One evening, in early 1968, an up-and-coming group known as Pink Floyd was on its way to a gig. They had but one person to pick up, and they decided not to. Syd Barrett, lead singer/lead guitarist/lead musician, was left behind. The band played that night as a four-piece: guitarist David Gilmour, drummer Nick Mason, pianist Richard Wright, and a lanky, tone-deaf, bassist.

How did this bassist elevate to icon status? What kind of stories could the fifth most talented musician of a band have to offer? Who could ever replace Syd Barrett?

There are rare success stories of bands that prospered after losing their front man. Van Halen continued success with Sammy Hagar after the departure of David Lee Roth. The Moody Blues played on after departed singer/guitarist Denny Laine was gone to higher levels of commercial success with Justin Hayward. But neither group had the incredible commercial and critical success that Pink Floyd had after Roger Waters became the leader.

George Roger Waters was born in September of 1943, who grew up with only his mother, Mary, as a parental figure. His father did not abandon the family; Eric Fletcher Waters was killed in World War II when Waters was only a baby. His father’s death would leave a permanent mark on his son’s psyche, slowly finding its way into Waters contributions to Pink Floyd. Starting with one song on an album of seven songs (“Corporal Clegg” from A Saucerful of Secrets) to dominating an entire record (The Final Cut), Waters’s inspiration is not found in love, but anger.

It is for his venomous lyrics and anger that Waters has his critics. To this day, there are loyalists who stopped listening to Pink Floyd after Barrett’s departure. Barrett’s Floyd was a completely different band from 1970s Floyd. Gone were the childlike lyrics that Barrett offered his listeners, brilliant though they were (“Alone in the clouds all blue/Lying on an eiderdown/Yippee! You can’t see me/But I can you”). Waters lyrics are often satirical, biting, and political. You won’t hear Waters bragging about bikes or how “buttercups cup the light.” He has statements to make, and, like it or not, he will be heard.

After having been credited for writing one song on The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967), Waters did not attain leadership status immediately. A Saucerful of Secrets (1968), though featuring some contributions by Syd Barrett (who the band tried to turn into a Brian-Wilson-esque songwriter), displayed Pink Floyd as a band in a state of transition that would haunt them for years to come. Although Saucerful is ultimately a success, it lacks direction; identity.

Failed experiments followed. The soundtrack to the film More (1969) is just a collection of half-realized ideas, both musically and lyrically. The new songs on the double-LP Ummagumma (1969) are entirely forgettable, with only the live songs of old songs to give fans a reason to purchase it. “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast” from Atom Heart Mother (1970) is a disastrous effort. Listening to a man waking up, eating breakfast, and going to work may sound like a good idea on paper…wait…not even then!

It wasn’t until the release of Meddle (1971) that the band began to show signs of life. With the epic track, “Echoes”, the soothing “Fearless”, and the jazz-influenced “San Tropez”, the band began to find a balance. Waters would write the majority of the lyrics and Gilmour (and sometimes Wright) would come up with the music. The only lyric to be heard in the otherwise-instrumental masterpiece, “One of These Days”, is from a distorted Nick Mason, and a sign of venom to come: “One of these days, I’m going to cut you into little pieces.”

The cynicism continued into the much-forgotten soundtrack for the film, The Valley, called Obscured by Clouds (1972). Obscured features the song “Free Four”, with Waters in fine form:

Life is a short, warm moment

And death is a long cold rest.

You get your chance to try in the twinkling of an eye:

Eighty years, with luck, or even less.

- “Free Four”

Everything clicked between the summer of 1972 and the winter of 1973. During the recording of Dark Side of the Moon (1973), all the lyrics would be credited to Waters. His storytelling of humanity’s enemies, including “Money” (“Money, it’s a hit/Don’t give me that do goody good bullshit”), war with “Us and Them” (“Forward he cried from the rear/and the front rank died”), “Brain Damage”, and “Time” (“And then one day you find ten years have got behind you/No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun”). The music throughout is timeless, but it is ultimately the marriage between the music and the Waters’s lyrics that elevates the album to classic status.

The focal point of the band’s follow-up, Wish You Were Here (1975), only furthered the band’s climb to the top. Another smash commercially as well as artistically, the album dealt with their lost bandmate, Syd Barrett. As opposed to having a loose-concept like Dark Side, Waters often talks directly to Barrett in “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”: “Come on you raver, you seer of visions/Come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!”

Waters plays the role of the greedy record industry representative, saying to Barrett, “Welcome to the Machine”. He invites him to “Have a Cigar”, gives him an insincere sign of gratitude before asking “Which one’s Pink?” The centerpiece of the album is the title track, which still packs a wallop today.

How I wish, how I wish you were here.

We’re just two lost souls

Swimming in a fish bowl,

Year after year,

Running over the same old ground.

What have we found?

The same old fears.

Wish you were here.

-“Wish You Were Here”

The express train kept rolling into Animals (1977), which Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello has defended as a punk album, citing “Dogs” as an example. Johnny Rotten was known to wear a shirt that said “I Hate Pink Floyd”, for they represented the prog-rock movement of the early 1970s. If punk music is largely about attacking the establishment and representing disenfranchised youth, then Animals is a quintessential punk record (with extended solos, of course).

And after a while, you can work on points for style.

