The 1975 Pink Floyd song Roger Waters “would have done better” than David Gilmour
The entire premise of who did what in Pink Floyd is a bit strange when it comes to discussing Roger Waters.
He was one of the premier leaders of the group during his time with the band, but since he wasn’t the primary singer up until the later records and didn’t even end up playing bass on some of their biggest tracks, there are times when you’d question whether he was even a major piece of the music that they made. But he was an overseer at the end of the day, and some of the biggest pieces of their catalogue wouldn’t exist without his input.
The Dark Side of the Moon was entirely Waters’s vision, and even though his voice doesn’t turn up until the final two songs, the idea of an album based around the cycle of life is so simple yet so profound when listening to his words. The lyrics to tracks like ‘Time’ and ‘Money’ still hold up just as well to this day, but a lot of that comes down to the way that Waters worked in conjunction with the rest of the band.
They had a profound revelation when working on the recording of ‘Echoes’, and when you listen to the way that Waters talks about the song in retrospect, it was like his mind was open to what lyrics could be about. This was about diving into the human psyche and trying to understand how we relate to each other, so when they ended up hitting the big time without Syd Barrett, Waters was using the same mentality on Wish You Were Here.
But the story of the band’s follow-up to Dark Side of the Moon is about much more than a bunch of tribute songs to their friend. It’s certainly there, but there are more than a few warnings about what the music business was supposed to be. ‘Welcome to the Machine’ is one of the more dystopian looks at what the business meetings look like for young and impressionable musicians, and by the time that Roy Harper shows up on ‘Have A Cigar’, it makes sense why the band brought an outsider in.
After all, Harper’s role is supposed to be about playing a suit that’s trying to schmooze the band without knowing anything about them, so having him provide his voice rather than someone in the band works perfectly. But even if David Gilmour thought that he worked perfectly for the song, Waters felt that he could have spent a bit more time working on it instead of having Harper come in.
He wasn’t against the idea of adding new members to their album, but Waters knew the track needed more of his contributions to sound right, saying, “I regret it. To me, it doesn’t feel very natural for him doing it. I think if I’d persevered with it, I would have done it better than that. If I’d sung it, it would have been more vulnerable and less cynical.” But vulnerable isn’t really what the song is about.
Sure, there are some warnings about the dangers of rock and roll, but having a sleazier voice on it does give the song more weight. It’s clear that whoever is talking doesn’t care one way or the other if the singer he’s talking to makes it or not, and that’s what delivers the message a lot better than someone trying to hold the talent’s hand through every step up the ladder.
Since Waters wasn’t the singer that he would turn into, though, having someone like Harper in their camp was going to give the tune a shot in the arm. It does take a bit of an adjustment period for people who only knew the original Floyd members singing, but given that the song is about the idea of the music business making you uncomfortable, why not actually be uncomfortable listening to the singer?
