       Roger Waters exposes the secrets of Rock 'N' Roll's most
                    self-destructive supergroup, 
                             PINK FLOYD
		 Penthouse Magazine, September, 1988


   "Is there anything more sad and unjust than a  *fake*?"  frets
radically  flustered  British rock legend Roger Waters, seated in
his Spartan loft offices in London. His  fervid  question  fairly
scars  the  afternoon air with its savagery. "Can you imagine the
disappointment in learning you'd spent your savings  on  a  false
Magritte  or  a fraudulent John Lennon manuscript? Not to mention
the spiritual trust and emotion people  invest  in  the  symbolic
power of any name."

   Indeed, Waters allows, in many ancient cultures names were sa-
cred  things that could never be changed, transferred, or falsely
assumed. To tamper with a name, much less manipulate  it  in  the
marketplace,  was  to desecrate the spiritual force it contained.
It was like spitting on the soul.

   "And it was the struggle *against* these kinds of  attitudes,"
adds  the  wiry  Waters,  his square jaw stiffening, "that helped
John Lennon create the sense of artistic decency that I  like  to
call `the Lennon Instinct.'"

   The fight that Waters is discussing is closer to home than any
cunning  exploitation  of  the  farflung  Beatles legacy, but the
stakes are still plenty high. Indeed, one of the biggest and most
bitter  battles in the annals of the billion-dollar rock business
concerns the much-coveted  legal  custody  of  a  quirky  musical
trademark: Pink Floyd.

   In the beginning were the words, and the words were  the  Pink
Floyd  sound. Derived from the first names of two obscure Georgia
bluesmen (Pink Anderson and Floyd Council), the term was  applied
in 1965 to a certain experimental British rock band; and over the
course of two decades it has become synonymous with  a  magnetic,
edgy music in which its pervasive chilling mood is the star.

   The man at the center of the ugly contest for control of  this
potent  rock presence is songwriter Roger Waters, a lyricist *ex-
traordinaire* whose spiky meditations on death, madness, and apo-
calypse  were  pivotal  in leading an obscure British psychedelic
group to the pinnacle of commercial  preeminence  in  progressive
rock.  In  particular,  Waters wrote all the words and the better
part of the music for Pink Floyd's 1973 album, _The Dark Side  Of
The  Moon_.  One  of the most successful records of all time, the
hypnotic _Dark Side_ has lingered for a staggering 725  weeks  on
_Billboard_'s  pop  charts;  yet  its  spooky  cover  image  of a
prismatic pyramid is the closest its faceless creators have  ever
come to iconlike stardom.

   Waters' legendary fertile imagination yielded another phenome-
nal blockbuster in 1979, the epic autobiographical ode to postwar
alienation, _The Wall_ -- and under his leadership the band would
ultimately  move  more  than  55 million albums. But the focus of
fans' adulation remained the anonymous banner of "Pink Floyd."

   The Floyd broke up in 1983 -- notwithstanding  all  flamboyant
appearances  to the contrary -- and now Waters and longtime Floyd
lead guitarist/vocalist Dave Gilmour are locked in a  fight  over
rights  to  the  name. Waters wants "the reigning trade-emblem of
rock" to be permanently retired, pleading, "Let's be fair to  our
public,  for  pity's sake, and admit the group disintegrated long
ago!"

   Gilmour vehemently rejects such notions,  raging,  "I've  been
working  on my career with Pink Floyd for 20 years -- since 1968.
I'm 44 now, too old to start all over at this stage of my career,
and  I  don't see any reason why I should. Pink Floyd is not some
sacred or hallowed thing that never made bad or boring records in
the past. And I'm not destroying anything by trying to carry on!"

   Actually, these pitched  acrimonies  evolved  out  of  a  1985
management  rift,  in  which  Waters  ended his representation by
veteran Floyd manager Steve O'Rourke. Their falling-out was  over
contractual agreements for future Floyd output -- a matter Waters
deemed moot since the  band  was,  to  his  mind,  defunct.  When
O'Rourke  bridled,  calling his termination by Waters a violation
of his own formal agreements with, and  responsibilities  toward,
the  entity known as Pink Floyd, Roger sought support from former
band members Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason  (Roger  even  rashly
proposed  to cede the band's rights to Pink Floyd if they'd close
ranks against O'Rourke's claims; neither Gilmour  nor  Mason  ac-
cepted Waters never-to-be-repeated offer.)

   As Waters tells it, when he calmed down and took the long view
on  both  the deepening breach with O'Rourke and his estrangement
>from Gilmour, Mason and Floyd orphan Rick Wright (who Roger  says
was  fired by mutual consent of the rest in 1980), he decided the
sanest course of action was a  writ  to  nullify  the  name  Pink
Floyd.

