Roger Waters: The Man Behind Pink Floyd's The Wall

By Greg Kot

Roger Waters -- the auteur who created the themes, wrote the lyrics, and shaped many of the best songs on such Pink Floyd masterpieces as The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and The Wall -- is touring North America for the first time in 12 years this summer. He'll perform many of the songs he wrote for Floyd, in effect reclaiming the legacy that has been usurped by his former bandmates.

Three years after completing the final Floyd album with Waters, The Final Cut (1983), David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright tried to resurrect the Floyd name for recording projects and tours. Waters sued to stop them, but lost, then watched in horror as the new Floyd --augmented by sidemen and elaborate visuals -- raked in $30 million on a 1987 tour while his solo career languished.

Before going into rehearsals with a six-piece band, one of the finest songwriters of the rock era cleared the air in a rare interview about life with and without Pink Floyd.

CDNOW: True or false: Besides fly-fishing and beginning a new family the last few years, you've been working on an opera about the French revolution.

Roger Waters: True! Man cannot live by rock & roll alone. It's called Ca Ira, an operatic history of the French revolution, and I hope to have it done for release next year.

Although it's set in the late 18th century, it's about change in general as much as that specific revolution. I've had to learn how to compose on a computer -- an idea that I loathed, but which I now find liberating -- and for an 82-piece orchestra and a choir. Plus I've been working on translating the French, which was first presented to me in 1989 by librettist Etienne Roda Gil, into English, so there will be two versions of the work released.

But surely you've observed the fates of rockers who dabble outside the genre. When Paul McCartney put out Liverpool Oratorio, the classical aficionados threw stones, and his fans scratched their heads. What makes you think this will be different?

I understand the knives will come out -- that's inevitable. But one of the problems that people in the classical world have is how many recordings of Mahler or Beethoven symphonies can you make? They're always looking for new music, but many of the new serious composers are into academic forms, which strike some people as sterile and cold.

I think I've made a work that is melodic and emotional; I think I've done something that can move people. The libretto is very much relatable to my earlier work, because it has that humane element.

"They [Pink Floyd] made a live video of one of their shows a few years ago, and I thought it was really awful. It became obvious to me that they never understood any of it at all."

Is there a rock record in the works?

I've written a few songs, and I have a broad idea of something I want to do. I've got studio time scheduled in February to make another pop record.

Will it be conceptual?

Yeah, definitely. Why change now, really?

And that concept is ...?

I am at a point where I can identify what the theme might be. But I'm not going to tell you.

You rat. So why tour now? You have nothing to sell.

I know [laughs]. When I did my last album [Amused to Death in 1992], I had the desire to tour, but not to spend the millions of dollars required to do a really serious show, especially after the unenthusiastic reception in 1987.

This year, I planned to spend the summer in the States with my family anyway, and I thought, "Why not do a few gigs at reasonably small venues where I can interact with the audience and they with you?" I wanted to see if I could rekindle some of the magic that I remember from the early days with the Floyd -- the magic which, in fact, had disappeared by 1977 when we got so big, and all anybody seemed to be focusing on was numbers, which is what made me write The Wall and swear I'd never play stadiums again.

So is this your way of reclaiming the Floyd legacy?

Let me put it this way: They made a live video of one of their shows a few years ago, and I thought it was really awful. It became obvious to me that they never understood any of it at all. And neither did quite a large number of the great unwashed -- as long as there are lots of lights going off, and they can recognize the tunes, they're relatively happy.

What was missing?

I just don't think they understand the songs or what they're about. If you read old interviews, they actually say that. I can remember interviews from Dark Side where Rick was saying, "We really don't care about the lyrics." They remain connected to the numbers, the money, and so that's what you get, that's what you feel through it all.

What you don't feel is the connection with the magic, because there isn't any. The working relationship I had with Dave and Nick and even Rick to a certain extent up to and including Dark Side of the Moon was very exciting and interesting and worthwhile, but after that it became very problematic. We'd done everything we had set out to do, and we kind of clung together from that point on in a very uneasy marriage because of the name, because it was easy, and we'd created an enormous audience.

And I have to say Dave did some great work as well after Dark Side. His contributions to those latter records were very important. But he certainly didn't do any work regarding the philosophy or politics or heart or drive behind the records. So when I left, they were put in a situation where no one was providing that, but they carried on doing that, and they did it by employing huge numbers of people to try and replace me.

"The end came when we did The Final Cut, and Dave said he didn't think the record was good enough, so I asked him if he had any songs. Well, he hadn't got any."

With all due respect to the people who went out and bought those records, they are just rubbish. Particularly The Division Bell; it's just nonsense from beginning to end. A Momentary Lapse of Reason had a couple of really nice tunes on it that, had I still been in the band, those chord sequences and melodies would have been made it onto a record that I was involved in. But conceptually and lyrically, it's just rubbish, partly because it's not true. It's like, "Let's try and write songs that sound as if they're Pink Floyd and make records that sound like Pink Floyd records."

Eric Stewart of 10cc told me how he got a phone call from Dave Gilmour where Dave said, "We're trying to make a new record, and we need a concept. Got any ideas?" It was funny, and it really pissed me off at the time. It pissed me off that no one saw through any of that. But I think history is starting to show that none of that stuff is really lasting. The last record was kind of pure ''Spinal Tap.'' Dave got his new wife to write lyrics!

Did you break up the band because their ability to execute your ideas was faltering?

They said all that stuff about what a horrid person I was and how I wouldn't let anyone have their say and how they are now working together as a band. Bullocks! Nobody had any say in anything except Gilmour, except that he needed Rick to write songs. I left because it was just no longer good for any of us. They were getting upset ... Rick Wright had been fired by mutual consent of us all, notwithstanding what they've all said since about how it was horrid old me. Gilmour and Mason absolutely agreed to getting rid of Rick because he'd become impossible to work with.

In fact, at the time, I was having a conversation with Dave about Rick, and he was saying, "Let's get rid of Nick too." That was the state everything was in. But I was finding my feet more and had things I wanted to say melodically, thematically, and lyrically. So I was writing more and more, Dave was writing less and less, Rick had gone, and Nick never wrote anything anyway, so in the end it was me writing everything.

The end came when we did The Final Cut, and Dave said he didn't think the record was good enough, so I asked him if he had any songs. Well, he hadn't got any. He wanted me to shelve it for a year, so he could write some songs. I said, "C'mon Dave, you haven't written any songs for five years, what makes you think you're going to start writing songs now?" I told him I'd release it as a solo record if they wanted, but they didn't want that either. That was the big bust-up really. There was so much rancor by the end of it.