The rock band Roger Waters thought had nothing to say: “[It] seemed to me like empty posturing”
The whole point behind rock and roll was to make something bigger than yourself. Sure, it started as just mindless party music, but once acts The Beatles started opening our eyes to the possibilities of the studio, artists like Roger Waters were convinced that they could make music that could speak to people on a much more visceral level. Waters certainly reached that kind of brilliance during Pink Floyd’s prime, but he thought the oncoming punk regime made a mockery of rock and roll once John Lydon started speaking.
Then again, are we sure that Waters didn’t have a bruised ego when he saw the biggest names in punk rock slag off his band? There was nothing inherently wrong with what Waters was saying, but some of those punk bands weren’t that far off the mark when they talked about them being a little too bloated for what they were doing.
After all, rock and roll was about being in a sweaty club and making the kind of music that brings people together, so how was an arena-rock-sized band going to compete with that? Waters didn’t get into that business by choice, though, and once he had that audience in front of him, he made sure to make every second count.
Since there was more real estate to work with onstage, Waters made some of the most lavish stage designs imaginable for Pink Floyd shows, including the infamous pig from Animals flying across the arena and turning the entire story of The Wall into a public spectacle whenever he played the album in full.
Each of those projects also carried a lot of weight behind them as well. When you listen to Animals, you’re hearing Waters rally against the corrupt side of big business, and out of all the great rock operas of the world, The Wall might do its job most effectively by showing the darker sides of what life as a rock star is like.
For Waters, that kind of sweeping statement was something that Lydon could never have hoped to accomplish with Sex Pistols, saying, “I had no feelings about [punk]. It passed me by. I’ve never listened to a lot of music because I’m too busy making my own. Malcolm McLaren and the Sex Pistols, on the other hand, seemed to me like just so much empty posturing, the worst aspects of the ‘look at me’ syndrome.”
It’s not like Waters was far off the mark in some respects. Lydon was known for generating as much controversy as he could as soon as he had a microphone in his face, but that kind of controversial behaviour is what helped kick down the door for people who felt like they needed more than hearing Waters groan on about how miserable he is making millions of dollars and playing to thousands of people every night.
Sex Pistols may have had a lot of hype surrounding them, but considering all the great punk bands that they spawned in their wake, it does seem like a fair trade. They were far from the greatest musicians in the world, but would we really want to live in a world where we had nothing to sift through except The Final Cut and the pompous side of rock and roll in the late 1970s?
