Speak to Me: Offensive Floyd
compiled by Russ Blomstedt
Barrett: "Arnold Layne just happens to dig dressing up in women's clothing. A lot of people do--so let's face up to reality." - Terrapin #12, October 1974
Wright (on "Arnold Layne"): "I think the record was banned not because of the lyrics--because there's nothing there you can really object to--but because they're against us as a group and against what we stand for." - Terrapin #12, October 1974
Hans Keller: "Have you encountered any hostility towards your creation?"
Waters: "Well, yes we have. I mean there's been quite a lot of hostility going on, you know, in places in the country. I mean the only hostility we've actually seen, of course, is that which hit the national press. A sort of professional knockers like Marv Pittman..." - 'Look of the Week', BBC, 14 May 1967
Hans Keller: "Why has it all got to be so terribly loud? For me, frankly, it's too loud. I just can't bear it." - 'Look of the Week', BBC, 14 May 1967
interviewer: "Do you use dope when you're playing?"
Pink Floyd: "Sometimes... usually, but not much."
interviewer: "Did any of your music evolve from the use of drugs?"
Gilmour: "No. There is more alcohol consumed than dope before we go on stage. You see, because, when you're high you can sit on your own, and play for hours and hours and hours, and if you put it on tape - if you come back to it when you are straight and it's a load of shit. I think what really we do, is that we all like to get that little bit of relaxation from smoking a small amount. For myself, I like a small smoke before I play, it relaxes me." - "A Pink Think with the Floyd", University of Regina Carillon, October 1970
interviewer: "Drugs were a part of the psychedelic movement. What role did they play on the Pink Floyd experience?"
Mason: "Almost none. As far as I remember, and at least referring to us, Rick, Roger and me, we didn't take them then. On the other hand, I can't say we weren't drinking much. Later, things changed, and all of us, together or separately, did the drug experiment." - from a French Pink Floyd magazine, March 1973
Wright: "There is no way that I could play music and take any kind of drug at the same time." - EMI publicity interview with Mark Blake, August 1996
Gilmour: "I still think that most people think of us as a very drug-orientated group. Of course, we're not. You can trust us." - Pink Floyd Live in Pompeii, 1972
Q: "Are you or are you not the gloomiest man in rock?"
Waters: "You can't expect me to take a question like that seriously... I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that it is stupid." - Q Magazine, November 1992
Storm Thorgerson (on the cover for The Wall): "The one they used is very bleak, isn't it? But then it reflects the music on that album. On the whole, I think his covers over recent years have been awful, but that's his decision." - from an interview with Simon Taylor, for his college dissertation entitled 'The Music and Images of Pink Floyd'
Waters: "I wrote The Wall as an attack on stadium rock--and there is Pink Floyd making money out of it by playing it in stadiums! Pathetic. They spoiled my creations." - Q Magazine, November 1992
Gilmour: "Someone said The Final Cut was the best Roger Waters solo album, but it was certainly the worst Floyd album." - New Musical Express, 9 July 1988
Waters: "I've been reading the nonsense that's been written about Amused To Death. Adam Sweeting [music journalist who said, in The Guardian, that the LP wasn't much cop], well, he's a complete prat. Always was, always will be... Sweeting is not a nice man. I don't know him but I know him. He says I write twaddle. He's wrong! He's one taco short of a Mexican meal. Sweeting is not the only arsehole: there's other cunts like Andy Gill and Charles Shaar Murray."
Q: "Andy Gill and Charles Shaar Murray. They write for Q."
Waters: "Do they? Who gives a fuck who they write for when they can't fucking write? ... It is extraordinary that Andy Gill and Adam Sweeting and Charles Shaar Murray didn't notice The Wall. They are supposed to be music journalists; how could they not have noticed this extraordinary well-constructed, deep and meaningful and moving and important piece of work? What the fuck's the matter with these arseholes? And now, with Amused To Death, they've missed another one, Adam Sweeting and Andy Gill and the other fucker and all the rest, they should be in hospital. I am confident that I am really clever and that I am really good at what I do so I'm not going to have prats like Sweeting and Andy Gill and Shaar bloody Murray telling me that I'm no good because they're wrong. Amused To Death is fucking, fucking good. Isn't it?" - Q Magazine, November 1992
Waters: "Radio One won't play my single because they know it's no good. They know it's not as good as Erasure or Janet fucking Jackson." - Q Magazine, November 1992
Waters: "I find the ubiquitous nature of Phil Collins's presence in my life irritating anyway." - Rolling Stone, July 1990
Waters: "Andrew Lloyd Webber sickens me. He's in your face all the time and what he does is nonsense. It has no value. It is shallow, derivative rubbish, all of it, and it makes me very gloomy. Actually, I've never been to one of his shows but having put that slightly savage joke on the record, I thought I'd better listen to some Andrew Lloyd Webber and I was staying in a rented house in America this summer and the people who owned the house had a whole bunch of his rubbish so I thought I'd listen to Phantom Of The Opera and I put the record on and I was slightly apprehensive. I thought, Christ, I hope this isn't good--or even mediocre. I was not disappointed. Phantom Of The Opera is absolutely fucking horrible from start to finish." - Q Magazine, November 1992
Waters: "Andrew Lloyd Webber used music of Echoes in the beginning of Phantom Of The Opera. Bastard. [...] But I think that life's too long to bother with suing Andrew fucking Lloyd Webber. - Q Magazine, November 1992
Hans Keller: "I think you can pass your verdict as well as I can. My verdict is that its a little bit of a regression to childhood." - 'Look of the Week', BBC, 14 May 1967
