“So I thought”: The musician Roger Waters was the most betrayed by…..

Anyone who joins a band with their friends needs to know what they’re getting into. The greatest artists of all time have always tried to run a group like a democracy, and no matter how much someone might want to take charge, it’s always important to get everyone’s opinion before making any major decisions. But when Syd Barrett left Pink Floyd, that left the leadership role open to Roger Waters, and he wasn’t going to budge when it came to getting the sounds in his head out into the world.

Then again, Waters was never exactly the most diplomatic person when it came to his opinion. Throughout Floyd’s career, there was no question that he steered the ship in terms of their outlandish concepts, but the idea of him calling himself the heart of Pink Floyd when he had his falling-out with the rest of the band is objectively false.

On every Pink Floyd album, it was always about every band member working together. Sure, Waters wrote fine musical passages and some of the most empathetic lines in the band’s canon, but there’s also no way to think of a song like ‘Echoes’ without Richard Wright’s fantastic keyboard work or David Gilmour’s distinct whale noises coming out of his guitar as the track breaks down in the middle.

That kind of collaboration was when they worked best, but The Wall is where everything started to go sideways. Wates was never going to budge when it came time to make the rock opera he envisioned, and if Wright couldn’t make the recording sessions and wasn’t contributing properly, he didn’t think twice about kicking him out of the group. While many people have justified Waters sticking to his guns on that album, The Final Cut is where the diminishing returns come in.

The whole record is practically a Roger Waters solo album masquerading as a Floyd piece, and even with Gilmour singing on one track, it’s hardly an album that should be listened to by anyone but completionists. So when the band decided to continue without Waters, it felt like they broke free after being shackled for so long, but that didn’t mean that Waters was safe from a few backstabbing moments.

When talking about his departure from the group, Waters said he was most upset with how Nick Mason handled the entire thing, saying, “[He was my best friend] so I thought… But when push came to shove, when we were making The Final Cut, I asked him to stand by me, to be part of ‘my gang’. He said to me, ‘…I want to go on with Gilmour…’. At least he had the courage to tell me that. I went, Alright, if that is what you believe.”

And while Waters and Gilmour don’t have a chance of reconciling any time soon, Mason has been able to make amends with Waters and be a third party between them in their later years. Even when Waters had disagreements with Gilmour during the rehearsals for Live 8, hearing Mason’s uncomfortable laughter as they both bicker back and forth is a great way of diffusing the tension between all of them.

But given the fact that Wright has long since passed and the dividing line between the former Floyd members are getting bigger and bigger, Mason seems content to leave his legacy where it is. It might have stung Waters to be betrayed by his old mate, but Mason never wanted to choose sides. He wanted to do what was right for him, and when he was forced to choose between Waters and the band, he knew that Gilmour still had that collaborative mentality the band thrived on.