Pink Floyd has been in the rock game since their formation in 1965. Pink Floyd is widely regarded as one of the most successful and influential rock bands in history. They have sold over 250 million records worldwide, and many of their albums are regarded as classics and game-changers. The band consisted of members Syd Barrett, Nick Mason, Roger Waters, Richard Wright, and David Gilmour.
The band achieved success with the albums like ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’, Wish You Were Here’, and ‘The Wall’. However, there was tension within the band for many reasons. Even with new and commercially successful albums, they were still having problems. Roger Waters and David Gilmour had a bitter place for each other back in the day.
The tension was great during the production of the album ‘The Final Cut’. It was the twelfth album by the band. Rogers was interested in the production of the album which dealt with the themes of war and peace. Rogers was the solo lyricist on the album. David thought there were some songs that were not good enough to be on the album but they were kept in the album because of Rogers. ‘The Final Cut’ became the last album featuring Roger Waters.
David has talked about this album a lot and has shown his dissatisfaction. The whole production process was quite a hassle for the band. There was tension between Gilmour and Waters. As they would get into arguments, he left the whole production process to Waters. But, even David had things he wanted to do on the album but his ideas were discarded. He talked about it in 1984.
“Basically, Roger had one idea of how he felt the album should be and a very strong idea of how he wanted it to be. I simply thought he was wrong in the approach to it in several areas, and I told him so. Tried to get some change, and he wasn’t willing to. It got to the point of arguments being so sort of severe because our outlet was so opposed at that time.”
“But he didn’t want me to continue producing because it was not achieving anything. It was just my opinion was so different that it was just being counterproductive. So, I stopped working on the production of the album and left it entirely to him and said, ‘All, you go ahead and finish it.’”
That’s when he also added, that he just played guitar in the album. He said, Waters got the chance to create the album in the exact manner that he desired, and I went and played guitar when it was necessary. Gilmour also commented that he doesn’t like it very much. “I still think that the way I wanted to do would have been a much better way of doing it.”
As said before, Gilmour thought that the album had songs that shouldn’t have been included in the album. It was because it wasn’t good enough to be in the album. The production was unsuccessful because more band members left than normal, instead of the customary compromise. He claimed that while Gilmour believed he couldn’t, Waters believed he could produce an album without him.
About it, he said,
“I think a lot of the music is not up to the standard. There are three good songs on it, and I think the rest are rather weak. I don’t have anything, particularly against the concept, I find its tone a little too complaining about myself personally. There’s that, and there’s the lack of good material on it.”
Gilmour thought that there were half of three good tracks there. They also didn’t have their usual production situation. Which, in his opinion, still worked. But it stands to reason that someone would believe it to be the proper course of action whenever compromising circumstances like that occur frequently, he said.
David concluded with, “Overall, that compromise tends to make something work. Roger obviously thinks he can produce it all by himself without my production help, and I think he can’t. He writes most of the stuff, he writes the concept of what’s going on. Therefore, he thinks he has more of a right to say about how it should be produced. I tend to agree that he probably should have more to do with it but not all to do it.”
