The genre Roger Waters wanted nothing to do with: “You’ll never get me to take this seriously”
Pink Floyd has always been about breaking down boundaries of what typical rock and roll could be. Although Roger Waters may have been the leader of the group throughout their time together in the 1970s and into the 1980s, each iteration of the band has held onto the belief that music can help shape the world around them if they have the right idea, whether that’s the political dogma in Animals or the operatic pieces of The Wall. Of all of their strange detours, though, there are certain labels that Waters would easily run away from if he had the chance.
Because during their time together, Pink Floyd’s sound had changed more than a few times. After Syd Barrett left, there was no clear choice on where the band was supposed to be going, but by making tunes like ‘Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun’, Waters could at least point the direction forward into something a bit more ominous.
But this was before Waters saw himself as the grand visionary of the band, and that meant everyone had their own ideas of what their future would sound like. Sometimes it would be grandiose like Atom Heart Mother, revolutionary like Meddle, or borderline unlistenable like Ummagumma, but every single album felt like another step forward towards something different until they finally reached Dark Side of the Moon.
If you were to have said that about the same band that had made The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, though, people’s heads might have exploded. When Barrett was at the helm, the world was still living high of hope and idealism in the Summer of Love, and when the frontman started singing fanciful tales about grand visions that were ripped straight out of a fever dream, many people were inclined to go along with him.
It certainly has its place, but anyone in Pink Floyd was bound to be uncomfortable with returning to that kind of record. Most people can look back and hear the hard work they put into everything, but since the focal point is someone who lost their mind only a few months later, it tends to feel like picking at old wounds when reminiscing on the old times of tracks like ‘See Emily Play’.
And no matter how many people like the idea of Barrett’s Floyd, Waters said that he wanted nothing to do with that kind of legacy, saying, “You’ll never get me to take this stuff seriously. However hard you try, it’s not gonna happen, OK? I refuse to take any of it seriously. We were just young guys getting together, wanting to be rich and get laid.”
That might not be entirely inaccurate, but Waters can only speak to where he is at this point in his career. He had gone through some of the biggest highlights in rock history, so when he made a record as cerebral as Dark Side of the Moon or socially pertinent as Amused to Death, he was never going to go back and try his hand at making the two-minute whimsical pop song again.
But there’s still a lot of charm in The Piper at the Gates of Dawn even if Waters doesn’t see it. That naivety is half the reason why their songs worked half the time, and despite the band going in the opposite direction afterwards, hearing Richard Wright quote ‘See Emily Play’ in the middle of ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ is a good indication that the band at least have that same respect for their original leader.
