The 1987 album that sidetracked Roger Waters: “I let them push me”
Whether you like them or not, one thing that will always be true about the music of Pink Floyd is that they approached each project with the utmost ambition, and that each of their releases felt as though they’d tried their hardest to be focused on the concept at hand.
That is, up until The Wall, which was arguably the last Pink Floyd project that didn’t find itself either crumbling under the weight of the members’ ambitions, or suffering due to there being one or more key members missing due to them having walked out on the band. After over a decade together as a band, only losing steam at this point is nothing to be sniffed at, but it sometimes happens to even the best of acts.
The Final Cut marked what many call the true end of Pink Floyd, with Roger Waters leaving the band afterwards, having let his relationship with David Gilmour disintegrate to a point where it was unsalvageable. The album itself wasn’t as coherent in terms of its overarching themes and ideas, and it seemed as though the band felt that they were no longer able to realise anything to their full potential in this incarnation.
Waters would, of course, go on to make records on his own while the others continued under the old band name, and while these solo ventures were still quite ambitious, not having the others around him to bounce ideas off meant that he was getting swallowed up by the ideas that he had.
When asked in a 1992 interview with The Los Angeles Times in advance of the release of Amused to Death what he was aiming to achieve with his latest album, he admitted that sometimes, the temptation to follow certain paths has ended up proving itself to be a distraction, and that approaching things in an uncomfortable way, while providing a challenge, doesn’t always yield the best results.
“It’s different than Radio KAOS,” he said, comparing it to his previous studio album, released in 1987. “But I don’t think it’s different than anything before that. I think on Radio KAOS I got sidetracked slightly by the available technology and the imposed notion that I ought to get a bit more with it.”
However, he would then go on to argue that external pressures were also getting in the way of his creative spirit, and that Radio KAOS was ultimately prevented from being as good as it could have been as a result of industry involvement and tampering with Waters’ approaches to the point that they became unrecognisable to him.
“You have to remember it was right in the middle of all the Pink Floyd litigation and I guess I got a bit insecure about what I was worth and who I was and all that,” he added. “I let them push me down roads that I shouldn’t have gone down really. I was absolutely certain when I started Amused to Death that I would make it in absolutely bone-simple traditional methods with real people playing real instruments.”
Considered by many to be the best release from Waters after departing from Pink Floyd, Amused to Death did end up taking things back to basics, for want of a better word. Perhaps after almost three decades working on ambitious works and trying to outdo himself, a disappointment like Radio KAOS was exactly what he needed to convince him that doing things the way he knew best would ultimately be the most rewarding thing.
