Roger Waters names the most influential album in rock and roll: “It changed everything for me”
Not every artist wants to create a catchy song whenever they walk into the studio. There comes a point where you want to test an audience, and acts like Pink Floyd are the prime example of expanding people’s horizons with their music. Although Roger Waters steered the prog legends through their glory years and made songs that opened people’s third eyes, he was trying to capture the experience he had hearing The Band’s Music From Big Pink for the first time.
When listening to both artists back to back, though, you’d be hard-pressed to really find any overlap between The Band and where Floyd was in the late 1960s. Waters was still heavily into space rock at the time, but The Band had just separated themselves from Bob Dylan and were now free to write some of the most rustic rock and roll ever conceived.
If you look at how both of them approached their craft, though, Waters always knew the power behind a great song. As much as they liked to experiment with tapes on tracks like ‘Echoes’, the best moments they’ve ever had came from Waters channelling the same kind of earnest songwriting he heard from The Beatles or from John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band.
And when looking through the tracklist of Music From Big Pink, it sounded like the group took every lesson they could possibly learn from Dylan and then applied it. They were still as tight as ever, but songs like ‘The Weight’ were sharp tales of social commentary that kept fans listening, especially when they came in with the round-robin vocals at the end of each chorus.
Apart from Dylan’s work, though, each of the members could really sing. Dylan was never trying to impress anyone whenever he stepped behind the microphone, but upon hearing Levon Helm or Robbie Robertson take the lead on a song, their Appalachian-style harmonies felt like the purest blend between The Byrds, The Beatles, and The Beach Boys anyone had ever attempted.
While Waters was already carving out his own path by then, he knew there was a change in the air when he finished spinning the record, saying, “That one record changed everything for me. After Sgt Pepper, it’s the most influential record in the history of rock’n’roll. It affected Pink Floyd deeply, deeply, deeply. Sonically, the way the record’s constructed, I think Music From Big Pink is fundamental to everything that happened after it.”
It’s not like Waters is wrong, either. When looking at the rise in singer-songwriters that came afterwards, everyone from Joni Mitchell to Gram Parsons to later James Taylor was listening intently to what The Band were doing, even rubbing off on The Beatles when they were getting back to their roots on songs like ‘Don’t Let Me Down’.
Waters was ready to open minds past conventional thinking on records like Dark Side of the Moon, but if Music From Big Pink hadn’t come along, he might not have had the tools to craft his masterpiece. It’s one thing to have the right idea, but you need to have the blend of melody and heart to get everyone else’s hearts dancing.
