In 1965, four young men formed one of the first—and eventually one of the biggest—psychedelic rock bands: Pink Floyd. At its start, the band consisted of Syd Barrett, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright. After a couple of years, guitarist David Gilmour also joined the group, only months before Barrett left in 1968. Now, the surviving members are Gilmour, Mason, and Waters, following the death of Barrett in 2006 and Wright in 2008.
Recently, the band put out a new song, but not all three musicians participated in the release. That's because there have long been tensions between two of them. Read on to find out about Gilmour, Mason, and Waters today, and where their relationships with each other stand.
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Pink Floyd has existed in different forms over the years.
Koh Hasebe/Shinko Music/Getty ImagesAside from Barrett leaving the band in the 1968, there have been some other lineup changes. Wright stopped performing with the group in the early 1980s, but then returned in the '90s. Meanwhile, Waters left the group in the mid-'80s and only returned in 2005 for the Live 8 concert, which all the members—minus Barrett—participated in.
The band generally stopped performing as a full group in 1994, though Gilmour and Mason came together in 2013 for the album The Endless River, which included previously recorded material combined with new recordings. They also recently teamed up for another song.
Two members have been feuding for years.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesGilmour and Waters have been at odds for some time. In a 2018 interview with Rolling Stone,Mason said of their feud, "It’s a really odd thing in my opinion, but I think the problem is Roger doesn’t really respect David. He feels that writing is everything, and that guitar playing and the singing are something that, I won’t say anyone can do, but that everything should be judged on the writing rather than the playing.” He added, “I think it rankles with Roger that he made a sort of error in a way that he left the band assuming that without him it would fold." Mason said that he gets along with both band members and thinks "it’s really disappointing that these rather elderly gentlemen are still at loggerheads."
David Gilmour has produced and played with other artists.
Gus Stewart/Redferns via Getty ImagesAll three remaining members of Pink Floyd have put out music outside of the band. Gilmour, 76, has released four solo albums with the latest, Rattle That Lock, released in 2015. He has also worked as a producer and played guitar for other artists. Earlier this year, Gilmour and Mason released the song "Hey Hey, Rise Up!" with the proceeds going to Ukrainian humanitarian efforts during the war.
"I rang Nick up and said: ‘Listen, I want to do this thing for Ukraine. I’d be really happy if you played on it and I’d also be really happy if you’d agree to us putting it out as Pink Floyd.’ And he was absolutely on for that," Gilmour told The Guardian.
As for his relationship with Waters, Gilmour toldRolling Stone in 2014, "Why on Earth anyone thinks what we do now would have anything to do with him is a mystery to me. Roger was tired of being in a pop group. He is very used to being the sole power behind his career. The thought of him coming into something that has any form of democracy to it, he just wouldn’t be good at that."
Gilmour has been married twice. He and artist Virginia Hasenbein were married from 1975 to 1990 and welcomed four children together. Since 1994, Gilmour has been married to writer Polly Samson, with whom he also has four kids.
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Nick Mason founded a Floyd spinoff band.
Luke Walker/Getty ImagesMason, Pink Floyd's drummer, has released and performed music on his own, too. He released a solo album in 1981 and has also recorded with other musicians. In 2018, he created the band Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets, which tours performances of Pink Floyd's early music and is named after their second album.
"Syd had a strange way of writing, which made it sound like a ‘normal’ pop song, and then it would lurch into something else,” the 78-year-old told Billboardof performing Barrett's compositions. "[That] makes it such a great vehicle for us."
As for his personal life, Mason was married to musician Lindy Rutter from 1968 to 1988, and they had two children. Then, in 1990, he married actor Nettie Mason and welcomed two more kids.
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Roger Waters is touring right now.
Kurt Krieger/Corbis via Getty ImagesWaters, 78, was a bassist and singer during his time in Pink Floyd. He left the band in 1985 but had already begun putting out solo work in 1984. He's released four albums, and the most recent, Is This the Life We Really Want?, came out in 2017. Waters started his latest tour, titled This Is Not a Drill, in July 2022.
In 2020, Rolling Stone asked Waters about playing both solo songs and Pink Floyd songs at his live shows.
"I hate to be the one to have to point this out to you, but they’re all my songs!" he answered. "I can throw together a setlist of any song that I ever wrote in my life, with the exception of some of the early ones." He also talked about the idea of getting back together with the band, saying, "Obviously if you’re a fan of those days of Pink Floyd, well, then you have a different point of view. But I had to live through it. That was my life. I know in the wake of it I’ve been cast as something of a villain … so be it. I can live with that. But would I trade my liberty for those chains? No [expletive] way."
Like his bandmates, Waters has been married before. He's been wed five times—to Judith Trim, Lady Carolyne Christie, Priscilla Phillips, Laurie Durning, and, since 2021, to Kamilah Chavis. From his relationships, Waters has three children.
