The members of Pink Floyd didn’t want one more reason to hate each other — however Russia’s invasion of Ukraine gave them one anyway.

David Gilmour and Roger Waters have been at loggerheads for 4 many years, far longer than they spent in the identical band, and issues aren’t getting any higher.

Earlier this month, Waters gave an explosive interview to CNN by which he described U.S. President Joe Biden as a “conflict legal” who’s “fueling the hearth within the Ukraine” (notice use of the outdated “the Ukraine”); and slammed NATO for “pushing proper as much as the Russian border.” Oh, and for good measure, he stated that “Taiwan is a part of China.”

Sticking with Russia for a second, Waters has been inconsistent on the topic these previous few months. Every week earlier than Russia invaded Ukraine in February, he advised an interviewer on Kremlin mouthpiece RT that speak of an invasion was “bullshit … anyone with an IQ above room temperature is aware of [an invasion] is nonsense.” By early March, he was writing on Fb that he was “disgusted” by Vladimir Putin’s invasion, which he dubbed a “legal mistake” and the “act of a gangster.” In the identical social media put up, he stated that Western governments had been “fueling the hearth … by pouring arms into Ukraine.” A few weeks later, Waters used a podcast — additionally that includes the musician Brian Eno and former Greek Cupboard minister Yanis Varoufakis — to sentence “propaganda to demonize Russia.”

Waters, 78, a founding member of Pink Floyd however who left the band in 1985, has but to fulfill a political difficulty he doesn’t have an opinion on. He’s labeled Israel an “apartheid state;” hit out at Brexit voters (“I assumed we had been higher than that. I used to be incorrect”); dissed Donald Trump (“The sewers are engorged by grasping and highly effective males”); and battered the “ruling class” for locking up WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Waters’ former bandmate Gilmour — who joined Pink Floyd in 1967, shortly earlier than the departure of founding member Syd Barrett — has a really totally different tackle the Russian invasion, and in April launched Hey Hey, Rise Up!, a brand new single below the Pink Floyd banner that samples Andriy Khlyvnyuk, frontman of Ukrainian rock band BoomBox, with the proceeds going to humanitarian aid efforts. Gilmour advised Rolling Stone that he was alerted by his Ukrainian daughter-in legislation to a social media clip of Khlyvnyuk singing.

Gilmour advised the Guardian that “the practicalities of getting an prolonged Ukrainian household is a part of this. My grandchildren are half-Ukrainian, my daughter-in-law Janina is Ukrainian — her grandmother was in Kharkiv till three weeks in the past. She’s very outdated, disabled, in a wheelchair and has a carer, and Janina and her household managed to get her all the best way throughout Ukraine to the Polish border and now they’ve managed to get her to Sweden.”

The tune was an enormous deal for the band’s followers because it had been 28 years because the final new Pink Floyd materials, 1994’s The Division Bell (2014’s The Countless River album was a largely instrumental affair crafted from The Division Bell outtakes) and got here after Gilmour had pledged that “that is the tip” for a band that has offered some 250 million albums.

Gilmour’s tackle Waters (within the interview with the Guardian, after his former bandmate’s February/March feedback) was merely: “Let’s simply say I used to be upset and let’s transfer on.”

The darkish aspect of the band

Tensions inside Pink Floyd are nothing new.

After the more and more erratic and drug-dependant Barrett — major songwriter and frontman within the early years — left Pink Floyd (named after the American bluesmen Pink Anderson and Floyd Council), Waters started to form the band’s inventive imaginative and prescient because it reached its business zenith on albums comparable to 1973’s The Darkish Aspect Of The Moon and 1979’s The Wall.

By 1983’s The Last Reduce, Waters had had sufficient — later saying the working setting on the time was “poisonous” — and believed that with out him, Pink Floyd could be no extra. However the others wished to hold on, main Waters to sue Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason in an try to stop them from utilizing the identify Pink Floyd, claiming the group was “a spent power creatively.”

Two years later, the 2 sides settled out of court docket, and Pink Floyd, with Gilmour on the tiller, carried on. In 2013, Waters advised the BBC of the lawsuit: “I used to be incorrect! After all I used to be. Who cares?”

The enmity between Gilmour and Waters subsided sufficient for a one-time reunion for the charity occasion Reside 8 in 2005, although there have been nonetheless clashes, with Gilmour refusing to play Waters’ One other Brick In The Wall, saying its anti-education message was inappropriate at a gig elevating consciousness of poverty in Africa, and including “anyway, I don’t prefer it a lot.”

They completed the Reside 8 gig with a considerably awkward bow, probably by no means to be seen collectively once more.