Pratique du Shadowing: The Ego That Destroyed Pink Floyd - Apprendre l'anglais à l'oral avec la vidéo
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I've been a fan of Pink Floyd for years.
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And I haven't listened to it very carefully.
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And toward the end, I mean, David Gilmour said that at certain sessions and recording moments,
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he felt almost there wasn't any point turning up because you were so controlling.
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You were such a stirrer.
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I'm not going there.
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That's it.
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I'm not going any further.
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Are there any paranoics in the audience tonight?
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Is there anyone who worries about things?
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Is there anyone here who's weak?
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Come on, they're coming here!
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Enjoy yourself!
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Come on, go try!
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80,000 people are packed into Montreal's Olympic Stadium.
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It is the 6th of July, 1977, the final night of the In The Flesh tour, and on stage, Roger Waters has reached his breaking point.
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And that's obviously what caused all the trouble in the band, is that...
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It's all strong stuff and it didn't sit well with the rest of them.
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Down in front of the barrier, an overzealous fan is screaming, caught up in the sheer spectacle of the world's biggest stadium rock act.
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Waters, exhausted and alienated by the chaotic stadium environment, snaps.
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He leans over the equipment at the front of the stage and spits directly in the young man's face.
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Why did you spit on a member of the audience?
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Because he was climbing up the front of the fucking stage!
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In that single, shocking instant, the cracks in Pink Floyd became impossible to ignore.
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They had achieved unprecedented commercial heights, yet the group dynamic had turned profoundly fractured.
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Waters would later reflect on the incident with deep disgust, using that sense of alienation from his own audience as the creative catalyst for what came next.
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Mostly the idea became that you wanted to build a wall between yourself and the audience.
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Is that correct?
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It is.
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It is.
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To my channel, Shane.
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It's hard to believe it's been 33 years since I spat at one of you.
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Before the colossal tours and multi-million pound productions, there was Cambridge.
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Roger Waters had grown up without his father, Eric Fletcher Waters, who was killed during the Allied landings at Anzio in February 1944,
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when Roger was barely five months old.
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That profound family loss became a recurring thread in his writing,
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shaping an artistic voice drawn to themes of absence, institutional cruelty and grief.
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When Waters arrived in London to study architecture in the early 1960s, he formed the earliest version of the band alongside Nick Mason and Richard Wright.
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Soon another Cambridge friend joined the fold, Sid Barrett.
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Sid became the charismatic centre of the group,
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writing their early psychedelic breakthroughs like Arnold Lane and See Emily Play throughout 1967.
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Why can't you see?
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Bandar in case...
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Ah, I will...
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Waters remained largely in the background, anchoring the rhythm section on bass.
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Barrett's behaviour, however, grew increasingly erratic and unpredictable.
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Facing the immense demands of early fame alongside heavy drug use, his health deteriorated rapidly.
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By early 1968, the band could no longer function with him on stage and Barrett was formally removed from the line-up.
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Sid went crazy in 1967.
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And so by 69, we weren't seeing him anymore.
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He disappeared completely.
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To save the project, the band turned to another Cambridge native who had been tracking their progress, David Gilmore.
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Losing their principal songwriter and visual figurehead left the group in a precarious position.
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the music press questioned whether they could sustain their initial momentum, forcing the band to spend the next four years operating as an experimental workshop.
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Between 1968 and 1971, they toured relentlessly in transit vans,
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scored art films and built long 20-minute instrumental suites during live shows.
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During this period, the four members worked in relative balance.
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David Gilmour provided distinctive lead guitar and warm vocal melodies.
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Richard Wright contributed rich keyboard textures, weaving jazz chords and classical motifs through their arrangements.
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Nick Mason held the rhythmic core together with an understated, fluid feel.
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Waters, meanwhile, focused on structural discipline.
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Aware of his technical boundaries on the bass, he channelled his energy into shaping overarching concepts,
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making sure their long instrumental passages were anchored to clear narrative ideas.
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Well, funnily enough, I'd already had songs on the first album and on the second album when Sid was still there.
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So it may have been that my nascent need to express my feelings would have may have risen to the surface, but not in the way that it did,
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because it had to fill in all the space.
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By late 1971, during band discussions and rehearsals, Waters proposed a thematic framework that would transform their collective career.
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Waters pitched a clear, direct concept for their eighth studio album, a cohesive record exploring the modern pressures that push people to breaking point,
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from time and money to mental strain and mortality.