  In 1986, on  Halloween,  Roger  Waters  filed  suit  in  London
against  Gilmour and Mason. Last year, the dispute spilled out of
the offices of the principals' attorneys  and  onto  the  world's
concert stages. Roger Waters mounted a massive tour in support of
_Radio KAOS_, his second solo LP, while Gilmour, Mason and Wright
performed  the  _A  Momentary  Lapse Of Reason_ LP under the Pink
Floyd flag.

   Waters' record drew wildly mixed reviews  and  sold  modestly;
yet  his  much-praised KAOS concert pageant, while pitted against
the rising tide of pseudo-Floyd promotion,  slowly  prospered  to
where  Waters  could  sell  out  solo shows in England's gigantic
Wembley Arena on two consecutive nights. Meanwhile,  the  product
of  Gilmour's  Floyd  facsimile  drew similarly mixed notices but
triumphed in record stores, sparking a hefty 3 million  purchases
in  the  U.S.  alone;  and the lasers- and props-packed _Lapse Of
Reason_ dates proved a steady sellout internationally.

   On both tours, crowds were treated to the bountifully forebod-
ing sweep of the Pink Floyd aesthetic. Hits and FM favorites like
"Welcome to the Machine," "Money,"  and  "Another  Brick  In  The
Wall"  were  lavished on all comers -- but it was only during the
_Radio KAOS_ concerts that noted  Los  Angeles  deejay  Jim  Ladd
(performing as the voice of the mythical KAOS station) deigned to
declare, "Words and music by Roger Waters!"

   While Waters' authorship of the best of the Pink Floyd  reper-
toire  was plain from the start, it was opponent Dave Gilmour who
won the crucial first round at the box office. While savoring the
bounty from _A Momentary Lapse Of Reason_, Dave permitted himself
a bit of boasting last november in the pages of _Rolling  Stone_:
"We never sat down at any point and said, `It doesn't sound Floyd
enough. Make this more Floyd.' We just worked on the songs  until
they  sounded  right.  When  they sounded great and right, that's
when it became Pink Floyd."

   Roger Waters read that "arrogant soliloquy" down  in  Nassau's
Compass  Point Studios last spring while at work with Paul "Don't
Shed A Tear" Carrack and the Bleeding Heart Band on the then  un-
titled follow-up to _Radio KAOS_.

   For Roger, Gilmour's assertion was the last straw. "That's  an
outright  lie,  absolute and barefaced," he seethed, slamming the
magazine down, "and someday the world will know the depth of this
entire hoax!"

   Waters saw Gilmour's quote in  _Rolling  Stone_  as  the  rock
equivalent of the Iran-Contra crew and their droll demurrals con-
cerning official misconduct, despite a damning paper trail to the
contrary.  The  Gilmour statement emboldened Waters to come forth
for the first time with details of what he sees  as  the  behind-
the-scenes  disloyalties and double-dealings that gave rise to _A
Momentary Lapse of Reason_. "I must  say,"  Waters  quips,  "that
under the circumstances, it's a superb title for a so-called Pink
Floyd record."

   Granted, anyone can say anything to the press to  justify  his
position  to  Pink Floyd's legion of rabid fans. However, the in-
trigues that emerge from six months of independent  inquiry  into
this  epic  test  of rock'n'roll wills differ shockingly from all
previous accounts.

   What emerges is a saga of greed, cynicism, and  misrepresenta-
tion  in  the modern music business. Over the last 20 years, rock
has grown from the simple  expression of a  spirited  singer  and
his  song  into a gigantic entertainment juggernaut in which even
the most splendid displays of "talent" and  "vision"  can  be  of
synthetic origin. Thanks to the convolutions of current recording
technology, a musician needn't play, a band needn't assemble,  an
artistic  bond needn't exist. A songwriter-producer can adopt the
focused traits of an assembly-line foreman as he brings the illu-
sion of a supergroup and its latest album into being. This is the
story of a massive controversy, centered on the marketing of  two
seemingly foolish words: Pink Floyd.



   "You learn nothing from a lie," says Roger  Waters,  stretched
out  in  the Billiard Room, a home studio that has supplanted the
game room of his spacious house in Barnes, West London. It's been
a  troubled six months since our initial Pink Floyd-related talk,
and the sinewy Waters looks distinctly world-weary. "Even as  you
discover  a  deliberate untruth, it always only confirms what you
already knew but refused to face."

   This blunt observation  is  at  the  core  of  Roger  Waters's
outlook  as  a  composer, since unsentimental confrontations with
delusion form the fundamental themes of his work. Like many  old-
guard  rock  practitioners, Waters values the unconditional open-
ness of the best rock as a public expression of a personal truth.
Naysayers  claim  that  rock no longer requires any creed or sub-
stance beyond the brazen announcement of itself.

