The 1980s stage show Roger Waters called too dark for the fans: “That was too tough”
‘A notable failure’ is a phrase that usually follows devastation, but in the case of Pink Floyd, it foreshadowed greatness.
This is how Roger Waters described the band’s song ‘Point Me At The Sky’, which was one of the first tracks he put together as the chief writer for the band. Before that, it was Syd Barrett who was in charge of a lot more of the band’s tracks, and so when he decided to call it quits, it left the rest of Pink Floyd in a strange place when they tried to work out how to move forward.
The first song that they put out was ‘Point Me At The Sky’, which they clearly tried to inject with the experimental style of Barrett, but it was ultimately forced. As such, the song just sounded off-kilter and weird, rather than exciting and cutting-edge. “[That was] one notable failure when Syd left the band,” said Waters.
Other bands may have crumbled at that point. They could have gone, ‘well, we can’t do anything without a good head songwriter’, and given it up, but that’s not what Pink Floyd did. Instead, they decided to change tactics a little and begin putting together songs that were based on drawn-out concepts as opposed to just being experimental. The result was some of the albums that we have come to know and love as some of the greatest that Pink Floyd (or any rock band, for that matter) have made.
We’re talking about the exciting concept albums that intertwine a story into the record’s narrative, such as The Dark Side of the Moon or The Wall. Roger Waters became so obsessed with this new writing style that he looks back at some of Pink Floyd’s earlier, experimental offerings and cringes at them.
“I don’t want to go back to those times at all,” he said when talking about Piper at the Gates of Dawn, “There wasn’t anything ‘grand’ about it’. We were laughable. We were useless. We couldn’t play at all, so we had to do something stupid and ‘experimental’.”
Of course, while these new conceptual approaches to music were pretty exciting, they also posed another issue for the band, which was figuring out how to take the stage with them. Usually, it’s easy for bands to play around with different setlists, moving songs in and out of position depending on how an audience reacts, but that’s tricky to do with a concept album. When you have a piece of music which has a clear narrative running through the whole thing, it’s difficult working out exactly how you should be running through those songs live.
Instead, Waters and co decided to make their gigs into incredibly exciting and well-thought-out pieces of what was essentially performance art. They did this with lights, effects and props, truly bringing their records to life. One of their most notable tours was that of The Wall, which is recognised as one of their best live sets to date.
However, it was hard for Waters to think of a way to end it. This was a fairly dark album, and so in turn, crowds who came to watch were equally exposed to something dark. How do you achieve that without pushing the boat out too far? It’s a question Waters wrestled with a great deal, but he eventually worked something out.
He said, “I mean originally, in the very, very first version of it, the plan was just to build the wall and leave it. But that was too tough, really, too kind of alienating, and didn’t feel right at the time. We didn’t not do that because of the worry about how people would respond. We didn’t do that because it was too tough, it was too ‘Fuck you’, which wasn’t the intention at all.”