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Rather than relying on abstract, disjointed verse, Waters took on the responsibility of writing every lyric on the album,
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creating a unified narrative voice.
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Funnily enough, there was a lot...
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In the original version that I read, there was a lot of we wrote cards out and we did this and we did that.
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I don't remember much we about this.
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Released in March 1973, The Dark Side of the Moon was a masterclass in band collaboration.
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Waters provided the biting conceptual framework and thematic structure.
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Gilmour delivered masterly melodic guitar solos and lead vocals, while Wright composed the chord sequences that formed the backbone of tracks like Us
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and Them and The Great Gig in the Sky.
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The album went on to spend decades on the charts, turning Pink Floyd into a global cultural fixture.
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Yet that unprecedented level of commercial success fundamentally altered how they worked together.
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Over the years that followed, Waters took on an increasingly central role in directing their creative output,
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gradually shifting the band from an open democracy into a project steered by his own specific vision.
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When they regrouped at Abbey Road in 1975, that shifting dynamic was put to the test.
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The sessions for Wish You Were Here proved difficult from the start.
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The band arrived at the studio drained by the scale of their recent success, struggling to find a clear artistic direction.
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Waters wanted to turn the record into a focused commentary on the music industry
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and an exploration of their shared memories of Sid Barrett.
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A major disagreement arose over the track list.
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Gilmore preferred to record three long pieces they had already developed on the road.
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Shine on you crazy diamond, raving and drooling, and you've got to be crazy.
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Waters argued instead for splitting Shine on you crazy diamond across the two sides to frame the entire record, replacing the other two songs with new material.
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Gilmore was outvoted 3 to 1, and the album proceeded according to Waters' structural plan.
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One of the periods, one of the moments, is in the show, because it's in when we play Wish You Were Here, and I do wish he was here.
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And I mean, it's partly what that song's about, and Shine On You Crazy Diamond is just completely about Sid.
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By the time they recorded Animals in 1976, Waters' thematic dominance was nearly absolute.
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He reimagined George Orwell's Animal Farm as a sharp critique of contemporary Britain.
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Gilmore contributed heavily to the 19-minute track Dogs, but for the first time, Richard Wright received no songwriting credits on the record,
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despite his synthesizers and electric pianos remaining central to the album's sonic atmosphere.
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You've said of yourself, I know I can be an oppressive personality because I bubble with ideas.
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It was easier for the others to go along with me.
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So I'm wondering at what point you realised whilst you were making music with Pink Floyd
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that it doesn't quite feel as good as it once felt, that personalities were rubbing abrasively up against each other.
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I think, and it's not just me, I think everybody would agree it was really immediately after Dark Side of the Moon, so we would argue furiously about almost everything.
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Relations were visibly deteriorating.
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By the 1977 Arena Tour, the four members were increasingly distant offstage, travelling separately and communicating less.
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Then came Montreal, the confrontation with the audience, and the creative reaction that followed.
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Retreating to his country home after the 1977 tour, Waters began writing intensely.
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In July 1978, he presented the band with two distinct rough demo tapes,
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one titled The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, and the other The Wall.
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He gave the group the choice of which project to pursue as Pink Floyd, keeping the alternative for a future solo project.
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the initial recordings were notoriously raw and abrasive, with Gilmour later recalling them as practically unlistenable in their early state.
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Turning the material into a viable Pink Floyd record would demand months of intense reconstruction.
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The wall chronicled the life of Pink, a fictional rock star who constructs an emotional barrier to insulate himself from personal loss,
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overbearing figures and the isolation of stardom.
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Waters drew heavily upon his own childhood and his father's death to craft the narrative.
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So we invented a gestalt character.
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This is Pink.
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And Pink had a bit of Roger's history, but also a lot of the characteristics of most of the rock stars that we knew.
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And they are all, you know, when people go into that business, they're looking for approval.
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They're looking for love in all the wrong places, one might say.
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To help manage the immense scope of the double album, producer Bob Ezrin was brought in to oversee the arrangements.
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Ezrin found himself working as a mediator between increasingly alienated band members.
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During the making of The Wall, this was the time at which Roger was sort of declaring his, what he perceived as his primacy within the band.
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And the story was, as I said, based on his life, so he had a very deep proprietary feeling about the whole story and the whole project.
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And he was resistant of input from the other guys to begin with.
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Waters maintained a demanding schedule, pushing for complete narrative consistency across all four sides of vinyl.
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That relentless pressure soon pushed their working relationship with Richard Wright to a total collapse.
