Roger Waters Claims David Gilmour And Rick Wright Tried To Undercut Him

Former-Pink Floyd leader Roger Waters took time out to slam his ex-bandmates David Gilmour and the late-Rick Wright for attempting to undermine him during their tenure together.

During his recent appearance on the WTF with Marc Maron Podcast, Waters, who'll be hitting the road next spring for an extended road trek, admitted, “Getting away from Pink Floyd, I think. . . was really important that I got away when I did. . . I was in a very toxic environment where I was around some people. . . David (Gilmour) and Rick (Wright) mainly were always trying to drag me down. . . They were always trying to knock me off.”

When pressed for specifics, Waters said, “By claiming that I was tone-deaf and that I didn't understand music. 'Oh, he's just a boring teacher figure who tells us what to do but he can't tune his own guitar. . .' They were very snotty and snippy because they felt very insignificant, I think.”

Waters went on to say, “I'm not putting them down. Those years that we were together, whatever it was like socially, there is no question but that we did some really good work together. . . We didn't share the vision — but we shared the work.”

Roger Waters explained that for him, the artistic situation of working as part of a committee throughout the 1970's changed after Pink Floyd became the prog icons of the 1970's: “We were a real group. Four guys driven by the ambition of making it. With (The) Dark Side Of The Moon we made it and those ambitions ceased to be quite as important as they were. So, the cracks that led to the eventual schism were there all through the making of Wish You Were Here, and Animals, and The Wall.”

We asked co-founding Nick Mason if after all the incredible work David Gilmour and Roger Waters created together — not to mention all the water gone under the bridge between the bandmates — after all is said and done, there's love between the two: “That's a very 'American' concept, (this) business of 'love' between Roger and David. It's pretty sort of (laughs) dangerous ground for me to try and second-guess how they would describe feeling about each other. I think you could say, they were in a band together for a very long time and that gives you a bond. Y'know, and you end up deciding you like or don't like someone — or whatever. They have huge differences about music and the band and the way things were done. But, I mean, no one could've walked away from Live 8 thinking it wasn't a good thing to do and there wasn't a sense of. . . enormous affection — let's not call it 'love.'”