“Burnt out since 1979”: The bandmate Roger Waters said couldn’t write anymore
Roger Waters never wanted to forget the importance of writing music.
He knew that being able to come up with that next great lyric is like riding a bike, and he needed to keep exercising that muscle if he was going to have any shot of becoming one of the greatest songwriters in the world. But whereas he was the creative force behind the conceptual pieces of Pink Floyd, he knew that there was some dead weight in the band that he needed to cut himself from if he wanted to make the best tunes that he could.
At the same time, it’s not like Waters always had the best judgment when it comes to his own songs. His idea of remaking The Dark Side of the Moon is still one of the most misguided choices that he ever made, and even on some of his true solo works, he could put his hand up and admit when he was wrong when making a record like Radio Kaos. But the sense of compromise that he had to accept for the rest of the band had become far too great for him to handle after a while.
The Final Cut had already sounded like the band was exhausted, so Waters figured that he needed to cut himself loose where he could. The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking was already an idea that he had in his back pocket for a while when thinking about the next phase of his career, and while the crowds didn’t turn up as much when he went out on his own, he would have much rather have kept expressing himself than watch David Gilmour make a mockery of what his band used to be.
A Momentary Lapse of Reason was nothing but garbage as far as Waters was concerned, and he had more than a problem with them performing a lot of the songs that he wrote with them every single time they got onstage. But even after being kicked out of the band during The Wall recording sessions, Waters seemed to have a lot more disdain for what Richard Wright was doing behind the scenes.
Wright had been the one colouring the sound every single time that they played, but Waters felt that the pianist couldn’t write to save his ass, saying, “Rick has been burnt out since 1979, when Gilmour, [Bob] Ezrin and myself unanimously decided to fire him. Ezrin was the person to first call Rick during Rick’s odd little vacation that fall to Greece, just as The Wall was being completed. He wasn’t performing in any way for us; he certainly wasn’t doing the job he was paid to do. On The Wall…Rick didn’t play many keyboards.”
If we’re talking about serving the song, though, Waters didn’t ever seem to grasp what Wright was capable of as a musician. The entire point of his inclusion in the band was about adding different textures to their sound, and while he may not have been the one crafting all of the band’s lyrics or coming up with some outlandish ideas, it’s not like he couldn’t find ways to add his signature touch in other ways.
The entire reason why Wish You Were Here works is because of his chords guiding the track along, and even when he was welcomed back into the band on The Division Bell, his vocals on ‘Wearing the Inside Out’ were some of the best on the album. And given that Waters had worked with people like Jeff Beck to get the best out of his own songs, it’s hard to believe that he didn’t understand what a bandmate could do to add texture to his music.
Wright may not have been the right person for the job on absolutely everything that Floyd ever did, but when you look at the fact that Waters constructed many of his solo tunes, you can definitely feel something missing without Wright’s voice and keyboard sounds. He didn’t need to get along with him all the time, but despite everyone working on the remake of The Dark Side of the Moon did what they were told, the lack of Wright is the reason why any remake of the album will always have a slightly faded rainbow.