   "In Aldous Huxley's book *Brave  New  World*,"  mulls  Waters,
nursing  a  cup of strong tea, "he warned about every human being
conditioned to accept his lot so that the bosses arrive at a nice
smooth  situation  where nobody questions anything and everything
is supposedly `taken care of.' This is the deluded scenario I put
forth  in *Radio KAOS* -- which was my doomsday-bound vision of a
`soap-operatic republic' in which nobody gives a shit if, for in-
stance,  Oliver  North  did the right thing or was wrong, or what
effect it had on anything else. All that many viewers still  care
about  concerning  the  indicted  Mr.  North is whether he gave a
good, solid,  John  Wayne  television  performance.  And  because
North's  airtime  suddenly became entwined with the American net-
works' sickening concept of what constitutes great television, it
was literally excused!

   "What it comes down to for me is:  Will  the  technologies  of
communication  and culture -- and especially popular music, which
is a *vast* and beloved enterprise -- help us to  understand  one
another  better, or will they deceive us and keep us apart? While
there's still time, we all have to answer for ourselves. But nei-
ther  Huxley nor Meese nor Ollie North could have prepared me for
the creative, technological and moral issues I'm facing with  the
Pink  Floyd  sham -- a grand display that's also being excused in
public because it makes for great arena rock.

   "Naturally," he chuckles, showing a handsome, seldom seen grin
that  merits  more exposure, "all of this solemn contemplation is
showing up in my music. *Radio KAOS* was hopefully  universal  in
its  pained concern, but my new album's themes involve anguish in
my very own backyard."

   Indeed, one day last winter, as the  personnel  calling  them-
selves  Pink  Floyd  were moving across the map from San Diego to
Sydney in fierce pursuit of ticket sales, a pensive Roger  Waters
went  to the Billiard Room and began writing stanzas for what be-
came a song for his new album:

             We watched the tragedy unfold              
             We did as we were told
             We bought and sold
             It was the greatest show on Earth
             But then it was over

             We oohed and aahed
             We drove our racing cars
             We ate our last jars of caviar
             And somewhere out there in the stars
             A keen-eyed lookout spied a flickering star
             Our last hurrah

             (COPYRIGHT 1988 ROGER WATERS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED)


   Waters gradually realized the two verses were  a  requiem  for
the  fragile  integrity of the Pink Floyd reign. And yes, tens of
thousands of spectators *were* at that moment crowding arenas  to
hear  a  band calling itself Pink Floyd. Yet the most devout fans
surely were aware that the whole presentation could not be furth-
er in fact or intent from the aims of the idealistic school chums
who forged the Pink Floyd Sound.

   When a title for his bittersweet new song eventually  occurred
to  Roger  Waters, it also seemed an apt name for both his latest
solo album and the tragic creative destiny that it summarized. "I
didn't  know  what  else  to call it," he shrugs, "but *Amused to
Death*."



   Among ultra-hard-core Pink Floyd zealots, the period of mourn-
ing  for  the band commenced way back in 1968, when another Roger
-- Roger Keith "Syd" Barrett -- was booted from  the  psychedelic
act  he'd  named.  A fellow student of Waters's at Cambridge High
School for Boys, Syd Barrett was invited by Roger in late 1965 to
join a combo he'd formed with two other architecture majors (Nick
Mason, Rick Wright) at London's Regent Street Polytechnic.  Spew-
ing  barrages  of  feedback-cum-Chuck Berry chords during Sunday-
afternoon "Spontaneous Underground" sessions at the  fabled  Mar-
quee  Club,  Pink  Floyd quickly became the vanguard experimental
outfit on the London underground scene.

   Unfortunately,  young  Syd  too  quickly  became  high-priest-
without-portfolio of a surreal strain of hallucinogen-fueled rock
songcraft, whose halcyon era was as hazy as his  own  cerebellum.
While  still  sufficiently  grounded as of January 1967 to author
Pink Floyd's first British  hit,  "Arnold  Layne,"  Barrett  soon
tired  of  the  rigors of reality. He was halfway to the laughing
house when *The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn*, the debut Floyd  LP,
emerged from Abbey Road Studios in August 1967.

   Cambridge High School alumnua`s Dave Gilmour, fresh from  gigs
as a male model in France, was brought on board in February 1968,
to serve as backup guitarist and  vocalist  for  the  dangerously
balmy Barrett. When too many visits to the popstar pharmacy paved
the way for Syd's inevitable on-mental tour collapse, Gilmour got
the nod as new guitar hero. Waters, Gilmour, and Rick Wright went
on to assist Barrett in two loopy solo LPs (*The  Madcap  Laughs;
Barrett*),  and  then  Syd retired to his mum's house to preserve
his premier rank as acid-fried rock savant.

