David Gilmour Reflects on Pink Floyd Legacy and Roger Waters Rift: “I Was Pink Floyd….
June 11, 2025 — In a rare and emotionally candid reflection, legendary guitarist and vocalist David Gilmour has spoken out about his enduring role in Pink Floyd and the long-standing creative tensions with former bandmate Roger Waters. Gilmour’s remarks, steeped in pride and nostalgia, have reignited discussions about the heart and soul of one of rock’s most iconic bands.
Speaking during a recent interview, Gilmour offered a revealing look into the band’s complex internal dynamics during their prime years. He addressed the often controversial assertion by Roger Waters that Pink Floyd’s essence lay almost entirely in his own conceptual and lyrical visions — a view that many fans and critics alike have long debated.
“I always told Roger,” Gilmour recalled, “when he thought he was Pink Floyd and believed he could replace the drummer, the guitarist, and the keyboardist with other skilled professionals, that I was and strongly felt like Pink Floyd.”
The statement is a bold one, especially considering the mythology that has surrounded the Waters-era Floyd for decades. Gilmour, who joined the band in 1968 and played a critical role in shaping its most successful records, has long been seen as a counterbalance to Waters’ more cerebral and often controlling approach. While Waters provided many of the band’s conceptual frameworks — particularly on albums like The Wall and Animals — Gilmour was the musical architect behind much of the band’s most emotive and sonically rich moments.
Recounting a telling exchange with Waters before the latter’s departure in the mid-1980s, Gilmour shared: “One time, long before he left, I told him: ‘If you leave, my friend, we will carry on — you can bet on it, we will carry on.’ And he replied, laughing: ‘You’ll never make it.’”
History, of course, would prove otherwise. Following Waters’ exit, Gilmour-led Pink Floyd released A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987) and The Division Bell (1994), both commercial successes that showcased the band’s resilience and Gilmour’s own creative force. While some critics saw these albums as less conceptually ambitious, they praised their musicality, emotional depth, and production quality.
In the same breath, Gilmour paid heartfelt tribute to the band’s late keyboardist Richard Wright, whom he considers an unsung hero of Pink Floyd’s sound. “In my view, the highest peaks reached by Pink Floyd were achieved when Richard Wright was at his best,” he said. “After all, what would Dark Side of the Moon have been without ‘Us and Them’ and ‘The Great Gig in the Sky,’ both of which he wrote?”
Indeed, Wright’s atmospheric textures and melodic sensitivity were essential to the emotional power of Floyd’s music. Gilmour went on to stress that without Wright’s contributions, Wish You Were Here — an album beloved for its warmth and introspection — “simply wouldn’t have worked.”
As fans continue to grapple with the band’s legacy and the enduring split between Gilmour and Waters, the guitarist’s latest comments underscore the collaborative magic that made Pink Floyd unique — and how much of that magic, he believes, lay in more than just one man’s vision.
“I was Pink Floyd,” Gilmour said, not out of ego, but as a declaration of identity, commitment, and artistic authenticity. “And we carried on. Because that’s what we always were — a band, not a dictatorship.”
With these words, Gilmour not only reasserts his place in Pink Floyd’s legacy but invites listeners to look beyond the mythos and remember the collective spirit that created some of the most enduring music of the 20th century.