The two albums that transformed Roger Waters’ understanding of music
There’s inspiration, and then there’s something bigger. The something bigger is a complete rearrangement. It’s a revelation that means that nothing is the same again. Anything that came before is viewed through different eyes, and anything after will forever be compared. In the world of music, these stories linger as defining moments for artists who might be inspired after, but after hearing a certain song or record, gain a whole new sense of perspective. Roger Waters had that exact experience twice.
It’s a beautiful cycle. While Waters himself had this higher-level experience, he’s no doubt also caused it. Countless artists have since credited Pink Floyd for prompting that. Their 1973 concept album, The Dark Side of the Moon, is a big one that pops up again and again when artists talk about albums that changed everything for them. As the band stepped into a more epic and cinematic sound, they seemed to truly widen the scale, daring their peers and also bands that followed to attempt to reach the same wide-screen energy they could.
But that would have never happened if it weren’t for the class that came before them in the 1960s and the way they inspired Waters. Pink Floyd were dubbed prog rock, a genre seen to be moving rock on. But that didn’t come about without rock and roll first, and Waters never denied that.
In fact, he owes it all to that, and to being a younger man living through what many deem to be the most exciting decade in musical history. Waters was right there on the frontlines, a teenager at the perfect time, watching rock and roll evolve into something more countercultural and into something heavier or more experimental. He got to watch world-renowned acts evolve in real time, seeing them progress from album to album and getting to be there, buying the records as it happened.
So while certain albums are told to us as major evolving steps, Waters was hearing it live. Like when The Beatles stepped into a new era, he was there. Or when The Beach Boys levelled up, he was there, amazed.
They were the two that stood out as life changers. “Along with Sgt. Pepper, Pet Sounds completely changed everything about records for me,” Waters once said, crediting these two albums for changing the game.
It makes sense. Not only are the two somewhat concept albums, a craft Pink Floyd would master, but they’re often associated. Both were moments where these two bands pushed themselves way further in terms of production. They’re studio masterpieces where the bands went far beyond any typical rock band set-up to bring in whole worlds of new sounds, styles and instruments.
When we talk about Pink Floyd as an epic act, it’s so obvious how and why these earlier records impacted them. Without the boldness of Pet Sounds or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, would they ever have had the ideas, let alone the dare, to try and tackle something like Dark Side Of The Moon or The Wall? I’d say probably not, or at least not with the same smooth, slick finish that both those 1960s records have, too.