   With Gilmour the appointed front man, Waters  gripped  Floyd's
artistic   reins   and   steered   them   into  years  of  exotic
progressive-rock reveries.  The electronics-drenched  albums  had
titles  like *A Saucerful of Secrets; Ummagumma; Atom Heart Moth-
er; Meddle. And the spacey songs followed suit: "Set The Controls
For The HEart Of The Sun," "Astronome Domine." The band also pro-
vided soundtrack scores  for  a  few  of  the  more  outre'  late
sixties-early   seventies   art   movies,   notably   *More*  and
Michelangelo Antonioni's daffily desolate *Zabriske  Point*(1970)
in  which  the  Floyd song "Careful With That Axe, Eugene" soared
over the closing sequence  of  desert  explosions.  (**note  from
typist/poster:  the  song  in the movie is titled "Come In Number
51, Your Time Is Up." and is a very souped-up version of "Careful
With  That Axe." This article contains some other minor inaccura-
cies, but I couldn't let that one stand.**)

   The  Pink  Floyd  stage  productions  of  the  era  were   the
forerunners  of the modern rock extravaganza, featuring elaborate
special effects and one of rock's  inaugural  light  shows,  plus
protracted  instrumental  suites  served up via a remarkable 360-
degree sound system called the Azimuth  Coordinator.  At  one  UK
concert,  a 50-foot inflatable octopus rose from an adjacent pond
during a climactic number, the Floyd playing so loudly the  deci-
bel level actually decimated the real aquatic life in the water.

   For all its bizarre overkill, the Floyd had no impact  on  the
American market until 1972's _Obscured By Clouds_ was embraced by
FM radio. From there it was a short step to a  commercial  blast-
off courtesy _The Dark Side Of The Moon_, with its immaculate in-
strumentation,  ominous  phonic  mumbles,   and   jarring   sound
effects(ticking clocks, ringing cash registers). Each band member
contributed something to the mix of _Dark Side_,  but  lyrically,
musically, and conceptually it was Roger Waters's coming out par-
ty. While the rest of the group  basked  in  the  glow  of  their
abrupt  mass  acceptance,  Waters  busily exorcised his ingrained
demons, expounding throughout _Wish You Were Here_(1975, dedicat-
ed  to  Syd  Barrett), _Animals_(1977), _The Wall_(1979) and _The
Final Cut_(1983), on gloomy human themes rooted in grief for  his
airman father's World War II death.

   "My father was a schoolteacher before  the  war,"  Waters  ex-
plains  evenly. "He taught physical education *and* religious in-
struction, strangely enough. He was a deeply committed  Christian
who  was killed when I was three months old. A wrenching waste. I
concede that awful loss has colored much of  my  writing  and  my
worldview."

   It has also shaped Waters's intense  sense  of  protectiveness
toward  Pink Floyd's recording heritage, since it encompasses ma-
jor developmental horrors in his life --  whether  they  involved
coping  with  the  death of the dad he never knew, or the psychic
dissolution of adolescent companion Syd Barrett.

   "Syd and I went through our *most* formative years  together,"
Waters  shyly admits, "riding on my motorbike, getting drunk, do-
ing a little dope, flirting with girls, all that basic  stuff.  I
still  consider  Syd  a  great  primary  inspiration; there was a
wonderful human tenderness to all his unique musical flights."

   From his alternately slack and hypertense body language to the
crackling clarity of his discourse, Roger Waters, 44, is the epi-
tome of the overly bright man for whom intellect, self-awareness,
and  social  conscience are a decidedly mixed blessing. The hard-
ness of his chiseled visage and flinty gaze are leavened,  howev-
er, by the disarming vulnerability of his nature.

    "There's something to be said for disastrous business miscal-
culation  and failure in the marketplace," he says with a hapless
chuckle. "They send you back home to ponder your  value  systems,
and at the same time they reward you with a new freedom to follow
your creative heart without worrying about commercial tyrannies.

   "I've also discovered that the law is not so  much  interested
in  moral  issues  as the cold factors of ownership, treating the
name Pink Floyd as if it were McDonald's or Boeing! On a personal
level,  I  have  nothing  against Dave Gilmour furthering his own
goals. It's just the idea of Dave's solo career  masquerading  as
Pink Floyd that offends me!"

   Gilmour is the polar opposite of his adversary in both appear-
ance  and opinion. Round-faced, smiling, with a teddy-bear torso,
he projects amicability and approachability -- until his  darting
eyes  sense weakness in their vicinity. At which point, the smile
turns to a fixed leer and a fabled sarcasm spills forth.

