Pink Floyd reunion with Roger Waters? A resounding ‘no,’ says David Gilmour

Rock reunions are all the rage these days, just ask an Oasis fan. Surely if Noel and Liam Gallagher can mend their relationship, can any previously estranged duo?

According to David Gilmour, not so with Pink Floyd.

In an interview for Independent this week, the respected guitarist and solo musician opened up about his enduring marriage to wife and collaborator Polly Samson, his new album Happiness and weirdnessand his long-standing obsession with mortality.

“I’ve never had so much fun,” he said of working on Happiness and strangeness, he hired new musicians to work with him: producer Charlie Andrew (Alt-J) and Samson, who wrote many of the lyrics on the album.

Gilmour said he believed he had avoided falling into the typical traps of fame and fortune by marrying Samson. “Fame and fortune are very much a double-edged sword, too much success, too much adulation, too much money – a recipe for disaster,” he said.

He called Samson his “savior,” adding, “There was a time when I let things happen, drank too much, did too much cocaine, all that kind of stuff. And in my life, that ended when we (Polly and I) started, right around that time… I haven’t been around any of that for over 30 years.”

Both Gilmour and Samson have been at odds with Waters for years.

But the conflict flared last year when Samson accused Waters of being “anti-Semitic to the core” in a social media spat over Israel, and also called him a “Putin apologist” after he suggested in an interview that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “probably the most provoked invasion in history.”

Waters said he was “aware of the provocative and completely untrue comments made about him by Polly Samson on Twitter, which he completely denies.”

Asked if Gilmour and Waters would ever reunite, the guitarist replied “absolutely not,” though he suggested he hadn’t completely ruled out a partial reunion with drummer Nick Mason.

As he himself admitted, he is currently focusing on solo work.

In a four-star review Happiness and weirdness, critic Helen Brown praised Gilmour’s musings on love and mortality, framed by the “high-definition liquid mercury” he conjured with his guitar.

“Happiness and Strangeness” ends with a slow, steady heartbeat, counterbalancing the audible pulse of the panic attack “The Dark Side of the Moon” she wrote. “Yes, I have ghosts,” sings Gilmour, “and they dance in the moonlight.”

“A flashy concert grand piano solo introduces chilling drama before bass and guitar merge in a friendly rhythm, and classical guitar melts old fears into acceptance. Floyd used to sing that ‘holding on in quiet desperation is the English way’, but Gilmour sounds happier. Dark days ‘flow like honey’, he says. All the ageing Floyds will find solace here.”

Read the full review. Happiness and weirdness is now available.