David Gilmour has said that it would be a “dream” to sell Pink Floyd’s catalogue, but not because of the financial gain the sale would bring.
The guitarist opened up about the idea of selling the classic rock band’s extensive catalogue during a new interview, and said that the idea is appealing to him because it would allow him to create more distance between former bandmate Roger Waters.
According to Financial Times, the sale would bring in a hefty price tag of around $500million (£381million) if it were to go through.
That, however, isn’t the main appeal for Gilmour, who instead said he’d be most tempted to sell to “be rid of the decision-making and the arguments that are involved with keeping it going”.
Describing the idea of selling the catalogue as a “dream” to Rolling Stone, he added: “I am not interested in that from a financial standpoint. I’m only interested in it from getting out of the mud bath that it has been for quite a while.”
The “mud bath” he refers to is most likely referring to the tension between him and Waters which has run for a number of years now. While it has gone on for decades, it came to a head again recently when Gilmour attacked Waters with claims of anti-Semitism.
It kicked off in February last year, when Gilmour’s wife Polly Samson shared a tweet in which she accused Waters of being “anti-Semitic to [his] rotten core”, as well as “a Putin apologist and a lying, thieving, hypocritical, tax-avoiding, lip-synching, misogynistic, sick-with-envy, megalomaniac”.
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Gilmour then re-shared Samson’s tweet, adding that “every word [is] demonstrably true”.
Waters himself issued a statement in response, which saw him describe Samson’s comments as “incendiary and wildly inaccurate” and continued that he “refutes [them] entirely”. He added that he was “taking advice as to his position” regarding the claims.
Samson’s comments came after Waters took part in an interview with German newspaper Berliner Zeitung, and shared his views on Israel and the Russian-Ukraine war.
Per a translated version of the interview on Waters’ site, the musician was at one point asked if he still believed – as he had said in the past – that the state of Israel was comparable to Nazi Germany. “Yes, of course,” he replied. “The Israelis are committing genocide. Just like Great Britain did during our colonial period.”
He also reiterated his criticism of the United States and President Joe Biden‘s role in the Russian-Ukraine war, calling America “the main aggressor” and saying that conflict was “provoked beyond all measure”.
Waters also discussed his views further in a 2022 interview with Rolling Stone, describing Israel as “a supremacist, settler colonialist project that operates a system of apartheid” for its continued occupation of Palestine.
Last year, Gilmour also promoted a documentary on Roger Waters’ alleged anti-Semitism.
Elsewhere in the latest Rolling Stone interview, Gilmour said that he finds it “boring” talking about his disagreements with Waters. “As I said before, he left our pop group when I was in my 30s, and I’m a pretty old chap now, and the relevance of it is not there. I don’t really know his work since. So I don’t have anything to say on the topic.”
Meanwhile, the guitarist is set to release a new album on September 6 titled ‘Luck and Strange’, his first album of new material in nine years.