   "I don't share Roger's sense of  angst  about  music  and  the
world,"  he banters scornfully, speaking at dusk in a Providence,
Rhode Island, hotel room shortly before  another  concert  stand.
"If  I  did,  maybe  we  would  have  come to an agreement on our
dispute. While Roger's acted dumbly and  isolated  himself,  I've
discovered  new strength with the extra work load I've had to put
on myself in this last year. But like him, I did several solo LPs
myself  and made no demands on anyone when I did.  Granted, I did
less work with Pink Floyd back in the  old  days,  but  that  was
something  Roger  was  forcing. And now," Gilmour adds with glee,
"the poor chap's lost his whip hand!"


   Perhaps. But David Gilmour is singing a vastly different  tune
than he did back when his solo future seemed brighter.

   "Roger comes up with the concepts -- he's the preacher of  the
group and spends more time home writing with Pink Floyd in mind,"
a breezy Gilmour told _Rolling Stone_ in 1978, as his _David Gil-
mour_  album  was being issued. "We get along fine. I know what I
give to our sound, and he knows it, too. It's not a  question  of
him  forcing  his ideas on us. I get my ideas across as much as I
want to. They would use more of my music if I wrote it."

   **(typists note: why might Gilmour have wanted/needed to  publicly
    deny internal strife within the band  in  1978?  Think  about it.)**

  Gilmour took an aggressive stab at writing his  own  music  for
his _David Gilmour_ and 1984 _About Face_ collections, but it ap-
pears that only Pink Floyd cultists bought them (**typists  note:
and who bought Waters's solo projects?**) It was after his second
solo album that he began to press the Pink ploy.

   "From there, the story takes a sordid  turn,"  claims  Waters,
"and  after  long thought on this mess and the mountain of false-
hood (**not to mention the money they're making with the  band  I
thought was *mine* Waaah! -- typist's insertion. sorry, I'll stop
:-)**) mountain of falsehood that this scheming bunch has  creat-
ed,  I'm now going to divulge the cold, hard, indisputable facts.
Please do feel free to go back to any of  the  parties  mentioned
about  their  side of the story. I think you'll stop them dead in
their sneaky tracks."

   The first bombshell Waters drops is that Bob Ezrin, who served
as coproducer on _The Wall_ as well as _A Momentary Lapse of Rea-
son_, was originally supposed to produce _Radio KAOS_.

   "That's right," Waters says with a grim nod. "We  met  in  New
York  City  in  February of 1986. This was after Gilmour had been
spouting for a year about how wise it would be to get Pink  Floyd
back  together  in  any  passable form -- with me always refusing
that scam.

   "So I see Ezrin for a two-day meeting and give  him  cassettes
of  the _KAOS_ material I'm working on. He said he was interested
in doing the record. We shook on the  _KAOS_  agreement,  and  we
agreed to start work in England on April 16 of 1986."

   Come early April, Waters found it impossible  to  contact  Bob
Ezrin.

   "I couldn't reach him," says Waters.  "Then,exactly  ten  days
before  my first scheduled _KAOS_ session in England, I manage to
catch him at home in the wee hours of the morning.  He  picks  up
the  phone,  is startled to find it's me on the other end, and he
blurts out, `My wife says she'll divorce me if I go work in  Eng-
land!'  I  was  stunned.  I said, `Couldn't you have told me that
three months ago?'

   "I'm in a state of shock, and the minute I put the phone  down
after  the  conversation,  my  wife Carolyn says to me, `I'll bet
he's going to do that pseudo-Pink Floyd record David wants' All I
could reply was, `I can't believe he'd do *that*.'

   "I discovered exactly one week later," Waters says,  "that  he
had indeed been hired to do a Pink Floyd record."

   After having Waters's detailed accusations read to   him,  Bob
Ezrin  replies,  "I  was  in  Los  Angeles  in the midst of a Rod
Stewart album when Roger called from London in February  of  '86,
and  I  set  two days aside at Roger's insistence and we met each
other halfway, both of us  flying  to  New  York  to  talk  about
_KAOS_.  At  the time I met with Roger, I said I wanted to do the
album, but I had an instinctive sense that he was being too rigid
and intense in his attitudes about the project. And believe me, I
know how rigid Roger can get from doing _The Wall_ with him.

   "See, Roger was completely inflexible about when and where  he
wanted to do _KAOS_. I have five kids, and he was wanting to move
my whole family to England for a minimum of three months. My wife
was  against  it because she felt it would disrupt our children's
school schedule. And so after I thought it through,  I  exercised
my right as a potential employee of Roger's to decline.

   "It was a *full month* afterward," Ezrin  proclaims,  "that  I
was  approached by Dave Gilmour about producing a Pink Floyd pro-
ject. I hadn't been in touch with Dave since producing his _About
Face_ album."

   So why, after rejecting a three-month Waters-related  stay  in
England  for  the  good of his family, did Ezrin wind up spending
almost seven months in London recording  _A  Momentary  Lapse  of
Reason_ with Gilmour?


