The $250 Million Offer

It seems like a scenario from another planet today, amid the ongoing feud between the two former Pink Floyd bandmates, Roger Waters and David Gilmour, but there was a relatively recent time when the group really did come close to reforming, at least for a live show. It happened, to be precise, in 2005. Roger Waters revealed that Pink Floyd turned down a $250 million offer to get back together for a tour. The bassist and founding member of the group explained that the historic reunion at Bob Geldof's charity concert led to a multimillion-dollar proposal from an anonymous promoter. Waters admitted at the time that he had genuinely "loved" the moment shared onstage with David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright, but that 2005 Live 8 performance has remained the last time the four of them took the stage together.

With Wright's death in 2009, a true reunion of the "The Dark Side Of The Moon" lineup has become impossible today, but it's especially after the recent clashes between Gilmour and Waters that any chance of the surviving members reuniting onstage has effectively been wiped out. Waters, however, made clear that the group really could have gone back on tour had they not turned down that tempting offer. In an interview with Word Magazine, Waters explained that he had genuinely been tempted by a reunion, riding the emotional wave of Live 8: "Oh, it was fantastic. I really loved it. I was hoping we could do it again. It was more than positive. If another opportunity had come up," he said, "I could even have imagined playing 'The Dark Side of the Moon' again — if there had been some special occasion... It would have been great to hear it again. Live 8 was fantastic." But that opportunity never materialized, and since then everyone has gone their own way.

Waters has never explained why the offer was turned down, but it's likely that old grudges between the band members won out over everything else, in the absence of a noble charitable cause tied to the show, as had been the case with Live 8. Much was made of the "silent tension" that preceded that Pink Floyd performance: Gilmour's wife, the writer Polly Samson, drew inspiration from that awkwardness to write a song. "David wanted something that would be a full stop to the whole Pink Floyd story. So, without any music, I wrote 'Louder Than Words'. The lyrics were easy to write because I'd been observing this thing for years: if you're in a room with David, Nick and Rick, nobody talks. There are just these awkward silences. And then they get on stage with their instruments and suddenly they become so eloquent, and the way they communicate is beautiful. So I wrote Louder Than Words to express that feeling".

Pink Floyd took the stage at 11:23 pm, right after the Who's set. Gilmour, Waters, Wright and Mason hadn't shared a stage since the "The Wall" tour wrapped up in 1981: they performed "Breathe", "Money", "Wish You Were Here" and "Comfortably Numb" (see the video below). Before launching into "Wish You Were Here", Waters told the crowd: "It's very moving, standing up here, doing this with these guys after all these years... Anyway, we're doing this for everyone who's not here, and particularly, of course, for Syd".

In the years following Live 8, both Waters and Gilmour kept performing as solo artists, trading a steady stream of accusations and mutual barbs that made any reunion project effectively impossible.

Recently, Pink Floyd also sold their catalogue to Sony Music for 400 million dollars. The major label, led by Rob Stringer, acquired the masters, related rights and image rights of the legendary English band, which comprises Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason and the estates of Richard Wright and Syd Barrett. Publishing rights, however, remain excluded from the deal.

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03/02/2026