The one band Roger Waters said meant nothing to him: “That wasn’t about anything”
Roger Waters didn’t care to mince his words when it came to any rock and roll band.
There were plenty of songwriters that he loved to listen to, but when you go back to some of his best records, you can normally find him critiquing the kinds of musicians that only wanted fame and fortune rather than actually having any sort of effect on what the music was supposed to be. But even in a genre that was already a little bit self-indulgent, Waters was convinced that some of the biggest prog bands in the world didn’t deserve to have the kind of platform that they did in their prime.
Then again, Waters probably has a love-hate relationship with the idea of making ‘progressive rock’. It’s true that a lot of Pink Floyd’s best records were about progressing past the traditional songwriting structures, but since Waters was already finding that in artists like Joni Mitchell, he wasn’t exactly going to claim to be the biggest Genesis fan simply because they also had songs that breached the ten-minute mark on each of their records.
Sure, Waters could get more than a little bit self-indulgent from time to time, but you can still hear the conviction that he has behind everything he’s saying. Like it or not, he still felt that he was making great art when he completely tarnished Dark Side of the Moon, and when you look at the kind of records that he was making during his solo career, he was clearly trying to get a message through to his fans.
So when prog bands started to turn their music into a virtuoso showcase, that was never going to fly for him. And in prog circles, there was no band that was more respected and reviled than Emerson, Lake and Palmer. All of them were at the top of their game musically and could play circles around virtually anyone else in their sphere, but when Waters looked even the slightest bit deeper, he started to realise that there was truly nothing there underneath those millions of notes that they played.
He wanted to like the band when he started off, but there was no sense in him going any further when he first saw them, saying, “That wasn’t about anything… it was a construct in order to sell records. It didn’t have its roots in somebody’s passionate belief in human life. It had its roots in wanting to be successful in pop music in the 1970s.” Then again, that might be selling the band a little bit short.
No, they didn’t have the same songs that dealt with the human condition or anything like that, but their musicianship was able to tell great stories every single time they played. ‘Lucky Man’ isn’t exactly the best case of them making the most insightful lyrics of all time, but when looking through a brilliant piece like Tarkus, they were clearly trying to make a record that made people think for a little longer, even if the band themselves disagreed on if the concept even worked by the end of recording.
And it’s not like everyone needed to be held to that same standard, either. Sometimes music doesn’t need to have a message to be enjoyable, and since The Beatles spent most of their first few years talking about generic love songs, it’s not like their first songs should be treated with any less respect than what they made when they started working on tracks for Sgt Pepper’s and Abbey Road.
Any band was allowed to switch things up every now and again on their records, and even if Waters wanted something deeper, that didn’t mean everyone suddenly needed to follow him. Most people didn’t want to be lectured at when they were listening to records, and even if Waters was willing to cross that line, you can’t blame everyone else for wanting to make something a bit more laid-back.
