Roger Waters is inextricable from the worlds of prog and psychedelia, and for good reason. His work with Pink Floyd represents some of the most ambitious and enduring music of the 20th century – first as a key figure in Syd Barrett’s early psychedelic incarnation of the band, and then as their leader and primary lyricist through the run of records that produced The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall.
That body of work is frequently discussed in terms of its sonic achievement, and rightly so. But Waters’ lyricism – the element that arguably gives those albums their lasting power – is less often examined on its own terms. While the prog and psychedelic world around him trafficked in fantasy, science fiction and deliberate abstraction, Waters went in the opposite direction entirely.
His lyrics confronted mental health, ageing, family trauma and political power with a lucidity that had no real precedent in the genre. It was this quality, combined with the shimmering musicianship of the band David Gilmour’s arrival helped to perfect, that gave Pink Floyd a depth none of their contemporaries could match.
By Waters’ own account, the decision to write about the real world rather than retreat into surrealism was significantly shaped by one source: John Lennon.
Speaking to KLCS in 2015, Waters explained what he took from Lennon and his bandmates. “I learned from John Lennon and Paul McCartney and George Harrison that it was okay for us to write about our lives, and what we felt – and to express ourselves. That we could be free artists and that there was a value in that freedom. And there was.”
Known for his exacting standards and spiky opinions on other people’s music, Waters is nonetheless a lifelong devotee of Lennon and The Beatles. He has also revealed that when the two men met, the encounter was rather more prickly than you might expect from an artist crediting another as a formative influence.
“I only met John Lennon once, to my huge regret, and that was in the control room at Number 2,” Waters told Rolling Stone. “He was a bit acerbic. He was quite snotty – so was I!”
The awkward encounter aside, Waters has never been in any doubt about what he owes to Lennon’s ethos. Speaking on a webcast in 2000, he articulated it plainly: “That the innocent should be spared, the guilty should be forgiven and that John Lennon should have been seen as right when he said, ‘all you need is love.'”
It is a sentiment that continues to run through everything Waters has done – in his music, in his politics, and in his refusal, across six decades, to look away from the things that matter.
Editors’ Picks
- 1970s Music
- David Gilmour
- John Lennon
- Pink Floyd
- Prog Rock
- psychedelic rock
- Roger Waters
- The Beatles
