If Roger had remained...

[Dark Blue]

If Roger had stayed in Pink Floyd and the band hadn't broken up after The Final Cut, I honestly think that the next efforts still would have been disappointing.

Hear a lot of people say that post-Roger Floyd wasn't as good. I agree. But I also think The Final Cut was a rather disappointing album that didn't live up to the standards set by any album coming before it spanning back to 1972.

Here's what I think.

Let's assume Roger stayed in the band. We can't erase the fact that he now had control of the band and was pushing the others away. If we were to change his dominance factor, The Wall might never have come to be.


So we leave it as it was, warts and all, but this time Roger stays and attempts to get on with the next album. Rick Wright is out of the band and Roger will not let him return. Mason is reduced mostly to session musician status on TFC and this remains much the case.

So the next album continues where TFC left off. We can tell the direction Roger would have went by his solo releases. Now imagine these as PF albums with a bit of Gimour sound in it but not much other influence.

My opinion is that the album that followed TFC, were Roger to remain, would be lyrically good, but musically very poor. Would Roger have remained in the band, I think that before the 80s were over PF would have lost all viability in a sales sense. The quality of the music would continue to decline and I doubt that Roger would have had it in him to truly get back to the WYWH days of real compromise.

Albums might have become increasingly more sparse, cynical and rough.


Would this have been preferable to the PF that eventually was? AMLOR and TDB may not be the best PF efforts, but I think they are a darn sight better than what might have been released had Roger stayed. I just can't imagine PF really surviving had Roger remained behind the helm of the band. His ever-increasing dominance helped the band for a short while but then began to drive them towards the ground. He might have destroyed the band.

But that's just how I see it, maybe you will see it differently.

I think Roger has mellowed out in recent years and were the PF to reunite I think he would be much easier to deal with.

But in the 1980s, if he'd stayed I think PF would have fallen far from their greatness with The Wall and people would write books about the bitter death of Pink Floyd.

At least the way it occured, we got a few more good albums out of them, and Rick got to come back and find his confidence again. What would have become of Gimour? Waters destroyed Rick, nearly destroyed Mason, and was starting in on Gilmour on TFC. I wonder if we might never have seen as much of a Gilmour solo catalog had different events transpired.


Waters' departure was probably for the best.

[Deranged]

I can be very short about this. The albums would have been great had Roger stayed. Simply because TFC is brilliant and so are Roger's solo albums.

[BreatheACigar]

I'm one of those people who say post-Roger Floyd isn't as good, but I agree with you about The Final Cut being disappointing. IMO The Wall was pretty hard to follow up with an album, but The Final Cut just isn't that great IMO. I like your theory that it might be better that Roger left. The Wall is one of my favorite albums, but I think that the best years were 68-75.

[PinkMoney]

Originally posted by Dark Blue
I think Roger has mellowed out in recent years and were the PF to reunite I think he would be much easier to deal with.

I agree with you on everything but this...Roger still acts like he created music.

Watch ITF as if Roger were the king of all music and if it wern't for him, music wouldn't exist. You'll see my point.

BTW I think David would shove his guitar up his(Rog) ass

[stratman]

Dave would have undoubtably made Pros & Cons listenable, and improved Radio KAOS and Amused to Death. I don't think there's any doubt about that.

[nutopia]

when analyzing the floyd civil wars I can only come to the conclusion that waters was a solo artist stuck in a band that he no longer wanted to be in;
it was inevitable he was going to leave b/c he would no longer listen to gilmour's valuable input when constructing his songs, -
much of TFC were songs that were originally rejected from ' the wall ' sessions by gilmour & bob ezrin;

all members believed the band was creatively dead, although mason claimed the band once again became creatively viable when waters left..

[mad yannis]

Come on guys, that's useless... we would not have had none of the existing albums but completely different ones, Rick Wright would not have returned to the band, and so on. And after all what can you expect from a band of three persons which don't communicate with each other anymore? The usual Roger's ranting with a couple of Dave's solos here and there? Or are we dreaming that all that happened post 1975 was different?

[Botley]

I agree with yannis, the divide created by "The Final Cut" is simply unbridgable. Dave could not work with Roger after that, no matter what, and still can't to this day so it's pointless to imagine what it would be like if he did. Besides, this is a DDT.

[Lumiere]

I was thinking about this very thing, the other night.

I think Pros & Cons would've been radically altered. Apparently The Wall was once much the same to the finished Pros & Cons - all songs in the same key, every song had the same melody. Dave would've written lots of music for it, and wouldn't have let it be so Roger-based.

Although, if TFC is anything to go by, P&C would've been exactly the same - a Waters solo record in everything but name.

[mad yannis]

Originally posted by Dark Blue
Waters' departure was probably for the best.

Exactly.

[GTMASTER]

Sorry to say that however much I loved TFC, if roger remained in Pink Floyd I don't think it would've stayed "Pink Floyd" more like roger with some studio players and Gilmour. Eventually emotional strains would've caused gilmour to leave (most likely) and PF would end anyways...

[Deranged]

Roger IS Pink Floyd, in the end he is the one that caused the group to produce the best music. So even without Dave i think it he would be allowed to carry the name. The same thing happened to Black Sabbath in the end Iommi was the only original member left, it's possible.

[Deranged]

And Iommi didn't even come close to contribute to Sabbath what Roger did to Floyd.

[Lumiere]

Roger should've been able to continue with the PF name if he wanted. He should've been able to because he was, in essence, Pink Floyd. He wrote nearly everything from 1969 onwards.

And no, I'm not discounting contributions by Mason, Gilmour or Wright. Without those three (Gilmour in particular), Pink Floyd certainly wouldn't have been the same.

[PinkMoney]

Originally posted by Lumiere
Roger should've been able to continue with the PF name if he wanted. He should've been able to because he was, in essence, Pink Floyd. He wrote nearly everything from 1969 onwards.

And no, I'm not discounting contributions by Mason, Gilmour or Wright. Without those three (Gilmour in particular), Pink Floyd certainly wouldn't have been the same.

he wrote mostly everything because he wouldn't let anyone else...