Internal strife within pop groups is neither new nor rare. The catalysts are well established: money (the Beatles), filial playpen squabbles (Oasis, the Kinks, the Everly Brothers), or sleeping with each other in various permutations (Fleetwood Mac). But the toxic state of relations within Pink Floyd is unparalleled – almost Shakespearean in its complexity, involving art, commerce and geopolitics.
In recent weeks there has been a very public escalation of hostilities in a conflict that has simmered for decades between guitarist Dave Gilmour and founding member and bassist Roger Waters – the two frontmen of the colossally successful prog rock band. On 6 February Gilmour’s partner, the writer Polly Sansom, tweeted a vituperative attack on Waters, accusing him of being “anti-Semitic to your rotten core… an apologist for Putin” and “a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-evading, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac”. Soon after, Gilmour retweeted this, adding, “Every word demonstrably true.”
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