The singer Roger Waters said was too good for words: “I don’t have the prose to describe it”
In the world of rock and roll rivalries, there’s everyone else, and then there’s Roger Waters and his vitriol towards Pink Floyd.
Talk all you want about how much some bands hate each other, but I’m pretty sure that not even Garfield loved lasagna as much as Waters hated David Gilmour and co. by the end of his time with the band. But while he could be absolutely cutthroat when talking about the legacy that his band stomped on, he did have a few warm feelings about the bands they could all agree upon back in the day.
Because even if the band went in wildly different directions over the years, you could still sense the genuine love they had playing together at Live 8. That might have all come from the years of goodwill they had built up in the pre-Dark Side of the Moon world, but Waters felt that he could at least find some common ground when they were listening to bands like The Beatles for the first time when they were kids.
And while Waters tended to focus on the singer-songwriters a lot more often, like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, he did have a soft spot for getting the right singer. He didn’t exactly have the most sturdy set of pipes out of everyone in the band, but he had no problem whenever someone like Billie Holiday came over the speakers whenever the band were shuffling through their favourite music.
Holiday was a much different kind of singer than traditional rock and roll, but what got Waters was the passion behind her voice. ‘Strange Fruit’ was already one of the finest protest songs that had ever been made, but even if you knew nothing of the context of the tune or the history that Holiday had, the reason why it worked so well is that you could feel your heart ache whenever you heard her voice.
It was a thing of beauty, and for someone who is never usually short on words, Waters felt that nothing could do justice to a voice like that, saying, “Billie Holiday is a sort of tragic figure. The vulnerability of this woman is so moving. I don’t have the prose to even begin to describe it. When you listen to [‘God Bless The Child’] it just tears your heart out.” But who’s to say that Floyd couldn’t make music of that calibre every now and again?
Gilmour was no Billie Holiday by any stretch of the imagination, but when listening to how all of the voices blend on a song like ‘Us and Them’, those kinds of musical climaxes were clearly within their power. If they needed to really draw on personal experiences as Holiday did, it was always going to come back to them honouring their friend when they began work on Wish You Were Here.
Syd Barrett was already a tragic figure before the band even broke up, but ‘Shine on You Crazy Diamond’ is one of the biggest emotional wrecking balls that Waters has ever been involved with. Holiday’s influence isn’t exactly easy to spot amid the synth pads and guitar solos, but during the vocal breaks, you can hear them putting a little bit of gospel flair into the whole thing, as if Gilmour is trying his best to get the slightest bit of R&B into his voice when talking about Barrett’s downfall.
‘Echoes’ is often cited by Waters as the moment where he felt that he could empathise in song, but Holiday really is ground zero for what that kind of feeling is supposed to be like. No one on this Earth could ever claim to live the same kind of life as she did in her prime, but when she’s talking about her struggles and her determination to carry on, you can tell exactly what she’s talking about.
