Why prolong the agony? All bands must die

Pink Floyd on Life Support

by Mike McInnis

In real life (i.e. that part of my life not spent glued to the computer), I am a physician. I deal with life and death literally every day. Some people, I have learned, willingly accept death as a necessary and natural part of human life. They have lived full lives, have contributed to society in some meaningful way, and are prepared to embrace death.

For a variety of reasons, however, others cling tenaciously to 'life', even when that life seems unworthy of living to many outside observers. Lives wracked with pain, loneliness, and obsolescence are sometimes preferred to the Great Unknown called death. I have seen people whose bodies are ravaged by time and disease beg for all means of invasive life support because, for whatever reason, that kind of 'artificial' life is less gruesome and frightening than the thought of dying.

What, then, of Pink Floyd? All objective evidence points a band that is no longer alive and functioning. The members seem to have little interaction with one another, socially or artistically. (Waters has pursued the most active musical career lately, although Gilmour shows some interest in writing and performing as well. Mason and Wright have been willing to play along when asked, but also seem perfectly content to do nothing.) It has been nine full years since the group's last new studio album and tour. In the interim, the 'band' has released 'Best Of' compilation and a live album of 20-year-old recordings, but nothing genuinely new. The recent anniversary reissue of The Dark Side of the Moon was created with minimal input from the band itself. Even the rejuvenated Roger Waters, who has toured three of the last four years and has released a new live album and a 'Best Of' of his own, still can't seem to muster the energy to complete his opera or his new studio album.

I don't suggest that Waters' or Gilmour's solo careers are over, or that they should hang up their instruments and retire. But I do believe that Pink Floyd, as a creative unit, is essentially defunct. The meager signs of life that are occasionally trotted out before the public's eye amount to little more than a corporate entity that is more interested in re-releasing old material in new formats than in producing anything new. The 'band' is being kept alive, it seems, for the purposes of marketing and record sales. The collective creative force is dead, but the 'group' is kept alive. On life support, if you will.

None of the current bandmembers will commit to this, of course. They have been declared dead before, and have lived to tell about it. Publicly, they all hold that they might be willing to get off their collective duff and do another album/tour/etc., should there be sufficient motivation. But even bandleader-by-default David Gilmour has begun to say that he doesn't have the energy for it any more.

Perhaps someday Gilmour will just admit that while he may be interested in being a semi-obscure solo artist and celebrity sideman, he isn't interested in being the frontman for the Greatest Show on Earth anymore, and will pull the plug on the Pink Floyd name.

Or maybe I'll be proved wrong. Perhaps Pink Floyd will beat the odds and make Yet Another Comeback. Good for them, if they did. I'd buy the album, and dissect the lyrics, and attend the concert, and love every minute of it.

Mike McInnis is the editor of Spare Bricks.