Read it how you want,” he told

The Guardian in April

.

The paths of the members of Pink Floyd diverge, then, in their political messages.

The lyrics of his glory years were combative, yes, and in particular anti-war.

But they were also vague in their denunciation, tending towards the symbolic and enigmatic.

They maintained that calculated ambiguity that suits mass rock so as not to scare anyone.

In his solo career, Waters has sharpened his left-wing activist profile: on his previous tour, he displayed the message “Trump is a pig” in large print when he floated the giant inflatable pig from the cover of

Animals

, while simultaneously projecting portraits of different world leaders, whom he tends to put in the same bag.

The legacy of the band resists these controversies and anything else.

And well-remembered songs like

Money, Wish You Were Here

or

Comfortably Numb

have continued to be enjoyed at the concerts of their two leaders.

Waters has put on overwhelming shows, in keeping with his trademark megalomania.

In 1990, he represented with invited stars

The Wall

where the wall of Berlin was torn down;

in 2010 he recovered the same project with a very complex montage that went around the world.

Another such tour, 2018's

Us + Them,

was no slouch in stage brilliance and was captured in a documentary.

He is now touring North America with

This Is Not a Drill,

which he put on hold during the pandemic.

Much more content on stage since he performs solo, less interested in special effects, Gilmour perhaps makes his voice and guitar better immerse us in the sound of his golden age.

It is verified in two live albums and documentaries:

Live at Pompeii,

2016 (in the same Roman amphitheater in Pompeii where Pink Floyd recorded, without an audience, the album of the same name in 1972)

and

Live in Gdansk

(from 2008, in this case with Wright, that was also half Pink Floyd).

But Gilmour hasn't toured since 2016.

The songs that the public craves the most in those concerts were born in large part from the collaboration between Waters and Gilmour, even when the former tried to impose himself on the latter.

The Dark Side of The Moon

(1973) and

Wish You Were Here

(1975) were albums created as a team, whose best songs were signed by both (and in some cases Wright).

But Waters' hyper-leadership stood out in

Animals

(1977) and grew bigger in 1979 in another of his masterpieces,

The Wall,

designed by him, which speaks of his own traumas.

He took the reins so firmly that he even fired Wright and hired him as an employee (it was humiliating, but it saved the keyboardist from the financial disaster that was touring for that album).

On the next album

The Final Cut,

from 1983, all the songs are from the one who has become the sole leader and have his voice, with hardly any room for Gilmour's or his riffs.

In 1986, Waters demanded to disband the band without even thinking that it was possible for the other three to carry on without him.

From there, the new Pink Floyd kept the type, and worked very well live, but without reaching that previous creative height.

Waters alone hasn't left such perfect records either.

There was a significant reconciliation in 2005, a truce that brought together the four historic members on stage in London to perform four songs at the Live 8 charity festival, televised around the world, at the initiative of Bob Geldof.

Only Syd Barrett was missing: his sister Rosemary confirmed that he was not in a position to participate, that he lived in seclusion at home and that he did not want to know anything about his old companions (he died the following year).

So Waters, Gilmour, Wright and Mason played for 24 minutes with solvency and a certain coldness, without the guitarist barely looking at the prodigal son, who was more smiling.

It could have been a good end point, the closing of the circle, but it was not.

A couple of collaborations followed (between Waters and Gilmour at a concert for Palestine in 2010,

The Wall of

2011), without raising a name as mythical as the one that has reappeared now.

That better climate did not serve Waters to promote his material on the Pink Floyd website and social networks, as he has vehemently claimed.

The closest thing to a reconciliation that can be expected today is an agreement for the sale of its catalog of songs, in the style of what other music figures such as Bruce Springsteen or Bob Dylan have done for figures similar to the 500 million that are handled here.

To the highest bidder: As reported by Bloomberg in June, the band members are negotiating with Sony, Warner and BMG through agent Patrick McKenna.

The Financial Times

revealed last week that the giant Blackstone is also in the bidding.

This investment group would not be new to the business: its investee Hipgnosis already owns rights to the work of Neil Young, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Shakira or Justin Timberlake.

A transaction of this magnitude, which would include both the compositions and the exploitation of the brand and its

merchandising

, it would be a less emotional end point than the Live 8 concert,

but much more lucrative for them.

Actually, the history of Pink Floyd is written.

Nothing you do now is going to change it substantially.

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Source: elparis

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