Roger Waters takes a long time to do an album as his old band, Pink Floyd, used to do. Although they made some very fine music at the time, the wheel of fortune never stops spinning and The Final Cut was their final outing. Roger moved on to a solo career and everything was fine during the days of The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking, apart from Nick Mason complaining about old Floyd material being played by some other musicians, one being Eric Clapton.
Years on, there is another concept album by Roger, Radio K.A.O.S., but there is also an album The Turning Away (pre-release title of A Momentary Lapse of Reason) by old "friends" David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Rick Wright under the Pink Floyd banner. Waters is nonplused by the enterprise and it has become a court case to decide whether the other members have the right to use the name.
In the beginning Waters refused to talk about the other members, but then he opened up. Being a nice person, he is warm and very forthcoming in explaining all the things about his current work.
Radio K.A.O.S. is a fictional work, a current point of departure across the past and future planes. The main character is Billy, a handicapped human, who moves from his native Wales to the US where his Great Uncle lives. Billy uses a cordless telephone, a computer, and a speech synthesizer to get in touch with Jim, a radio DJ at Radio K.A.O.S. They become radio friends.
He drinks beer from a tall glass; the interviewer can't smoke as Roger has given it up and can't stand the awful habit. Let's have a scotch then.
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oger Waters, the master of concept albums, has created another manifesto that lashes out at broadcast commercialism entitled Radio K.A.O.S.
Seated in a hotel room in London's most expensive Mayfair area, Waters talks and talks. Some performers age gracefully, but not him. The lines crowd his face, and despite his youthful looking body, there is an array of gray hairs in his longish do. All his promo-pictures show him wearing sunglasses, but he doesn't wear them during the interview.
So what's it like getting back on the road again?
It's good doing interviews after a lot of years being locked up in the studio. When you face fifteen people, they all tell you different things about the songs, things you didn't even think about. I'm not analytical. My music is very instinctive; it comes from very instinctive roots. I look upon song writing as a very passive activity. All one can do is try not to interfere with the process of feelings which are coming from somewhere.
Where do you do most of your work?
I've got a studio at home, but I don't go daily to it. I don't treat it as a job, I just work from time to time. As far as the writing goes, I work very little, I have to admit. Most of the work is to absorb the information from wherever and whenever it comes in.
Where does your inspiration come from?
When I write a song it is usually out of the blue and has got nothing to do with anything. I usually look at it and think, "What am I going to do with it?" The second song I wrote for this piece [Radio KAOS], "Who Needs Information," being a specific narrative about a miner killing a taxi driver (during the miner strike in the U.K. in 1984), I was puzzled: where it came from, who were the people there, why that scene? Then I make a conscious effort to make sense out of it and allow other songs to develop from those characters.
But you've always carried a cross very painfully.
Yeah, I think so, and we've all got crosses to bear. My biggest one was my father in the war, his death, and having to grow up in a female dominated society and because of that causing my subsequent relationship with women to become very difficult. I lost my father when I was three months old and there was always that hole. Maybe it is easier to accept a loss when you know what you've lost, and in my case it wasn't that. All that provided me with, was a lot of material for The Wall and also The Final Cut, that being the last of my writing about him. That's what made me feel very bad about the Falklands war. I'm not a pacifist, but I feel very bad that innocent people get killed.
OM:
Do any of the contemporary subjects on Radio K.A.O.S. purge you in any way?
Roger:
Not at all. They just let me express the feelings, vent my obsessions. We all have that, in different ways. There are a lot of different concerns on this record, but the main one is the automation of the humans. What I mean, is a soldier who has to press a button and send the bomb flying. It is a thoughtless process and that's what frightens me really. The central idea of this record is posing a question of whether or not it enables individuals to exchange feelings and give them a better chance to remain human.
OM:
Would you consider yourself an optimist or a pessimist?
Roger:
At the moment I'm an optimist although I see so many rotten things in the world. So many paradoxical things are being accepted that it really hurts. But, on the other hand, there are a lot of people who are like a separate entity and I hope that it will spread. I believe that we are due for another two steps forward and then one backwards. I'm really enjoying life now. It has a lot to do with a number of things. I've got a family with two kids which makes me very happy, but that's private and I'm not going to talk about it. What also makes me happy is that I'm not part of a group anymore. That's a weight off my shoulders. I like the people I'm working with and what I'm doing.
OM:
A weight off one's shoulders is a cross discarded.
Roger:
I'm not sure that I want to go into all of these. When you work with people for many years, there comes a time when it's no longer productive.
OM:
Like a marriage break-up, but less painful, if at all.
Roger:
Exactly like a marriage, but for the difference from that sort of liaison where you might keep on going on, for the sake of children, you don't do it in a group. Apart from maybe doing it because of a name, it is comfortable and easy due to the past success. You are protected. Eventually it has to finish and you should leave, whatever the aggravation; it is great to be finished. I've been through a divorce, without children, but it is as aggravating.
OM:
The other members of Pink Floyd have done an album, The Turning Away, with a lot of songs about you, such as "Sorrow," "A New Machine," the title track "The Turning Away," "Peace With You," "Learning to Fly," and "Yet Another Movie III." How do you feel about it?
Roger:
I can't believe it. I can't feel good about them as long as I don't know who wrote the songs. I'm very surprised.
OM:
The cover is very similar to Dark Side of the Moon as is the music.
Roger:
Everything is so hush-hush about it and the most awkward thing is that the album is scheduled for release in America on the opening date of my tour. So the media is going to be on the case.
OM:
Did you suspect that Pink Floyd would ever end on a sour note?
Roger:
Oh, yeah. People never knew what we really looked like, not talking about what was really happening within the band. This story has been going for a year or two and there will be a day when I won't worry about it. I wish I could say I didn't care about it, but I did and there is no point in turning my anger inwards.
OM:
You've always sounded angry on your records.
Roger:
I wasn't angry with them then. We had some good times together and enjoyed it. There is something about the boys in the bands - they are so mately - but it ends, like most of the things in life.
The Bleeding hearts is the name of his touring band and it includes Andy Fairweather-Low on guitar and Paul Carrack (formerly of Squeeze) on keyboards and vocals. No sign of Clapton on this tour however. The show is going to be a traveling radio show and during the concert there are going to be phone-ins.
OM:
Don't you find yourself in competition with yourself in trying to repeat the success of Dark Side of the Moon (which is still on the charts after 14 years)?
Roger:
I can't say, truly. Maybe subconsciously, but it happened with The Wall as well. It happened twice in my career, two enormously successful albums. Three times, it would be too much to ask. I wish this record to be extremely successful and it would make a lot of difference to be doing a tour of Europe. If the record isn't a success, I can't tour; nobody would come to see me play live.
OM:
The record should be successful because there are few effects. It is based on more solid songs, as opposed to the technological gimmickry, for the sake of it, in the past.
Roger:
Thank you, I haven't realized that.