Roger Waters says Live 8 is perfect end to Pink Floyd as it was ‘really, really special’

The final show from the classic line-up of Pink Floyd was “really, really special” according to bassist Roger Waters.

The veteran songwriter would say he had been keen to reunite with David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright again in the years to follow the band’s Live 8 show, but it never came to fruition. When asked about the possibility of a Pink Floyd reunion post-2005, Waters said it was “not up to me” whether the classic line-up got back together again. Mason would join Waters for a series of shows celebrating The Dark Side of the Moon, while Gilmour would appear with Waters for a solo show. But the original four did not get back together on stage, with Wright dying in 2008. Speaking with Word Magazine just months before Wright’s death, Waters said the Live 8 show was a unique experience that he would want to do again.

He said: “The answer is… not up to me. The answer is: I’d be very happy to do it but it’s sort of up to Dave, I guess. But I don’t think he wants to do it, so I don’t think it’ll happen. And that’s absolutely fair enough. It’s not going to change my life. But I did love Live 8. 

“I thought it was really, really special. If that’s the only thing we ever get to do again to underline the collaboration, then I’m very glad there was at least one moment we could do it. But I thought it sounded great. He feeling was… it was so… it was so intense. But I’m not sure that we all felt that. In fact, I’m quite sure that we didn’t all feel that. But most of us did.”

The Live 8 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.”

There was much interest in Pink Floyd continuing, at least from promoters. Waters would share: “The day they announced the Pink Floyd were to play Live 8, I went out to dinner with a friend and an offer arrived – literally bang on the dinner table – for the four of us, the Pink Floyd, to tour again. An offer of $250 million. Guaranteed.”