(Credits: Alamy)
Sat 30 August 2025 16:15, UK
The most important part of being a musician is trying to keep getting better. No one can spend their time creatively stagnant every time they walk into the studio, and while Pink Floyd knew that better than anyone, David Gilmour felt that there some musicians didn’t have any interest in going that extra mile.
Then again, none of the members of Pink Floyd ever had an ambition to be the most technical players in the world. Sure, every one of them was an absolute genius when it came to working off each other, but looking at the general framework of their songs, Richard Wright always seemed to be the one most interested in twisting the songs into shapes that no one had seen before.
But among the four members of the classic lineup, Gilmour was at least interested in seeing what things he could do beyond making fantastic guitar solos. He never necessarily asked to become the frontman once Roger Waters left the fold, but albums like The Division Bell showed that he was on the right track to making tunes that were a lot more accessible to a larger audience.
At the same time, none of it was going to be the same without Waters coming back into the fold. He may not have been the greatest singer in the world, but his knack for songwriting was what made him the glue of the group. Syd Barrett had left the band with only table scraps of his work, and when Waters started writing about the pain and empathy that he felt for the larger problems with the world, it was impossible not to feel it every single time an album like Dark Side of the Moon came on.
Then again, the idea of the group being truly progressive rock falls apart when it comes to Waters’s technique. Oh, some of the best prog songs have come out of the Floyd canon on albums like Animals and Wish You Were Here, but compared to the sonic geniuses like Chris Squire of Yes or Geddy Lee of Rush, even Gilmour had to admit that Waters falls well below everyone else in their field.
He did help music progress in many respects, but Gilmour felt that Waters never worked on his chops over the years, saying, “He had developed his own limited, or very simple style. He was never very keen on improving himself as a bass player. Half the time I would play the bass on the records. Because I would tend to do it quicker, right back to those early records. I mean, at least half the bass on all the recorded output is me anyway.”
Being respected for having chops may have felt good at the time, but that was never where Waters’s head was whenever he made a song. He wanted to put the listener in a mood, and that meant using other musicians to help bring his vision to life, whether that was working with orchestrators like Michael Kamen on The Final Cut or getting the job done by playing the simplest acoustic chords that he could think of.
It wasn’t what most people thought of when they looked at progressive music, but that’s what made Waters so captivating as a frontman in the early days. He was interested in showing people where he was at any given point in his life, and even if he didn’t play insane bass runs, it was impressive enough to sit back and respect the size and scope of his recordings.
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