The ease of putting together Pink Floyd‘s Live 8 reunion is, according to Roger Waters, because he was “determined to roll over” in arguments.
Waters would share that he was determined to keep the peace with former bandmate David Gilmour ahead of the show, which would be the final performance of The Dark Side of the Moon line-up. Gilmour and Waters were joined by Richard Wright and Nick Mason for the show, which saw the band perform four songs in a twenty-minute set. Waters suggested, in an interview with Uncut Magazine, that he was expecting some hostility during the show because of how he had left the group in the 1980s. Waters would leave Pink Floyd in 1985, two years after the release of The Final Cut, but Gilmour would carry on as frontman of the band until 1994.
Waters said: “A little bit. It was bound to be, after all the history. But I went into the whole process determined to roll over if there was an argument. I know how to work his. If there’s conflict, I immediately play dead. Then everything will be fine. And I did and it seemed to work rather well, I have to say.”
Despite the show being lauded by fans and spoken of positively by Waters, the bassist believes Gilmour regretted the performance. It appears the chances of Pink Floyd reforming again are almost zero, though it seemed much more likely the band would play again in 2005.
Waters said: “No of course not. I’d do it in a heartbeat. I don’t think Dave wants to do it all. I think he sort of regretted Live 8 a bit, so who knows. Well because it was his band and suddenly it wasn’t any more.
“Suddenly this is what it was, this is the sort of thing it actually is – it’s Dave and Roger and Nick and Rick. And he said afterwards it would have been just the same if Roger hadn’t been there, but it’s not the same.”
Waters would say in several interviews around this time that he wanted to reform the band and also that he “regretted” the way things fell apart for the group on his departure in 1985. Speaking of his departure from the band in 2007, Waters said: “I don’t think any of us came out of the years from 1985 with any credit, really. It was a bad, negative time, really. And I regret my part in that negativity.
“I was actually more attached to the philosophy and politics of Pink Floyd than the others were — certainly more so than David was. In a way, whatever I did I did in a way to protect the integrity of what I saw as being important about the work that the four of us did together.
