Roger Waters was ‘told to get Pink Floyd’ back together for Live Aid but declined for one reason

An earlier reunion for legendary rock band Pink Floyd was on the cards, but founding member Roger Waters declined.

The bassist and songwriter had been asked to reform the band just a few years after he left the group. Waters was one of the many big names absent from Live Aid in 1985, a show where he was asked to reform the band he had just left. You can see Waters in the background of documentaries about Live Aid, and though he would not perform at the event, he was present for the Bob Geldof charity drive. The Wall hitmaker had been asked to put Pink Floyd back together for the show, but he declined and proposed a new set of musicians which he could perform with. The organisers would decline, though twenty years later Pink Floyd would reform on the Live Aid stage for a twenty-minute performance.

Waters said: “I tried to pitch into Live Aid. They asked me to put Pink Floyd back together for it, and I said no, but I’d bring my new band to play. They didn’t want that. But that’s alright. I went along on my own.”

Despite not being asked to play on his own, Waters did manage to reform Pink Floyd at Live Aid 2005, which is to date the band’s final performance. Their twenty-minute set would feature songs like Comfortably Numb, and would be the first time Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright performed together.

Gilmour would appear at a Waters show in 2011, but the relationship has soured in recent years. It was very different in 2005 though, with Waters full of praise for his long-time collaborator.

Speaking to Word Magazine, Waters said: “Just pleased. I just felt pleasure, playing the music, and hearing Rick playing his great keyboard parts which of course we know and love so much from the records. It felt good. I thought Nick played great. I thought everybody played great. Dave sang beautifully. It was a great feeling.”

The performance was so great in fact, that Waters suggested it was a moment which rekindled his love for playing to larger crowds. He added: “We have holes in our psychology and performing in front of large numbers of people who enjoy it is obviously part of the point of doing it. And so when it happens, trust me, it feels fantastic.

“It’s something I lost touch with entirely in Pink Floyd, which is why I wrote The Wall and why I left in the end. Since then I’ve started to do tours with my own band and I started to realise that I had allowed myself to let go of the past and just really enjoy – wallow – in that connection with people who know my work and appreciate it.

“We did a big tour in 02 of the Southern Hemisphere, everywhere from Seoul to Santiago. People knew every word to every song and they knew what they meant. They get it like I get Imagine.” Though the show was a success, the four-piece never played together again, an impossibility after Wright’s death in 2009.