One of the core problems with Pink Floyd were the things left unsaid.
Whenever any creative team buries all of their grievances over time, it should come as no surprise when things start escalating before everything gets completely out of control. But even in the worst moments, Roger Waters could give his bandmates their flowers.
Even by the standards of normal frontmen, though, Waters could be a bit of a lot to deal with from time to time. There were normally moments when he felt he had the band’s best interests at heart when guiding them through some of their classics, but there’s a fine line between being a great song coach half the time and then simply using every single person in the room as a session musician. And when making albums like The Wall, Waters had finally crossed that line a little too much.
The massive rock opera was already his baby, and if he wanted it to get done right, that meant that everyone had to have a good idea of what he was going for. Bob Ezrin was at least willing to match Waters’s intensity when it came to getting the right take for every single song, but that left little room for everyone else to work. And when working as a member of a band, the last thing you want to do is be put through studio boot camp like this.
Nick Mason and David Gilmour were at least able to roll over when they felt they couldn’t play one of the songs to the best of their ability, but Richard Wright really got the shaft most of the time. As Waters saw it, the keyboardist wasn’t taking any of the music seriously, and he figured it was better to fire him halfway through than have to worry about whatever ideas he might be bringing to the table.
But if there was one person Waters couldn’t behave like that around, it was Gilmour. He was the one saving grace behind the album by gifting the band ‘Comfortably Numb’, but ‘Young Lust’ is still up there for one of his finest contributions, with the guitarist finally playing into the rock and roll tropes that should come from an album all about a disgruntled rockstar slowly losing his mind.
Compared to the other classics on the record, Waters even thought the song was one of Gilmour’s greatest moments on the album, saying, “‘Young Lust’ is a pastiche number. It reminds me very much of a song we recorded years and years ago called ‘The Nile Song’, it’s very similar, Dave sings it in a very similar way. I think he sings ‘Young Lust’ terrific, I love the vocals. But it’s meant to be a pastiche of any young rock and roll band out on the road.”
But as far as vocals go, some of the best pieces of the project are when Gilmour and Waters are going back and forth. ‘Comfortably Numb’ is the obvious standout in that regard, but ‘Run Like Hell’ features a great call and response together, and to borrow from the band’s later years for a second, there had to be some lapse of reason when they decided not to include ‘What Shall We Do Now’ on the final record.
It’s nice when Waters and Gilmour could throw compliments towards each other, but most fans didn’t realise how good they had it at this. They were slowly starting to lose that camaraderie they built this era of the band on, and it would get more tense between them as the years wore on.
