The one singer Roger Waters said wanted to steal from him: “I want that”
Most up-and-coming bands could certainly learn a thing or two by studying what Roger Waters did with Pink Floyd.
Not everything that they played was all that complicated, but when looking at everything from their live show to the records they made, Waters wanted to push things forward for rock and roll whenever he could. He felt that the genre could be a lot more like high art compared to whatever else was on the charts, and it wasn’t like the rest of the rock world wasn’t taking notice, either.
But on the surface, Pink Floyd looked like the average psychedelic rock and roll band when they first formed with Syd Barrett. Barrett was a legitimate genius who had some wild ideas for what rock and roll could do, but when he fell victim to his own mind halfway through recording their second album, Waters’ choice to steer them forward meant carrying on the legacy that Barrett had begun on The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.
All of their songs were meant to mean more than a typical love song, and when they first reached ‘Echoes’, Waters knew that he had a format that could work for him. And while the rest of Floyd’s discography with him focused on getting every drop of human expression out of every instrument, Waters felt that it was essential for him to keep outdoing himself whenever it came to the live show.
Most other artists would have happily played the tunes as they were and made the best of every show they could, but more seats demanded more stagecraft, and The Wall was one of the most daunting tasks anyone had to face. Not only were they worrying about getting everything right on the money when they started playing, but having to worry about getting the sound out from behind the wall in the second half of the show, as well as David Gilmour standing atop the wall, was going to be impossible for anyone to grasp at the time.
When they managed to pull it off, though, Waters remembered Mick Jagger paying close attention, saying, “I remember Jagger coming to the Nassau Coliseum gigs in late 1979 and seeing The Wall. He came backstage, trying to find out how he could get that. ‘I want that.’ Somebody pointed to [illustrator] Gerald Scarfe, who was sitting on the sofa chatting with Nick Mason. And Jagger didn’t see. He thought it was Nick. So he went up to Nick and said, ‘I gather you’ve done all the visuals and all that.’ And Nick, being Nick, said, ‘Well, yes. I did.’ And Jagger sat and talked to him, wasted half an hour of his life thinking that.”
Though Floyd may have been yanking his chain to a certain extent, it’s not like Jagger didn’t understand what they were going for. The Rolling Stones had spent most of their career playing the same kind of high-energy show that everyone expected from them, so the idea of adding some theatricality into the mix was bound to get Jagger’s attention when they started incorporating massive TV screens into the mix.
But would a massive conceptual show have worked for The Stones? Probably not. The entire appeal of the band was about taking all the essence of rock and roll and channelling it into a few hours’ worth of the best music possible, and while Keith Richards already had second thoughts about the band doing disco back in the day on Some Girls, he probably would have been mortified if he was told about a storyline that they had to follow.
Because as much as Jagger wanted to keep things interesting in the band, no one’s going to a Stones show looking to see something that they hadn’t seen before. They were the kings of rock and roll for a reason, and they would spend the rest of their lives proving to everyone that they could get down as hard as anyone else in their field.