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By 1979, Richard Wright was struggling personally and professionally.
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Facing marital difficulties and living abroad for tax reasons, he found himself increasingly sidelined in the studio.
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When scheduling conflicts arose and progress stalled on the album's keyboard tracks,
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tensions between Waters and Wright escalated into an open confrontation.
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Roger was very tough on Rick.
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He was disappointed in Rick's contribution to the record, which was not correct, because Rick's fantastic.
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And the minute that he plays or sings, it just becomes Pink Floyd.
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You know, he's such an essential part of the sound.
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But he's a very sensitive man and was feeling a little bit removed from the process after the making of animals.
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And I think he was self-conscious.
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And Roger, like many bullies, they recognise weakness.
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The minute they see it, they smell blood and they go for it.
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Waters gave Gilmour and Mason a hard choice.
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Either Wright would leave the group upon completion of the recording sessions, or Waters would withhold the wall from being released as a Pink Floyd album.
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The timing was particularly dangerous.
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Pink Floyd had recently lost vast sums of money in a disastrous investment venture with an outside financial firm,
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leaving them in a deeply vulnerable financial position.
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Delaying or losing the album could have resulted in complete financial ruin.
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Gilmour and Mason agreed to the terms and Wright was quietly removed from the partnership.
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In an extraordinary turn of events,
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the band retained Wright as as a salaried session keyboardist for the 1980 and 1981 live performances of The Wall.
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Because the elaborate stage production, complete with towering animated puppets and a physical brick wall spanning the arena,
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incurred massive financial losses, the three remaining partners absorbed the debt.
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Wright, working on a fixed salary, walked away as the only musician to earn money from the performances.
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The internal dynamic had shifted permanently and their next project would fracture the core even further.
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In the spring of 1982, the conflict between Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands deeply affected Roger Waters.
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Having spent his life reflecting on the wartime loss of his father, he saw the conflict as a betrayal of the post-war generation.
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He abandoned plans for a conventional soundtrack to the wall film and poured his energy into to a fierce anti-war record.
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The resulting album, The Final Cut, was released in March 1983.
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Its packaging carried a notable credit, a Requiem for the Post-War Dream by Roger Waters, performed by Pink Floyd.
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Gilmour voiced strong reservations about the material, arguing that several tracks were cast-offs from the wall that were not strong enough for a new release.
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Studio sessions grew exceptionally hostile.
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Gilmore and Waters clashed repeatedly over track selection and arrangements, leading Gilmore to drop his production credit, though he retained his financial producer's share.
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The studio strain extended across the band.
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The work that we did together through,
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in spite of the fact that we're not blood brothers, was remarkable.
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On the track, Two Sons in the Sunset, session drummer Andy Newmark had to be brought in to record the drum parts
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because Mason had difficulty navigating the song's complex shifting time signatures.
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The record read more like a solo statement with guest accompaniment than a band effort.
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Pink Floyd had reached an artistic standstill and Waters was ready to make the separation formal.
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In December 1985, Roger Waters formally notified the record company and management that he was leaving Pink Floyd.
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It's over, I think.
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Just that simple.
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It's over.
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You can call it part of your past now.
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Yeah.
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Other people, I think, have other opinions about it, but you'd have to speak to them.
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Believing that the group's creative identity was inextricably bound to his conceptual direction and writing, he viewed the band as functionally finished,
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later referring to the partnership in legal filings as a spent force creatively.
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It proved to be a critical misjudgment.
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Now, tell me, Roger, what's going to happen to the Pink Floyd in the future?
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Your guess is as good as mine.
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My guess would be not very much.
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But I don't know, you never know.
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You never know these things.
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David Gilmore and Nick Mason resolved to continue working together.
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Gilmore began assembling new material on his houseboat recording studio, the Astoria, inviting Mason and eventually Richard Wright into the sessions.
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When Waters learned that the project was moving forward under the Pink Floyd banner,
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he initiated High Court proceedings in October 1986 to formally dissolve the partnership and challenge the continuing use of the group's name.
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Basically brought two legal actions against us
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which I don't know how long they'll take to get to court but we will see.
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I don't envisage them causing us too many problems.
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I don't think that he or anyone else has the right to tell us whether
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or not we can carry on and use it ourselves.
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Waters sought to wind up the commercial entity while Gilmore
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and Mason fought to defend their right to operate under the established name.
