The lyric that made Roger Waters want to throw up: “Pass me the bucket”
It’s impossible for any artist to look back on all of their work and see nothing but masterpieces. Anyone with their head that far up their ass is most likely delusional about their own work, and even the people who genuinely believe they are the biggest artist in the world will have those moments where things didn’t work out. Then again, it’s not often that someone like Roger Waters writes something that will make him have a visceral reaction to it later down the line.
Granted, Pink Floyd was always going to be an acquired taste before they hit their classic period. Even when they had Syd Barrett as their leader, their zany brand of space-themed psychedelic rock was fun but also a bit too quirky for anyone who wanted to listen to bands like The Beatles. If The Piper at the Gates of Dawn was weird, no one was going to be prepared for what they had to offer on records like A Saucerful of Secrets.
While the band’s middle period does have a few growing pains to work through, there are still pieces that are great in the mix. ‘Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun’ is the first time that Waters had some real punch behind his lyrics, but listening back to a song like ‘Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast’ off of Atom Heart Mother is like trying to hear a band jam while their roadie does a stoned version of ASMR in the background.
Once the band hit on Meddle, Waters found the one thing that would guide him through the rest of his career: empathy. As it turns out, people actually want to hear songs that sound like a human being is singing them, and once Waters hit on the idea of the pressures of daily life on Dark Side of the Moon, he had the perfect backdrop for the kind of troubles that everyone will have to deal with at some point.
Even though he paints with a fairly broad brush lyrically, tracks like ‘Time’ and ‘Us and Them’ are still fantastic case studies of what people should remember when going through life. And while ‘Breathe’ perfectly ushers us into the world of the album by asking us to show compassion, Waters couldn’t help but listen back to the record and hear a sense of naivety.
Despite being one of the greatest intros to any of their albums, Waters said that the line made him want to throw up when discussing Animals, saying, “It’s a little bit high school revolutionary, but it’s a little bit like ‘Breathe breathe in the air, don’t be afraid to care.’ [Makes retching noise] Pass me the bucket. But then again, that’s the truth. It’s OK sometimes to be that naive and direct about feelings.”
After all, that naive feeling that Waters talks about now is a lot more necessary for people to take in later on in life. It does seem a bit trite looking at those lines without the music, but if someone took that message to heart and actually bothered to care for their fellow man, it would be a lot easier for mankind to come together knowing that it’s not easy going through everyday life.
Then again, that compassion seemed to be long gone by the time Waters made The Final Cut, practically turning the band into a surrogate solo group for him and making sure that no one got in the way of making the song he heard in his head. It’s one thing for Waters to be a perfectionist about his work, but towards the end of his time with Floyd, he seemed to lose that sense of empathy that he worked so hard to finetune.