   There, a long pause. "Dave didn't  demand  things  like  Roger
did,"  Ezrin  finally  replies. "While Roger was thinking only of
*his* family's schedule, Dave was willing  to  work  out  a  more
flexible calendar plan that would accomodate the school schedules
of both our sets of kids.  Also, Dave flew to LA to hang out  and
play his work tapes -- rather than insisting that I go to him."

   Ezrin's disclaimers sound peculiarly  prissy  coming  from  an
itinerant  veteran whose studio dance card has regularly included
heavy-metal hell-raisers like Alice  Cooper  and  Kiss.  However,
giving  him  the benefit of the doubt, we move on to the artistic
integrity of _Lapse of Reason_.  Roger  Waters's  outspoken  ire,
you'll  recall,  was triggered by Gilmour's assertion to _Rolling
Stone_ that "we never sat down at any point  during  this  record
and said, `It doesn't sound Floyd enough. Make this more Floyd.'"

   On the contrary, according to Waters, it  was  Bob  Ezrin  who
rang  just  such an alarm at the halfway mark in the _Lapse_ ses-
sions.

   "After four to five months of constant work with  Gilmour  and
company,"  says  Roger,  "Bob spoke to Michael Kamen, who did or-
chestral arrangements on _The Wall_ and also coproduced my  first
solo album, _The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking_. (** typists note:
Kamen also did some arrangements for Queensryche, a  very  Floyd-
sounding  band at times**) Bob told him the tracks were `an abso-
lute disaster, with no words, no heart, no continuity.'"  Michael
Kamen,  who had declined involvement at the start of the project,
confirms Waters's account of the conversation with Ezrin.

   "Ezrin was so depressed," says Waters,  "he  took  a  cassette
copy  of the tapes home to his house in Encino, where his teenage
son Josh discovered it and played it with his friend. Both of the
kids  got  angry,  and  Josh  told  Ezrin,  `Dad, it's *not* Pink
Floyd!'

   (** typists note: what would a teenager  in  1986  have  known
about the many different phases and sounds of Pink Floyd??? **)

   "What happened next," says Waters, gathering steam, "was  that
Bob  Ezrin, David Gilmour, and CBS Records executive Stephen Ral-
bovsky had a confidential lunch meeting  at  Langan's  Brasserie,
the famous London bistro in Hampton Court, in October or November
of '86, wherein both Ezrin  and  Ralbovsky  told  Gilmour,  `This
music  doesn't  sound a *fucking thing* like Pink Floyd!' And ac-
cording to what Dave told me, they had spent $1.2 million on it!"

   Back to Bob Ezrin. Is Roger Waters's account  of  this  secret
meeting correct?

   "Omigosh!" gasps Ezrin in dismay. Then,  in  a  quavery  tone:
"How  Roger  could have known that we all had that meeting is re-
markable to me! Okay, fair enough; the *point* of the meeting was
for me to tell David that what he had thus far was not up to Pink
Floyd standards.

   "Wait a minute, let me rephrase that: I said it was not up  to
*our*  standard of a Pink Floyd project, and that we should start
over again.  And David was open and willing to do that.

    "But the fact, amazingly, that Roger has become a *detective*
to  learn  about  that  meeting  says  to  me that this thing has
become...er, it's gone too far  past,  er...It's  not  about  the
music  anymore!  It's  about the simple `making' of the _Lapse of
Reason_ record -- as well as the fact that Roger's not on it."

   Precisely. Roger Waters's most vociferous  charge  has  always
been  that  the  intention on the part of Gilmour, Ezrin, et al.,
was never to create music that succeeded on its  own  terms,  but
instead,  from  the  corporate estimation on down, to endeavor to
fake the Pink Floyd Sound. Right?

   Another uncomfortable pause. "Well," Ezrin murmurs,  "I  won't
tell  you  that there weren't times when I didn't say to David or
David didn't say to me, `This  would  be  easier  if  Roger  were
here,'  or `Roger would know what to do,' or `Roger could give us
that flavor.' But both David and I knew that that would mean con-
tending  with the rigid, intense, obsessive, and *artistic* Roger
-- which we didn't want."

   And which Roger had closed the door on anyway.

   "Er,...yes. So we had no choice but to go our  own  route  and
start over -- and we did."

   Which brings us to the question of exactly whose  fingerprints
are  on  (and *not* on) the version of _A Momentary Lapse of Rea-
son_ that reached the marketplace. Scanning the fine print on the
inside  of  the expensive gatefold album jacket, one discovers --
in addition to Gilmour, Nick Mason, Rick Wright, and Bob Ezrin --
a guest list of 15 noted session musicians. (** typists note: How
many session musicians are on _Dark Side of the  Moon_  and  _The
Wall_?  Even in the days of Barrett, session musicians were used.
An entire high school marching band sat in on _Jugband Blues_ and
I  don't think that's Roger's voice singing _The Great Gig In The
Sky_ either....**) No less than 18 *more* musicians and technical
experts  are acknowledged and thanked in the sub-fine print.  ANd
the songwriters tucked away on the record's  label  include,  be-
sides  Gilmour and Ezrin, Messieurs Anthony Moore, Phil Manzanera
(** typist's note: Manzanera is a guitar wizard in his own right.
Check  out his solo _Guitarissimo_ if you have a chance. **), Jon
Carin, and Pat Leonard.

