Roger Waters names his “favourite period” of Pink Floyd
The story of Pink Floyd is one of the most complicated in rock history. Starting as pioneers of the psychedelic genre led by frontman Syd Barrett, they slowly moved out of this period and refined their sound. After Barrett left in 1968, the new-look lineup of the band, Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Richard Wright and Nick Mason, started a voyage out of the more explicit sonic area of their early years in a metamorphosis that would see them craft some of the most well-rounded albums of all time.
The new look Pink Floyd moved away from the whimsical psychedelia of their first two albums, 1967’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and 1968’s A Saucerful of Secrets, and into an area that has long been characterised as prog-rock, a hotly contested tag. Yet, how they are described is essentially redundant, as their music is so distinctive and like nothing else.
At their peak, they far eclipsed what anyone else in the prog genre was doing, composing albums that fused incisive takes on life’s inherently twisting nature – not to mention the decline in the mental health of former frontman Barrett – with an undoubted musical genius that pushed rock to its limits.
Of course, the pinnacle of Pink Floyd’s career has to be 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon, perhaps the finest concept album ever created, featuring classics such as ‘Us and Them’, ‘Money’ and ‘Time’. Focusing on the pressure the band faced in their lifestyle as a prominent act, and the mental health problems of Syd Barrett, the record is one of the most affecting sonic palettes in existence. A multi-platinum selling record, it says all about its accomplishment that it is the fourth-best-selling LP in history.
As fans of Pink Floyd will know, despite The Dark Side of the Moon being the album that confirmed their legendary status, it also changed things for the band. It made them global superstars, and, in many ways, the trappings of this hastened the arrival of the schism that would occur around a decade later in the period between 1979’s The Wall and 1983’s The Final Cut. The latter album signalled the end of this iteration of the band.
When speaking to Q Magazine in 1987, the period when his feud with the remaining Pink Floyd members David Gilmour and Nick Mason was at its peak, Roger Waters, the group’s former creative director and bassist, was asked by the publication what was his “favourite period of the Pink Floyd?”. Somewhat unsurprisingly, he named it the pre-Dark Side of the Moon era. He said this was because they were still “a band” in those days and that, at that point, they “all agreed about the same things”.
Waters said: “It’s hard to remember that far back. But I think probably pre-Dark Side Of The Moon. In those days, it was a band. I’m sure that at that point we all agreed about the same things, like, we’ll only play the new material. We won’t play any of the old material anymore. We’ll only do this album and the one before, and that’s it. There was a certain integrity and what was important was the work. And that is still exactly how I feel now, although I do confess I do old tunes onstage now.”
He concluded: “Nevertheless, I feel exactly the same about the work. I just don’t (laughs) have to argue with anyone about it now. I can just get on with it.”
