Pink Floyd's third world war: 30 years of insults, denunciations and pig-shaped balloons

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In the summer of 1986, journalist Hugh Fielder was interviewing

on his ship 'Astoria', anchored on the Thames, where he also has a recording studio.

The conversation was interrupted by two important phone calls that caused Gilmour to go to another cabin.

Fielder couldn't hear the conversation, but he could tell that whatever it was, the conversation was tense.

After the first call, Gilmour became serious.

After the second, he didn't hold back anymore and jumped at Fielder:

-It's the pig, Roger is claiming the fucking pig!

A team of lawyers hired by Roger Waters, the until then leader of the group, was examining legal documents from a decade ago, when in 1976

who escaped, in the middle of the photo session for the cover of the

album , possibly because Pink Floyd wanted publicity for the album, although the versions differ on this, as on almost everything that has to do with that British band.

'Algie' flew and flew, eventually causing some airborne chaos in London as pilots landing and clearing Heathrow reported to the control tower that they had not taken drugs, but that, indeed, there was a pig flying three miles away. high (in English, moreover, "when the pigs fly" has the same meaning as in Spanish "when the donkeys fly").

In 2008, when Waters performed at Coachella, he ran away again.

He is a pig who loves freedom.

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And in 1986, Pink Floyd and Roger Waters were separating, in

.

Waters and Gilmour had tried to launch their solo careers and had failed miserably.

But, while the bassist and leader -Waters- wanted the dissolution to be final, the guitarist -Gilmour- thought it was better to work together again.

"My whole career is in Pink Floyd, and I'm not going to give it up now," he said in 1987, despite the fact that the promotional video for his -perfectly forgettable- album and tour

(

), from 1984 presented him as "the former Pink Floyd guitarist" and he himself had stated on the television network 'MTV' that the idea of ​​the group was "risible".

The balance was moved by the drummer, Nick Mason, who, despite being a personal friend of Waters, went with Gilmour.

And Waters, one against two, lost in court.

Of course, he could have continued suing.

But the problem is that this would have cost him

.

And Waters, although he has very high ethical principles, appreciates money.

He said so in 2004: "If I had continued, they would have annihilated me financially."

Meanwhile, Gilmour and Mason released their own version of Pink Floyd.

It was a historic success.

And that they did not share with anyone.

was left as a mere session musician with a fixed salary and hardly any

.

Gilmour, Mason, and producer Bob Ezrin took it raw because, as the guitarist himself explained to British

magazine in 1990, "we had taken the biggest risk and, honestly, we wanted the biggest slice."

And so Pink Floyd (without Waters) created the formula for success of the rock 'dinosaurs' of the last 30 years: put out a record and go on a giant tour playing the classics on as freakishly big a stage as possible.

A monstrosity for Waters, who pays obsessive care to his performances, which are usually a mixture of images and music closer to opera (technical, mind you) than to a typical

concert .

But, also,

, with the advantage that, for a few years, it is no longer necessary for them to release a record.

So profitable is the strategy that in 1999 Waters returned to the stage and, since then, he has already gone on five tours in which he plays as little as possible from his solo career and all the great Pink Floyd hits.

And, as for 'Algie', Gilmour and Mason, apart from paying Waters 800 pounds (which today, corrected for inflation, would be about 2,000 euros) for each of the 299 times that Pink Floyd took him to fly for His concerts after he left the band gave him the face of a wild boar, with fangs, and huge genitals from which, in 1987, the pig peed on the audience at a concert in Philadelphia.

The pig's sex change has a raison d'etre:

. "

Consequently, if what flies is a male sparrow, it is more difficult for him to file a complaint.

Of course it is something that the ex-leader never forgave.

In 1992,

), in which the recently deceased Jeff Beck plays, continued to claim the paternity of the inflatable sparrow.

"They have looted my creations without me being able to do anything. My only pathetic victory is that they had to put testicles on the pig, "

he told

35 years have passed and the war between Waters and Gilmour is still more fierce than then.

Now the guitarist's wife has entered, the writer Polly Samson, who

:

(1994) and

(2015).

On Monday, Samson dispatched on Twitter: "Unfortunately @rogerwaters you are anti-semitic to your rotten heart. Also a supporter of Putin, and a liar, thief, hypocrite, tax evader, misogynist, lip-syncing singer, sick with envy , and megalomaniac. Enough nonsense."

Gilmour retweeted: "It's all demonstrably true."

This sudden explosion of fury has been years in the making.

But it started to reach boiling point in 2017, when Waters asked Gilmour to let him use Pink Floyd's Facebook page to promote their album

(

) and the 'Us + Them' tour, in which he paid homage precisely to 40 years of

.

Gilmour refused.

And, to add fuel to the fire, he did

That put Waters out of his mind.

Then, for added spice, Gilmour vetoed the remastered reissue of

, which went on sale last year, had a brief text about how the recording of the album had been, written by the 'unofficial' Pink Floyd historian, journalist Mark Blake.

But then there is politics.

Which is striking, because both Gilmour and Waters and Mason (who has survived his former teammates' war and managed to reestablish his friendship with Waters thanks to what he calls "my extraordinary ability to do 'the Tancredo gift') They define themselves as "socialists" and, furthermore, "atheists" ("the only god I believe in is Bob Dylan," Mason has said).But

, to the

despite having charged up to $3,000 for admission to some concerts on the US leg of his hyper-ideologized 'This is not a drill' tour, which arrives in Spain in March.

In the last decade and a half, he has gone from boycotting Israel -something in which other relevant creators, such as Brian Eno, Ken Loach, or Lorde, are located- to qualifying that country's policy towards the Palestinians as "genocide".

He has defended Nicolás Maduro.

And, in February 2022, he first

, then justified Moscow's attack on its southern neighbor.

Yesterday, Waters appeared at the United Nations, invited by Russia, to declare that the invasion "has not been something that was not provoked."

These are positions that have cost you money.

In 2018, her contract for German radio to broadcast one of her concerts was cancelled.

A year earlier, as he himself declared to EL MUNDO, American Express refused to provide financial services for the payment of tickets for his tour in the US.

Both of his concerts in Poland on his current tour have been cancelled.

And

', in which the former Pink Floyd gave benefit concerts with soldiers mutilated in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Cohen said that if Waters continued to participate in those charities, he would withdraw his financial support for the initiative, even though it was not political.

But perhaps what has ignited the flame is Ukraine.

Gilmour's daughter-in-law is from that country, and in 2022,

in support of that country.

Either way, Waters keeps turning left.

Now he says he would play in Moscow rather than Tel-Aviv, despite the fact that his then-saxophonist, Ian Ritchie, stated in August 2018 that when the band performed in the Russian capital, their security services asked them to use the internet. as little as possible, to avoid being infiltrated by the computers.

Meanwhile, Gilmour has become more and more isolated.

His public appearances -musical or not- are more sporadic every day.

Some attribute it to his state of health -77 next month and a fragile heart, as he himself has admitted, from decades of cocaine-, and others to the influence of Samson, whom they

, whom she isolated from her friends in her last years of life.

A Borges whose favorite record, which was played on all his birthdays, was precisely

.

Pink Floyd's war began, thus, with a flying pig and has ended against the background of the biggest war Europe has suffered in seven decades.

.

If Gilmour, Waters, and Mason could get together and make a record about it, it would be their masterpiece.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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