David Gilmour: Being ‘Rude and Insulting’ Benefited Pink Floyd

David Gilmour believes that success hindered Pink Floyd’s ability to accept criticism.

During a conversation with The Sun, Gilmour elaborated on how the band’s creative dynamics shifted over time.

“After you achieve these dizzying heights, people tend to show you way too much deference,” the guitarist explained. “It becomes hard to retrieve the setup you had when you were young.”

As Gilmour noted, success made it challenging for the band members to accept opinions different from their own.

“In the earlier stages of Pink Floyd, we could be as rude and insulting to each other about our personalities and our music as we wanted,” he recalled, “and yet everything would be all right in the end.”

However, the time eventually came when things were no longer all right.

“No one ever stomped off permanently — until that bloke did.”

“That bloke” Gilmour referred to is Roger Waters, the band’s bassist and primary songwriter, who acrimoniously left Pink Floyd in 1985.

Two years later, Waters explained to Rolling Stone that the band never managed to come to a common understanding of their internal dynamics or roles. “It was an irritation to start with, and it became an impossible irritation towards the end,” he said.

Pink Floyd’s most famous lineup would only reunite one more time. In 2005, Gilmour, Waters, Richard Wright, and Nick Mason performed a brief set at the Live 8 benefit concert in London.

David Gilmour is now set to release his fifth studio album, Luck and Strange, on September 6. This will be his first solo LP in nine years.

According to The Sun, Gilmour stated that his new album is his most satisfying work since The Dark Side of the Moon.

“There’s a wholeness to it that I can’t pin down,” Gilmour mused. “It goes all the way through without any concept album bullshit.”

Source: The Sun, Rolling Stone