Pink Floyd and the vibrant history of artistic feuds
Even by the standards of bitter artistic feuds, the latest spat between Pink Floyd’s stars is awesome, a parable of how envy can be the engine of hate.
The decades-long enmity between former Floyd singer and guitarist David Gilmour and chief songwriter and vocalist Roger Waters curdled further this week when Gilmour’s wife, Polly Samson, told Waters he was a “Putin apologist” and “anti-Semitic to your rotten core”.
This wasn’t about politics. Waters was also a “lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac,” Samson tweeted.
No random volley of insults this; she sounds like she knows the man. Her husband concurred: “Every word demonstrably true.”
The outburst was prompted by an interview Waters had given to a German newspaper, in which he aired his provocative views on Israel and Russia. But the hostilities pre-date current world events and centre on the “who wrote what” territory beloved of rock/pop fall-outs.
Of his Pink Floyd bandmates, Waters said: “They can’t write songs, they’ve nothing to say. They are not artists. They have no ideas, not a single one between them. They never had and that drives them crazy.”
As Waters claims to have unilaterally re-recorded the Floyd classic The Dark Side of the Moon (“I wrote it”), it is unlikely fences will be mended any time soon.
Which is sad for them but hugely gratifying for the rest of us, with the promise of years (both ageing rockers seem to be in good nick) more of this as they continue to trade blows.
Once bands break up there is nothing quite as entertaining as their off-stage antics, some more base than others.
Of the current crop, the Gallagher brothers reign supreme in the sparring stakes. With sibling rivalry that sounds like it began at birth, it’s a wonder Oasis was ever created, let alone lasted for as long as it did.
When Noel finally quit the band in 2009, he said: “I simply could not go on working with Liam a day longer. He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.”
Liam goes for more childish swipes, often referring to his brother as “potato” and other, mostly unprintable, epithets on Twitter. Smashing Noel’s guitars and hitting him with tambourines are also part of the act, though this is for real.
It may be a stretch to call the Gallaghers’ foul-mouthed animosity an artistic feud but there is common ground with more rarefied cultural clashes, whether fuelled by drink, drugs, grudges, over familiarity, or envy.
The legendary (and debateable) acrimony between Mozart and the older Salieri led to rumours that the latter poisoned the more talented up-start and tried to make his life a misery.
What a gold mine for playwright Peter Shaffer, whose Amadeus capitalised on the composers’ conflict. And what a disappointment when, in 2016, a musicologist discovered a long-lost composition written by both musicians, suggesting their relationship was boringly collaborative.
Also ending in relative harmony was the notorious literary loggerheads between Paul Theroux and his former friend and mentor VS Naipaul, for years the gift that kept on giving in bookish circles.
Reportedly sparked when Naipaul put up for sale his signed copy of one of Theroux’s books, the row led to an entire memoir, Sir Vidia’s Shadow, penned by Theroux.
Even before then, Naipaul had said of his pal: “He was an absolute bore… Theroux didn’t know what he thought about anything. He had no views… But he pestered me with letters, long letters being written to me every two or three weeks at a certain time.”
But after 15 years of mutual slights, the pair reconciled during the Hay festival. “Well, it was fun while it lasted,” a Guardian writer lamented at the time.
Graphic tensions erupted between Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, whose friendship had resulted in works such as Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud (sold at auction in 2013 for £89m) and Freud’s portraits of Bacon, one stolen and one on display recently in the National Gallery’s “New Perspectives” exhibition.
For 25 years, the pair saw each other every day. Freud’s second wife, Lady Caroline Blackwood, said: “I had dinner with him [Bacon] nearly every night for more or less the whole of my marriage to Lucian. We also had lunch.”
But eventually the twin geniuses of 20th century art ended up not speaking, the discord attributed to Freud’s envy of Bacon, or Bacon’s envy of Freud.
While volatile, their relationship was not on the volcanic scale of their 19th century counterparts, Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gaugin, whose famous falling out in Arles – following arguments over painting styles – led to Van Gogh cutting off part of his left ear.
There was no resolution to that quarrel and some 135 years later we still relish their rancour, which has perhaps become integral to appreciating their art.
Who knows if people will still be talking about Pink Floyd in the next century, but given the longevity of other artistic disputes, their bickering back story may turn out to be as enduring as their back catalogue.
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