When David Gilmour Met Roger Waters Again... Ouch!

Every Pink Floyd fan knows about the acrimonious parting of ways between Roger Waters and David Gilmour... but many don't know the story of this not-so-pleasant meeting... two decades later.

The event: Live 8. The facilitator: Bob Geldof.

The challenge: Getting Gilmour and Waters together again – even for a one-off appearance. For Pink Floyd fans all over the world, this was a historic event in the making. And here’s how it happened… finally.

As was to be expected, Gilmour wasn’t too keen to get together with Waters. In 1993, they had parted ways with a lot of rancour and unpleasantness. And to be fair, it was Waters who had walked out of the band. Also, since Waters was the dominating, overbearing one, it was natural for the relatively more passive Gilmour to avoid any interface with him.Nevertheless, the ever-persuasive Geldof managed to convince the two artistes to meet in a London hotel room. Gilmour remembers reaching after Waters had arrived – he recalls that he entered the room with a lot of apprehension. When the discussion started, both men were very cagey.

Five minutes into the discussion, Gilmour recalls it felt like being back in the past. Waters took the lead, and assumed his earlier air of bossiness. Gilmour immediately experienced a conflicting array of emotions. On the one hand, it was an old familiar feeling — in the good old days of Pink Floyd, he was accustomed to being the laid-back one while Waters called the shots. But on the other hand, it concretised the decision for him. In that instant he knew that he would do Live 8 as a good cause — but that would be it.

And that’s exactly the way it happened.