(Credits: Far Out / digboston)
Sun 25 January 2026 16:30, UK
It is no secret, at this point, that Roger Waters is a rather difficult man to please; throughout his career, from Pink Floyd and beyond, the songwriter has left a trail of ruined relationships and a plethora of long-standing feuds which continue to this very day.
Pink Floyd was rarely a harmonious group to be a part of. During their early days, during the psychedelic haze of the 1960s, the group didn’t waste much time before unceremoniously sacking their songwriting leader, Syd Barrett, as a result of his deteriorating mental health, which, presumably, wasn’t helped by being booted out of his own band. Then, in the years that followed, Waters’ tenure as band leader was most often punctuated by vicious arguments, resentment, and ‘musical differences’.
Admittedly, Floyd also produced their greatest material during the Waters era, with The Dark Side of the Moon being the crowning jewel of the group’s discography. Yet, even still, that did little to quell the internal tensions, and Waters ended up walking out on Pink Floyd in 1985, leaving arch-nemesis David Gilmour to take the reins. Even during that period, though, Waters still seemed rather highly-strung when it came to his fellow musicians.
Outside of the Pink Floyd camp, aiming to get a slight bit of respite from the constant, dizzying arguments, Waters embarked upon a solo tour, recruiting long-time friend and fellow musician Tim Renwick, along with guitar virtuoso Eric Clapton, to back him up. You would assume, perhaps, that Waters was far more comfortable in this set-up, but, of course, you would be dead wrong.
“He was a bit difficult,” Renwick recalled of his first impressions of Waters to Guitar Player. “He was very determined to rule everything.” Inevitably, then, when it came to touring together, Waters wasn’t the easiest leader to get behind.
“I got along with him very well when we were rehearsing for the Pros and Cons tour. It was just the two of us,” Renwick shared. “But once we actually got involved with the band, he really became a bit too bossy.”
In particular, the tour seemed to bring with it a growing level of jealous resentment towards Eric Clapton. “It has to be said that Roger was a bit resentful of the fact that whenever Eric Clapton got up and played a solo, the place would erupt,” Renwick admitted. “People would get their lighters out, and there would be a tremendous outpouring of applause.”
While that reaction would be – you might assume – beneficial to the tour, not to mention being part and parcel of having one of the greatest guitarists of all time in your group, it didn’t seem to sit right with Waters. “That annoyed Roger quite a lot because, rightly or wrongly, he felt that the audience weren’t actually listening to the songs,” Renwick explained. “They were just watching out for what Eric was doing. So there was a certain amount of resentment there.”
Nevertheless, this thrown-together group managed to get through the remainder of the tour, and Clapton and Waters even collaborated further in the years that followed. For Renwick, however, the Pros and Cons tour was a worrying encapsulation of Waters’ leadership style, and it is no surprise that the guitarist went on to work with Pink Floyd under David Gilmour shortly thereafter.
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