The “revolutionary” artist Roger Waters believes changed rock
Rock and roll had already radically changed a few times before Roger Waters started fronting Pink Floyd.
He never wanted to be at the lip of the stage singing his songs when Syd Barrett was at the helm, but with Flower Power beginning to die out and Barrett becoming less and less reliable, someone needed to step up before the entire band started to collapse. And while Waters did eventually take the group in another direction, there were just as many people who were starting to go beyond what the psychedelic movement was all about.
That’s not to say that the Summer of Love wasn’t devoid of any great material. Sgt Pepper’s had already kick-started everything in June of 1967, but when looking at the other names making waves around the same time, it wasn’t hard to see the whole thing evolving. The Doors were showing everyone a darker side of rock and roll, but there was everyone from the Grateful Dead talking about spreading the love and Crosby, Stills, and Nash trying to make everyone see the gravity of the times they were in as well.
That certainly left an impression on Waters, but at that point, he wasn’t only looking to become a storyteller with his music. That was to come later, and when looking at the very beginnings of Pink Floyd, it was about creating a musical experience that no one would soon forget with their massive light shows.
Because it’s not like all of them were the greatest musicians in the world when they began. David Gilmour and Richard Wright certainly had impressive chops when Barrett left, but it was better for them to put on a spectacle rather than put up a banner and hope that the fans would enjoy a bunch of guys getting up onstage and jamming for an hour. There had to be something else happening in Waters’s mind, but Cream was the first band who had the chops and the spectacle to them.
The volume was already deafening at every Cream gig, but a few months shy of Jimi Hendrix’s crash landing on the scene, Eric Clapton was already being seen as one of the greatest to ever pick up a guitar. Everyone had been learning their blues licks and trying to emulate their heroes, but what Clapton was doing took the basis of what those old Buddy Guy and BB King records did and brought a lot more fury into the mix.
Everything had started to change, and Waters could feel the entire music world changing before his eyes, saying, “That changed everything. Before Eric, guitar playing in England had been Hank Marvin and the Shadows. Very, very simple. Not much technique. Suddenly, we heard something that was completely different. The record sounded unlike anything that any of us had ever heard before. It was completely revolutionary.”
That’s before even getting into his wilderness period of working with everyone he could think of. The dissolution of Cream was bound to be heartbreaking for everyone involved, but given how many great riffs he played with the power trio, the fact that he continued to get better all the way up to his work with Derek and the Dominos was proof that he was working on a different wavelength than any other rock guitarist.
While it may have been strange to see Clapton eventually get that sound up to break out his Stratocaster and play as clean as possible, it wasn’t like he was ever trying to negate what he did in his prime. He knew that he had seen the heights of being one of the greatest guitarists of all time, and when someone has taken the instrument that far, what’s the point in trying to recapture that same feeling again? After all, he was a journeyman, and that always meant moving on to the next thing.
