Pink Floyd founder Roger Waters took to Facebook on Tuesday to air his grievances with David Gilmour and the official Pink Floyd website. In the video, captioned “ANNOUNCEMENT,” the former bassist for the pioneering psychedelic rock group goes after his fellow founding band member in addition to an alleged conspiracy by the powers that be to keep his work off of the band’s website. And no, in case you were wondering, there is no actual “announcement” contained in the clip—unless you count the announcement of Waters’ insecurities.
Since his 1985 departure from the group he founded with Syd Barrett, Richard Wright, and Nick Mason (Gilmour joined two years after formation), Waters has kept the looming structure of Pink Floyd at arm’s length—except, of course, for the wealth of songs that keep him playing arenas as a solo act. The band’s classic lineup of Waters, Wright, Mason, and Gilmour has taken the stage together only once since Waters’s departure, at a 2005 reunion concert at London’s Hyde Park that lasted all of 25 minutes.
Waters’s video, posted to his official Facebook page early Tuesday morning, begins cheerfully enough with a flurry of cartoon hearts juxtaposed with Gilmour’s powerful opening notes to “In The Flesh” from The Wall. Everything seems normal as Waters appears on scree to thanks fans for their lovely comments in regards to his recent “Mother” video. Waters’s posh-Bob Weir look is accented only by his lone Alfalfa hair sticking straight up (Google it, kids) as he begins to lose his composure rather quickly.
“No, it’s not Dave Gilmour [in the “Mother” video], it’s DAVE Kilminster,” Waters says of his touring guitarist shown in the video who bears a passing resemblance to a young Gilmour. “Dave KILMINSTER is the guy with the black flowing locks sitting on the sofa playing an electric guitar.”
The sheer mention of Gilmour’s name, much like Voldemort to Harry Potter, seems to visibly cause Waters a great deal of pain. After humblebragging that the video already has 1.5 million views, Waters gets to the real purpose of this video: the fact that he isn’t allowed on the Pink Floyd website. It’s not like they have a photo of Waters’s resting bloke face hanging on the server or anything, it’s just that he cannot add his own content to “THE Pink Floyd website.” Waters insists that this ban comes personally from Gilmour, as if David knows his own iCloud password let alone how to build a WordPress website.
Waters, ever the peacemaker, alleges that he recently attempted to convene a “Camp David” for the surviving Pink Floyd members in London. While Nick Mason (probably) sat there uncomfortably, Waters allegedly argued with Gilmour that fans love the “body of work that” the original members did. While it’s unclear what Waters’s new, hyper-political catalog of music has to do with the band’s original body of work, it appears that the pitch to Gilmour was about as successful as the one he murmured, tight-lipped, into his iPad’s camera early Tuesday morning.
This isn’t at all relevant to Waters’s argument, but around two minutes in, it sounds like somebody starts pressure washing just off-screen. The background noises provide much-needed levity to Waters’s recreation of Abe Simpson’s classic “Old Man Yells At Cloud” moment.
Where things get really juicy is when Waters goes full Trump and starts citing rumors he’s hearing from other people that he obviously made up himself. It’s truly ironic to see Waters embody the populist characteristics of the president that he hates so much.
After referencing the “rumblings and grumblings in the ranks” from his “friends who follow these things,” Waters wonders aloud, “why do we have to sit and watch Polly Samson for year after year month after month day after day and the Von Trapps reading excerpts from their novels to get us to go to sleep tonight?” This is a reference to the recurring livestream from Gilmour and his family, Polly Samson’s A Theatre for Dreamers, which was originally started by Gilmour’s wife to promote her new novel. Since then, the webcast has evolved into a multi-media event with poetry readings and performances from Gilmour, who just last week honored Pink Floyd’s founder Syd Barrett with a pair of covers.
Waters goes on to cite more grumblings in the rank in file from folks who ask, “‘Why don’t we get to hear about anything that Roger is doing or about This Is Not A Drill or when he makes a piece of work it’s not shown…and none of his work is publicized, the fact that his and Sean Evens‘s film Us And Them, which has just gone out digitally for streaming everywhere, is not mentioned…we’re not allowed to even mention such a fact on the official Pink Floyd website. This is wrong. We should rise up, or just change the name of the band to Spinal Tap and everything will be hunky-dory.'”
Seemingly realizing that he is only just approaching a mental breakdown broadcast over the internet rather than in the midst of one, Waters finally decides to wind things down before they get too crazy. “Alright,” he says. “I’m not going to get all weird and sarcastic, though as you know that is the direction I am known to sometimes lean sentimentally.”
Finally, Waters thanks viewers for all the love and signs off, transitioning once again to the flutter of cartoon hearts from the video’s opening. Watch the full video below.
Roger Waters — ANNOUNCEMENT