How A Momentary Lapse Of Reason caused all-out war for Pink Floyd

As Pink Floyd all but collapsed following the release of 1983’s The Final Cut, fans could’ve been forgiven for thinking that the rancour between warring members Roger Waters and David Gilmour couldn’t have got any worse. But things were about to get nuclear.

It was the mid-80s and Gilmour and Waters had both recently released solo albums to mild success, but with Waters officially announcing that he’d officially left Pink Floyd, Gilmour saw a fresh future for the prog-rock pioneers. No matter that in Waters’ mind, his departure meant the end of Pink Floyd – for Gilmour, the idea of re-forming the band and making a new record without his overbearing bandmate was pretty much a dream come true.

Waters tried to see the plan off at the pass, taking out a high court application to ensure the Pink Floyd name could never be used again. Unperturbed, Gilmour proceeded to put a band in place – bringing drummer Nick Mason and keyboardist Rick Wright into the fold down the line too. Wright had been pushed out of the group during sessions for The Wall and, for legal reasons, would have to remain a salaried member for the new album. 

Waters was furious, declaring that Pink Floyd was “a spent force creatively”. He took action against his former bandmates and label bosses at EMI Records, bringing the case to court in 1986 and sparking a furious war of words between the sparring members in the press. Waters lost, however – not that he accepted the verdict. “My QC told me that the kind of justice I was after, I could only get from the public,” he said later. “The law is not interested in the moral issue but in the name as a piece of property.” He took offence, he said, at what he saw as Pink Floyd being turned into what he described as a “franchise”. “When does a band stop being a band?” he moaned. “They presumably have the same sort of definition as the people going round calling themselves The Drifters.”

The fiasco didn’t seem to have an effect on the album that became A Momentary Lapse Of Reason, unless the title referred to their former leader’s decision to drag the group through the courts. Whilst Waters wrote it off as “a pretty fair forgery”, it was a record where Gilmour assembled a crack team of collaborators including Michael Kamen, producer Bob Ezrin, saxophonists Tom Scott and Scott Page, keyboardists Bill Payne and Joe Carin, drummers Jim Keltner and Carmine Appice and more to craft an atmospheric, ambient rock album worthy of the name. It was a huge success, selling in its millions. 

Years later, Waters admitted to the BBC that he’d made an error taking Pink Floyd to court. “I was wrong. Of course I was. Who cares?” The damage was done, though, and you imagine that Waters had realised it was all self-inflicted.

Source: loudersound.com