Like the club tie, and the firm handshake,

A certain look in the eye and an easy smile.

You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to,

So that when they turn their backs on you,

You’ll get the chance to put the knife in.

- “Dogs”

Hey you, Whitehouse,

Ha ha charade you are.

You house proud town mouse,

Ha ha charade you are

- “Pigs (Three Different Ones)”

Harmlessly passing your time in the grassland away;

Only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air.

You better watch out,

There may be dogs about

I’ve looked over Jordan, and I have seen

Things are not what they seem.

“Sheep”

During the Animals tour, something happened that gave way to the band’s next album. Waters began to feel detached from the audience, alienated in stadiums after years in smaller venues for audiences who were there to listen to the band’s music. There are bootlegs circulating with Waters screaming for fans to stop setting off fireworks during the acoustic opening of “Pigs on the Wing”. At one point, Waters actually spit on the face of a fan during a performance.

This behavior (of both fan and artist) led to The Wall (1979). A double-LP based on Waters’s childhood, father, and mother, as well as Barrett’s increasing paranoia and drug use. The combination made for a difficult album to record, as the band itself began to deteriorate. Wright would be fired from the band, only to remain on as a hired player on the band’s tour for the album. Waters was no longer the band leader, but the dictator.

The album boasts several songs that actually get radio play even today, including “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)”, “Mother”, “Young Lust”, “Hey You”, “Comfortably Numb”, and “Run Like Hell”. A beautiful song, “Nobody Home”, written and sung by Waters, is told from Barrett’s point-of-view: “I’ve got a little black book with my poems in,” “I got elastic bands keeping my shoes on,” “I’ve got the obligatory Hendrix perm.” It’s a tragic song amongst an album filled of tragedy. Nobody did it better than Waters.

[The band’s final album with Waters is The Final Cut (1983). For more information on that record, we invite you to click here. Ignore the fact that it was a written by a buffoon and get more information than you thought was available for this forgotten masterpiece. And it is Waters’s finest hour lyrically]

After an acrimonious split from the band, Waters teamed with Eric Clapton for The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking (1984). An album about a man’s dream/nightmare via hitchhiking has its fair share of hate, but it is ultimately an anti-Waters album. Hate is not the driving force here; it is the polar opposite. Waters sums it up in his explanation of the final track “5:11 AM (The Moment of Clarity)”: “The moment fades. The man is afraid. He reaches out and touches his wife’s hair. She is awake. He loves her…” It’s an album about trying to rid one’s self of hatred and fear, and embrace the possibility of love.

Despite all the good feelings to be found at the conclusion of the album, Waters would file a lawsuit against the remaining members of the band regarding the use of the name “Pink Floyd”. He felt he was the driving force of the band (he was) and that the band itself was a “spent force” (they were). He would lose, and Gilmour would continue on with the name and Mason (later reinstated member Wright) to enormous commercial success, but little critical. The absence of lyrics from Waters would taint any recordings to follow.

After releasing the dated Radio Waves (1987), Waters staged a live performance of The Wall with a slew of famous performers. Celebrating the fall of the Berlin wall in 1990, Waters and company played to an audience of 250,000, followed by a record release and (years later) a DVD release. The performance had several technical errors, and some of the performances (i.e. Thomas Dolby) date the show badly. All in all, an amazing accomplishment, and a historic vent.

Amused to Death, which featured Jeff Beck on lead guitar, would be the last studio album of Waters’s career. Another album about the human condition, Waters sounds as though he has reached the end of his own mortality. With a frail and fading voice like that of Tom Waits or Lou Reed, and the record is definitely about the lyrics and the story with the music serving as a backdrop.

Years later, Waters mounted a world tour in the late 1990s, and has been touring off and on since. His popularity as a solo artist is greater now than it was in the mid-1980s, as more and more people discover his work in Pink Floyd.

In 2005, Waters rejoined his old band in London for Live 8. It would have been a big deal solely for the fact that Pink Floyd was performing as a unit of any kind in nearly a decade, but anticipation increased ten-fold when it was learned Waters would be involved. Rifts were healed, but it would mark the last time the four would play together (Wright passed away in 2008).

The importance of Roger Waters can be best described by an icon in his own right: Trent Reznor. The following excerpt, taken from a meeting between Reznor and Waters, speaks not only of the latter’s influence and admiration, but how his music and lyrics have the ability to connect to us, reminding us we are not alone in this fishbowl. Year after year…

I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania. Not to sound too kiss-ass, but when The Wall came out, it was a turning point for me. I was in high school at the time, and I remember that music had always been my friend- a companion, the brother I didn’t have, or whatever. I came from a broken home. I was alone a lot as a child. And when The Wall came out, that record seemed very personal to me, even though I was in a completely different lifestyle, place and situation than Roger would have been in at that time. I’d never heard music that had that sort of naked, honest emotion. I had that sense of, “Wow, I’m not the only person who feels this way.”

- Trent Reznor, Revolver 2000

Roger Waters Recommendations:

Book: “Saucerful of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey” by Nicholas Schaffner

CD: Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd // The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking by Roger Waters

Check Out:

Roger Waters – “Mother” (from In the Flesh Live)

Categories: Features, Icons of Rock
Tags: Pink Floyd, Roger Waters