   This mysterious multitude is discreetly  substituting  for  an
act  that last consisted of Waters, Mason, and Wright, with Roger
doing the overwhelming majority of the songwriting. (**  typist's
note:  the  article does NOT mention Gilmour in the previous sen-
tence. And what about Michael Kamen, or the  orchestra  hired  to
play  Kamen's  arrangements  on  _The Wall_? Plus, while I rarely
listen to _The Final Cut_, I think I  recall  distinctly  hearing
other  singers and instruments on it as well.  **) Does Dave Gil-
mour still presume to call this  army  of  hired  guns  and  mer-
cenaries Pink Floyd?

    "Listen," Gilmour fumes, "the band is  bound  to  change!  It
must,  regardless  of  the external or internal climate it faces.
But Nick and Bob Ezrin and I ultimately sat down with the materi-
al and decided what worked and what didn't!"

    Notice there is no mention by Gilmour of the fourth  "member"
of the unfathomable Pink Floyd, Rick Wright.

   "That's because Rick Wright is merely on a wage on this entire
Pink Floyd world tour," Waters explains. "Rick has been burnt out
since 1979, when Gilmour, Ezrin and myself unanimously decided to
fire him.

    (** typist's note: so it's ok with Waters to  call  it  Floyd
without Wright OR Barrett...just not without Waters? **)

  "Ezrin was the person to first call Rick during Rick's odd lit-
tle  vacation that fall to Greece -- just as _The Wall_ was being
completed -- and said, `You're no longer  pulling  your  weight.'
And  Rick  told him, `Fuck off!' It was then we all discussed the
matter, and Gilmour said, `Let's get rid  of  Nick  Mason,  too!'
Eventually  Rick  did  some  _Wall_ shows, but he only received a
wage, and then in 1980 we fired him for  good."  (Gilmour  corro-
borated  these  charges  of Wright's failings and "severance" ar-
rangement in a 1984 interview, in which he said  of  Wright,  "He
wasn't  performing  in  any way for us; he certainly wasn't doing
the job he was paid to do. On _The Wall_...Rick didn't play  many
keyboards.)

   "On August 4 of '86," Waters says, "I had a meeting with  Dave
on the _Astoria__, his houseboat-recording studio that's anchored
on the Thames, because we were still trying to settle our differ-
ences.  Dave told me himself that he still had no respect for ei-
ther Wright or Mason, but that they were useful to him.  The  man
who  was  most  useful, however, was Bob Ezrin, which is why Dave
and Bob now each split three points right off the  top  from  the
gross  retail sales of _Lapse_. The remaining 12 or so points are
divided amongst a sea of other participants like  Mason.  As  for
poor Rick Wright, he's on a weekly salary of $11,000. I know, be-
cause I've seen his contract with my own eyes.

   "At least Rick knows it's  just  a  payday.  Nick  Mason  goes
around  acting like Pink Floyd might really be a functioning tour
band. And once again, I invite and urge you to go to  Wright  and
Mason and repeat all these charges."

   Unfortunately, Wright and Mason refused all requests  for  in-
terviews,  which  were repeatedly tendered through both the press
offices of CBS Records (which also remains Roger Waters's  label)
and  those  of  JLM  Public  Relations,  Waters's  own  Manhattan
representative.

   If, as Waters alleges, the erstwhile personnel of  Pink  Floyd
merely  function  as potted phantoms and paid-off tour props, who
can be counted on to propagate the Pink Floyd Ploy beyond the '88
World Tour?

   "That's the most scandalous facet of this whole ruse,"  Waters
rules,  "because Gilmour has built up an entire cast of backstage
characters that he's sought to enlist as sources of material  for
the *next* so-called Pink Floyd album. Many of them are leftovers
>from the first abortive try, when he and Ezrin were pulling their
hair  out  in  vain  efforts  to concoct a concept album. Failing
that, they just established relationships with anybody willing to
cook up songs that resembled something Pink."

   Could Waters reveal the names of any of  these  other  phantom
Floyds?

   "Oh, sure. One is Eric Stewart, a founding member of the  ori-
ginal 10cc band and a very talented British songwriter who's col-
laborated with Paul  McCartney,  for  instance,  on  Paul's  1986
_Press to PLay_ album.  Another lyricist David has waiting in the
wings is Roger McGough, the Liverpool poet, who was a  member  of
the  famous experimental mid-sixties rock group Scaffold -- which
also had Mike McGear,  McCartney's  brother.   And  then  there's
Carol  Pope,  who's one of the finest contemporary Canadian song-
writers. I'll give Gilmour credit: When he devises  a  fraud,  he
goes to first-class talent for assistance."

