The album Roger Waters was massively disappointed in: “Nobody knows who I am”
While Pink Floyd was making some of their best music, there was tension underlying the band, which meant that each song was sounding closer and closer to their last. While people go back and listen to classics like Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall and hear a band at their very peak, the members of the band at the time remember things differently, as those recording sessions marked some of the last times that that line-up would work together.
Pink Floyd has always been a band shrouded in controversy. The original line-up quickly disbanded when Syd Barrett left and was replaced by David Gilmour. Once Gilmour stepped in, the band pivoted and started making longer, complicated, psychedelic concept albums, which they are now most famous for.
When people think of Pink Floyd, they think of classics such as ‘Comfortably Numb’, born out of Waters’ idea about an album that followed a jaded rockstar and the trials and tribulations that come with fame. Listeners view the serene melancholy that comes with such a song as nothing short of a masterpiece, but for the band, things were getting tough.
Gilmour recognised that when they were making The Wall, it was likely going to be one of the last times that he and Waters worked together. “I think things like ‘Comfortably Numb’ were the last embers of mine and Roger’s ability to work collaboratively together,” he said.
Shortly thereafter, the band split up, and a court case followed. Waters wanted to continue using the name Pink Floyd despite not being a member anymore. He was shocked that some of the other band members didn’t join him when he left, and he said this was one of the only times that the legal system has taught him a lesson.
“It’s one of the few times that the legal profession has taught me something,” Waters commented. “Because when I went to these chaps and said, ‘Listen, we’re broke, this isn’t Pink Floyd anymore’, they went, ‘What do you mean? That’s irrelevant; it is a label that has commercial value. You can’t say it’s going to cease to exist… you obviously don’t understand English jurisprudence.’”
Waters ended up making music under his own name but was deeply disappointed with the results. His debut solo album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, didn’t do the numbers that he was hoping it would do. This taught him a harsh lesson, as he realised that regardless of his work with Pink Floyd, people only knew him as part of a collective rather than a solo artist.
“I confess, particularly with the Pros and Cons tour, it was a big surprise to me. So that was bit of a learning process. I don’t know. At the time, I was kind of disappointed,” Waters concluded. “But I’ve learned now that nobody knows who I am and that the whole thing was starting again… I expected more people than did to know who I was and what I’d done. But they didn’t. And they still don’t.”
