ROUGH WATERS
Pink Floyd frontman remains fierce and raging
For someone who preaches peace and love, Roger Waters picks a lot of fights. The 73-year-old, who regularly speaks out against farright politicians and “greedy ” corporations, has been feuding with former Pink Floyd bandmate Dave Gilmour for more than 30 years.
“Of course I’m belligerent,” announces the four-time divorcee.
Considering the dedicated way in which he has pursued his vendetta against Gilmour, I suppose this shouldn’t come as a surprise. But, with millions in his bank account I had assumed he might have mellowed.
During a discussion about the relative values placed on lyrics, melody and arrangement in his songwriting, it becomes obvious that he still bears a grudge about the way he was treated by the band and, in particular, the way they dismissed his musical abilities.
“The music is hugely important to me,” he says. “It may sound daft to say, but over the years I maybe haven’t taken quite enough credit for it. I think the idea that Rick (Wright, keyboard player) and David particularly tried to sell me in the band, when I was a young man, was that I was a bit of a headmaster but I shouldn’t bother myself with music because I wasn’t musical. It’s absolute crap. I’m twice the musician either of those guys ever were. I just am. I’ve got it. It’s in me.”
The public can assess this claim for themselves on Friday, when Waters releases his first solo album in 25 years.
Is This the Life We Really Want? is a politically charged concept album on which Waters rails against warmongering governments, mourns the plight of refugees, calls Donald Trump a nincompoop and generally vents his spleen at the inequalities of the modern world.
“I recognize a theme that I keep returning to, in all my work, since Echoes (from Pink Floyd’s Meddle in 1971). It’s an obsessive belief in a humanity that we share, which makes it possible for me to empathize with you, whoever you are. But for some of us, it’s so deeply buried that we will never touch it.
“President Trump, there’s no way he’ll ever empathize with anybody. If you talk about love to him, it would be like talking Swahili — he couldn’t understand it. But I still believe it’s there. I’m in love with the idea that there is no ‘us and them.’”
Waters’s forthcoming tour is named Us + Them after the classic song from Dark Side of the Moon. It kicks off Tuesday in the U.S.
The album’s tone veers between elegiac sorrow, righteous anger and world-weary cynicism, in a sonic landscape of vast synths, shimmering acoustic guitars and cavernous drums, all linked by odd tape loops and Waters’s dry, elliptical narration. It is hugely reminiscent of Floyd’s classic work, from Dark Side of the Moon to The Wall.
Waters ascribes this to the input of Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich.
Interestingly, Waters turns out not to be a fan of Radiohead, a group many see as carrying on Floyd’s experimental mantle.
“I find it sort of impenetrable. I like my rock ’n’ roll to be very direct. I don’t want to be digging around trying to figure out the meaning.”
Waters’s songwriting career came about by accident. When Pink Floyd formed in 1965, Waters was the bassist, content to follow childhood friend Syd Barrett’s lead. Following the release of their debut album, The Piper at the Gate of Dawn in 1967, Barrett’s descent into drug-induced psychosis led to the recruitment of guitarist Gilmour and the departure of their founder.
“When Syd went crazy, either we gave up or somebody started writing. So it was a matter of necessity. You can’t have a band without songs, however crappy they might be. And there are a huge number of bands out there who have writers who are useless. Frankly, most rock ’n’ roll is awful.”
I like my rock ’n’ roll to be very direct. I don’t want to be digging around trying to figure out the meaning.