   "Yes," Eric Stewart confirms, "Dave Gilmour and I got together
around  August or September of 1986 to work on a concept that was
definitely intended for the next Pink Floyd album. We sat  around
writing  for  a period of time, but we couldn't get the different
elements and ideas to gel. The songwriting itself was  acceptable
in certain parts, but not as awhole; so the concept was eventual-
ly scrapped.

   "I don't want to divulge the concept because, especially know-
ing  Dave,  he  may want to go back and revive it. It may well be
used in the future."

   Peter Brown, former director of the Beatles  NEMS  Enterprises
management company and present manager of Roger McGough, is happy
to give similar confirmation of his client's  Pink  Floyd-related
collaborations with Dave Gilmour.

   "Dave worked with Roger McGough late in 1986 on original ideas
for  the  Pink  Floyd  project," Brown explains, "but those ideas
remain a grey area. We're waiting for Dave  to  finish  his  Pink
Floyd world tour to see what will come of it all."

   "The idea to contact me came from Bob Ezrin, says Carole Pope.
"It  was  January  of  1987 and they were looking for somebody to
rewrite a batch of Dave Gilmour's material, so  I  went  over  to
England  for  a  few weeks to lend assistance. Bob and David also
asked me if I had any suggestions for concept albums in the  Pink
Floyd  style.  By the time I left England in February, they still
couldn't decide what to do. They did have one song, though, which
I  thought  was quite nice, though it never surfaced on _Lapse Of
Reason_. It was a mid-tempo  thing  about  Roger  Waters,  called
`Peace Be With You.' Seems strange that they didn't use it."

   And so, while the genuine creative alliance of the Pink  Floyd
Sound  lies  in  an  unquiet grave, David Gilmour has contrived a
ghoulish farm-club system designed to generate prolific stand-ins
and  impostors.  As you read this, the current Floyd cavalcade is
fulfilling its last global concert commitments. But peace is  not
at  hand.  Once Gilmour completes the tour, perhaps he'll contact
those collaborators currently on hold  for  whatever  Pink  Floyd
roles  stand  vacant.  It's as if a surviving Beatle -- say, Paul
McCartney -- had instituted  an  employment  agency  for  Beatles
clones,  and  found it worked efficiently enough to dare call the
fickle roster the Fab Four.

   Bob Ezrin, who could be at the helm for the  next  episode  of
this pop chicanery, has his own convoluted rationale for this en-
terprise.

   "I think Roger is brilliant, but he's a tough guy to  disagree
with,  and  he  can be overly passionate and uncompromising. It's
those qualities that go into making him a great artist, but  nei-
ther  Dave  nor  I  would  ever consider ourselves great artists.
We're more interested in creating something  that's  popular  and
fun. Actually, I *hate* the word *artist*, but I would definitely
concede that Roger is a great artist -- as well as a total obses-
sive  and  a psychiatrist's dream. I love Roger, and I truly love
most of what he does, but not enough anymore to go through what's
necessary  to  be a part of his process. It's far easier for Dave
and I to do *our* version of a Floyd record."

   For Gilmour's part, he will press on unless a  court  decision
prohibits him from such activities.

   "I don't see any reason why I should stop," he states tersely.
"It  took  decades of care and feeding for Pink Floyd to find its
loyal audience, and I won't throw in the towel, especially  after
_Lapse  of  Reason_  has  been such a huge success. Roger doesn't
have the right at present to tell me what to  do  with  my  life,
although  he believes that he does. And he'll not ruin my career,
although lately he's been trying to."

   Actually, apart from the ongoing legal fray, Roger  Waters  is
pouring  most  of  his  energies  into  promoting  and performing
_Amused to Death_ -- plus writing material for a fourth album  of
his own.

   "Things change so drastically and yet they remain  the  same,"
Waters  assures, leaving his chair in his West London home to be-
gin another afternoon of trial-and-error songcraft  in  the  Bil-
liard  Room.  "The  Lennon Instinct tells me that, as with John's
song of the same name, my approach to the Floyd  fight  is  `just
like  starting  over.'  Yet  I'm also pleased that I've got a new
career, a solo career, that I've been nurturing since 1984.

   "The main difference between me and Dave Gilmour is that, when
it  comes time for him to finally confess his dishonest...venture
to the world, I'll at least have the justice of a solid, credible
head start on him."

   Waters shows a fatigued grin. "That's the advantage of putting
your *own* good name on your work. If people do decide they enjoy
it, they always know who to thank and where to find you."

