from the Daily Mirror

January 12, 2001, page 8

ROGER WATERS DECLARES VICTORY

'Floyd Wars' End After Years of Struggle

by Mike McInnis and Rick Karhu

 

The Great Floyd Wars
A Timeline

• June 1986 Waters announces to record labels that he will no longer be recording as Pink Floyd.
• July 1986 Record label ask what that's supposed to mean.
• Aug, 1986 Waters shoots back that it ought to be "fucking obvious what that means."
• Sept. 1986 Record label approaches Waters and tells him he can't leave, not now, not like this.
• Oct. 1986 Waters informs record label that "it's too late for that. I'm leaving. It's over."
• Nov. 1986 Record company stares wistfully out the window trying to hold back the tears and wondering why it hadn't listened to its mother about Waters.
• Dec. 1986 Waters approaches record labels with an offer to let the record label keep the car.
• Jan. 1987 Record labels get up and call Waters a "cheating bastard" and hopes he "rots in hell" and that this "has nothing to do with who gets the car" and runs, crying to the bedroom, slamming the door behind it.
• Feb. 1987 Waters goes to record label and embraces it, holding it, and finally, overcome with emotion, falls madly into bed with it.
• March 1987 Record label has multiple orgasms. Neighbors file official complaint about the noise level.
• April 1987 Waters and record label lie in bed, quietly contemplating the sweat on their skin that glistens deliciously in the moonlight that falls through the softly swaying curtains.
• May 1987 Record label sits up, covering itself with the sheet and leaves the room, knowing that this last-minute fling cannot change the inevitable.
• June 1987 Waters leaves the record label, never to return. He takes the car.
 

LONDON— Ex-Pink Floyd bassist and lead tyrrant Roger Waters declared victory Thursday in what have become known as the Great Floyd Wars. "The time has come to put the past behind me, and I really mean it this time. Squarely behind me. I have won handily, and am ready to move on," Waters announced to the press outside Buckingham Palace, where a group of tabloid reporters and soulless paparazzi had gathered in hopes of catching a glimpse of the Queen picking her nose or haranguing the kitchen staff. Waters gained a rare bit of publicity by strategically positioning himself in front of the crowd.

Since 1986, when Floyd guitarist David Gilmour announced plans to re-form the band without its erstwhile lyricist and record a new album full of erotic love songs inspired by Waters' daughter, the so-called 'Wars' have featured lawsuits, conceptual theft, giant inflatable pig testicles, backstabbing, legal maneuvering, illegal maneuvering, public indecency, character assassination, profiteering, racketeering, Mousketeering, and mudslinging, as well as numerous thinly-veiled references to the size and functionality of Waters' and Gilmour's genitals.

Fans of the band have taken sides for years, and confrontations between the two factions often result in eruptions of violence, such as the infamous Los Angeles riots of 1992, when a group of Watersites, wearing their traditional Ray Ban sunglasses, attacked a young Gilmour fan in the streets and forced him to listen to "Who Needs Information" again and again until he suffered irreversible brain trauma.

The most recent such disturbance took place in Seattle, when a group of masked Gilmourians promoted violent protests of Waters' performance there during his Waters Tour 2000, dubbed the WTO. The resulting violence required intervention from the National Guard, and caused in excess of $50 in damages to area businesses.

But on Thursday, as Waters read from a prepared statement, it seemed like the long international nightmare might finally be coming to an end.

"Despite what the members of that other band may say, the long struggle is over, and I have clearly won," Waters said. "Pink Floyd is still a spent force, creatively, just as they were from the moment I left them, just as they were the moment Syd Barrett left... er, I thought I dropped that line, dammit. Anyway, they haven't recorded anything of value in the last 14 years, and geneologists hired by me have confirmed that the Gilmour family haven't been responsible for a decent melody in at least 120 years since Dave's great-great uncle Norman "Doc Feelgood" Gilmour wrote the tune and words for the traditional folk favorite 'I've Got a Bucket Full of Lima Beans (And My Love Has Gone Away) Part One.'

"I, on the other hand, have continued to write and record at a steady pace, and when I say steady, I mean steady in the sense of startlingly intermittent. Every time a small independent film goes into production, I get a bit of work. My work shows up in nearly every independent film in existence today, from the smart and sassy Roll Over, You're Snoring, the 88-minute study of 20-something life in New York city ably produced by Johnathan "Cottonmouth" Piedmont to the award-winning, sullen and bittersweet portrait of isolation and soul-searching amongst the laundomat attendants of 1940 Chicago called You Want Pork Chops? I'll Give You Pork Chops, You Bastard! That's quite a record folks! My work appears in every independent film produced between 1998-2001. Who else can say that besides Michael Caine? And I continue to work on my opera, Ca Ira (French for 'When The Hell Is This Thing Going To Be Out?') which will be released soon. I promise."

Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright, cornered outside a West Side gentlemen's club, had this to say in reply: "Huh? Wha...? What are you talking about? Who are you with? Did Nigel send you? Nigel? You know, with the little bags of...? No? Oh! Forget it! Never mind. That was a joke!"

Rob Choonie, a music fan and noted Waters devotee, felt that Waters' announcement was long overdue. "The announcement was long overdue, especially for a music fan and noted Waters devotee like myself. I can't stand any of the music 'Pink Fraud' has done since Rog left, but Roger's solo stuff just plain rocks! Clearly, victory is his." Choonie went on to explain that he couldn't stand any of the music that "Pink Fraud" (his term) have done since Rog left, but that Roger's solo stuff "just plain rocks." Clearly, Choonie feels the victory is Roger's.

Pink Floyd manager and underworld tough-guy Steve O'Rouke was quick to issue a statement. "Since Roger left, we've recorded two double-platinum #1 albums, two double-platinum #1 live albums, and toured the world—the world, mind you, not just selected Moose Lodges and truck stops in North America—twice. I mean, artistic credibility be damned. We're businessmen, and we do damned good business! In the same period of time, Roger has recorded a couple of albums which at least a dozen people bought, and a collection of breakfast cereal jingles, I think. So you tell me who won?"

Waters, when asked, would not reply to these allegations, on the grounds that they were stupid. Instead, he hinted at plans for an upcoming album, tentatively entitled Genuine Love. "It's about a deaf, dumb, blind, mute Albanian farm boy who is torn from his home by the Market Forces™ and forced to hitchhike across Eastern Europe in search of his dead father, and discovers magic along the way. Or something. I don't really know. It's not actually my story, but rather the work of independent filmmaker Sir Fritz 'Chunky' Allyson III and is currently in production starring the street-smart but vulnerable-in-the-right-way actor Maurice Micklewhite. It's being produced under the working title Those Shoes That You Genuinely Love Come in Sizes 7, 7 1/2, 8, 8 1/2, 9, 9 1/2, 10 and 11, But No 10 1/2 So I Don't Know What You're Going To Wear To The Bar Mitvah But Maybe You Can Borrow A Pair From Don Downstairs which is where I got the title."

 

Mike McInnis and Rick Karhu are the wildly successful writing trio behind such hit television programs as "I Saw Your Goober" and "Janet: Portrait of a Fatso". They are currently working on a documentary about the liquid nitrogen-producing and frequently spasmodic tribes of South America called "The Angina Monologues."