David Gilmour says he ‘knew’ some fans would not approve of Pink Floyd without Roger Waters

After a major change to the lineup of Pink Floyd, David Gilmour said he “knew” some fans would not approve of him fronting the band.

He did so for nearly a decade, with Roger Waters leaving the group in 1985. The band would stagger on, releasing two albums – A Momentary Lapse of Reason, and The Division Bell – before performing their final show in 1994. Though the group did reunite for a one-off performance in 2005 with Waters, and released a charity single in 2021 without Waters, it appears Gilmour was fighting an uphill battle when fronting the group. In an interview with Q Magazine, Gilmour confirmed he felt some fans were not on board with his vision for Pink Floyd after Waters had left the band. The group’s final album featuring Waters, The Final Cut, proved underwhelming, selling only three million copies. Waters has since suggested this was more than enough, but Gilmour used it as an example of Pink Floyd’s dwindling influence.

Waters said at the time: “It sold three million copies, which wasn’t a lot for the Pink Floyd. And as a consequence, Dave Gilmour went on record as saying, ‘There you go: I knew he was doing it wrong all along.’ But it’s absolutely ridiculous to judge a record solely on sales. If you’re going to use sales as the sole criterion, it makes Grease a better record than Graceland.”

Though the underwhelming sales figures contributed to Waters’ decision to leave the band, Gilmour believes there were some fans who did not “approve” of Pink Floyd continuing without the long-serving bassist.

Gilmour told Q Magazine in 1990: “I knew we would get some fans who would not approve. We didn’t get too many. There would be people in the audience who would make their feelings heard about Roger not being there, just by shouting very loudly during moments when the rest of the audience was being respectfully quiet.

“They are perfectly entitled to, I just can’t understand why the fuck they bothered to pay for the tickets. If they don’t like us, go see Roger instead.” Waters would tour as a solo act with his Radio K.A.O.S. album shortly after leaving Pink Floyd.

Despite the crowd calls for Waters’ return “dying away” over time, Gilmour still remembers two incidents which occurred on the tours. He said: “There was once a whole row of about eight guys with “Fuck Roger” T-shirts on.

“There was another guy wearing one of Roger’s tour T-shirts, which had the name Roger Waters in green fluorescent lettering across the top, so I only had to glance into the audience and his name would be beaming at me.

This guy was starting off by shouting at us, but by the end of the second half he took the T-shirt off, tore it up into little bits, put it on the floor and stamped on it!”

Gilmour went on to suggest fans “don’t understand what happened” between Waters and the rest of Pink Floyd. The guitar veteran added: “He sent a letter to CBS in America and EMI here saying he’d left Pink Floyd – it was quite clear and unequivocal.

“He didn’t tell us – we only found out when we got a copy of the letter from the record company. He left, and we wanted to carry on with our careers. It’s as simple as that. We had a fight, which was just about our freedom.”