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If Ringo and George reformed and called themselves the Beatles, I personally would be extremely upset because there are millions and millions of children out there who go, oh, the Beatles are coming to town,
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wahoo, let's go and buy tickets.
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Or, oh, look, the Beatles album's coming out, well, let's go and buy it.
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That's all, and that's exploitation, and I think it's wrong.
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The legal standoff did not end with a dramatic courtroom verdict.
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Instead, after months of of intense negotiation, both parties agreed to a comprehensive out-of-court settlement in December 1987.
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Gilmour and Mason secured the legal right to continue recording and touring under the name Pink Floyd,
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while Waters retained specific rights to the theatrical presentation of the wall, along with other distinct staging assets.
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With the departure of long-time songwriter Roger Waters, remaining band members Nick Mason,
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Richard Wright and lead singer-guitarist David Gilmour are learning to fly on their own.
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On the 7th of September 1987, Pink Floyd released a momentary lapse of reason and launched a massive worldwide tour.
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The tour played to packed stadiums around the world, proving that audiences still had an enormous appetite for the band's live sound,
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visual scale and classic repertoire.
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Waters launched his own solo tour for his album Radio Chaos during the same period,
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drawing considerably smaller crowds while Pink Floyd's tour went on to become one of the highest grossing live acts of the decade.
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I was wrong. Were you?
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Of course I was. Who cares?
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It was a commercial decision.
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You know, and in fact, it's one of the few times that the legal profession has taught me something.
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He's doing his thing, you know, he's been touring his wall show, having a great time, really enjoying himself.
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And I'm doing, you know, new music and coming out and doing shows.
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You know, I don't think either one of us wants to go back.
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The commercial reality made it clear that the Pink Floyd identity carried an immense weight of its own, separate from the involvement of any single member.
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Waters had provided the conceptual brilliance and literary edge behind the band's most iconic records,
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but Pink Floyd had always been a synthesis of distinct musical voices.
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When that fragile collaboration broke down, the music carried on, anchored by the sonic style Gilmour and the rest of the band had built from the very beginning.
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David Gilmour's own relationship with that vast catalogue is explored in our look at his four favourite Pink Floyd songs,
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which you can watch right now by clicking the thumbnail on your screen.
The Tension That Split a Legendary Band
The video paints a vivid picture of Pink Floyd’s internal strife, centered on Roger Waters’ growing alienation during the 1977 *In The Flesh* tour. A pivotal moment—Waters spitting at an overzealous fan—exposed the band’s fractured dynamic, rooted in his struggles with fame, grief, and control. This real-life scenario, filled with raw emotion and conflict, offers rich material for English learners to practice understanding natural speech, including slang, intonation, and conversational flow.
Useful Chunks & Collocations
- "reached his breaking point": Describes a moment of overwhelming stress. Example: "After weeks of overtime, she reached her breaking point."
- "cracks became impossible to ignore": Signals hidden problems becoming obvious. Example: "The team’s poor communication meant cracks became impossible to ignore."
- "creative catalyst": Something that sparks new ideas. Example: "The artist’s trip to Japan was a creative catalyst for her latest series."
- "recurring thread": A theme that appears repeatedly. Example: "Loss is a recurring thread in his novels."
- "erratic and unpredictable": Describes inconsistent behavior. Example: "His erratic and unpredictable schedule made planning difficult."
Your Shadowing Challenge
Shadowing—repeating speech aloud in real time—is a powerful way to improve pronunciation and fluency. For this task, focus on the section where Waters reflects on spitting at the fan. Use a shadowing app to play short clips (5-10 seconds) and mimic his tone, pace, and stress. Notice how he emphasizes words like "fucking" to convey anger, and how his voice softens when discussing regret. Practice until you can match his rhythm naturally. This exercise will help you master conversational English’s emotional nuances, making your speech sound more authentic. Remember, tools like shadow speak apps can slow down audio if needed—use them to break down tricky phrases. Keep practicing, and you’ll soon notice progress in your ability to follow and replicate natural speech patterns.
Qu'est-ce que la technique du Shadowing ?
Le Shadowing est une technique d'apprentissage des langues fondée sur la science, développée à l'origine pour la formation des interprètes professionnels. Le principe est simple mais puissant : vous écoutez de l'anglais natif et le répétez immédiatement à voix haute — comme une ombre suivant le locuteur avec un décalage de 1 à 2 secondes. Les recherches montrent une amélioration significative de la précision de la prononciation, de l'intonation, du rythme, des liaisons, de la compréhension orale et de la fluidité.