mirror-textfiles.com/music/PINKFLOYD/watrno92.txt

Date: Thu, 19 Nov 92 02:03:24 CST
From: root@darkside.osrhe.uoknor.edu
To: echoes@tcsi.tcs.com
Subject: Rog's interview in Musician 11/92 [LONG]


Here's the interview from MUSICIAN 12/92 with Roger Waters.  I was going to
throw in the article on Jeff Beck in relation with ATD, but my fingers are
dead.

The *WORD* are just any way of trying to do italics on a terminal.  That's
how they were in the article.

On the front cover, there's Waters looking dead on at you and it looks
like they're shining a light from below (for a Darth Vader sort of look).
The cover says:
			Pink Floyd
			   Wars

		R O G E R  W A T E R S

			Strikes Back

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Roger and Me - The Other Side of the Pink Floyd Story"
By Matt Resnicoff

	"Roger gave you an interview?"  There was a slight lilt of surprise in
Dave Gilmour's customarily baronial tone.  "Well, yeah," I said, "he has a
wonderful new album about media desensitization and the self-destruction of
the human race."  "Had he seen the article you did about me?"  "He had.  He
was a bit miffed by some of the things you said, in fact."  "If someone said
such things about *me*," Dave laughed, "I'd sue them."  Such things would have
burned Roger's ears off even if he'd never seen them.  Of course, he had.  I'd
faxed him some pre-publication excerpts as an invitation to rebut the tales of
Roger's egomania, dissentiousness and delusions Dave told in a recent
*Musician* cover story.  Dave bore all the scars of a real survivor, and his
characterizations of Waters were enough to invite pity for his ex-bandmates.
Dave calls on unrelated business, or just to say hell; Roger dispatches
several go-betweens to say "No comment."
	But I'm not about to buy any one man's opinion of any other -- even if
the man on the line is the closest associate Roger Waters had for the twenty
years leading up to his attempted destruction of the name "Pink Floyd" upon
leaving it behind in 1986.  For the moment we get suckered by what public
figures want us to think, we have the makings of the crippled world order
outlined in *Amused to Death*, which is the most evolved work any member, or
ex-member, of Pink Floyd has ever done.  And Roger Waters wants to talk about
that.
	On the expressway out to his impressive summer rental in the Hamptons,
a 500-pound wheel flew off a truck from the oncoming lane and destroyed the
front end of the car I was riding in.  An officer assessing the wreckage
pointed out that had the car been travelling one or two miles per hour faster,
all passengers would unquestionably have been mutilated.  Waters, who would
moments later deny his reputation as a sociological obstacle course, simply
couldn't help himself:
	"So -- You'd rather *die* than face me."

	At the heart of *Amused To Death* are the same concerns that have
plagued this man since he assumed lyrical control of Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd:
the pointless extermination of values, the lumps taken by innocent bystanders
amid heartless political actions, dogs and war.  Centering on a monkey
transfixed by television, the album takes Waters' ongoing preoccupation with
nature subsumed by "civilized thinking" and sets it against his regard for the
malleable, sheeplike masses.  His monkey is a picture of unimprinted
innocence; he is also a caricature of blind imitation.  Students of Floyd will
recognize the elements, but while recasting his concepts, Roger has made more
subtle use of musical detail; the gentle cadences that signalled final peace
in *The Wall* and *Animals* create a false sense of security in *Amused To
Death*.
	To appreciate *Death* is to be implicitly displeased; Roger has turned
to issues of more sobering impact than the ennui he reacted to in 1973's
enormously popular *Dark Side of the Moon*, which just shows how far we've
come in the 20 years since that record.  The horrors he depicts are stark and
lacerating - even coming from someone who from up close looks like a dyspeptic
David Brenner.  He and his music are eerie.  Somehow, even if you don't want
to believe him, you find yourself thinking he's right.  *Amused to Death*
isn't just a Waters masterpiece, it's *another* Waters masterpiece.
	And because God plays into it as more than just a motif, as the
all-defining single "What God Wants" makes clear, I've gone in assuming that
Waters has finally come to terms with the fact that for all the moralizing any
songwriter can do, he knows you can't fight city hall.  Though God serves as a
motivation or excuse for greed in certain parts of the album, Waters laments
religion as determinism.
	"Well, everything is relative," he said very quietly, walking past a
couch covered with pillows bearing slogans like "Where there's a will, there's
a relative."  "The solar system has a relationship to the rest of the
universe, and the earth is in the solar system and we're on it, so if you care
to follow it through, we all relate to everything.  However, my attitude is
not fatalistic.  I believe that to at least some extent, man's destiny lies in
his own hands.  And man is generic term, because a lot of individuals don't
have much say.  You do, I do, but a lot don't.
	"The work is my response to the world outside me.  Unlike *The Wall*,
for instance, the narrative is external rather than internal.  What *makes*
the work is the internal response to the external narrative. 'What God Wants'
derives at least in part from George Bush's statements during what came to be
known as Desert Storm - all that crap about God being on the side of the
American people, which is always crass, but within the context of what was
going on there, a 'holy war,' is ludicrous and obscene.  The idea of whose
side God is on is 600 years old - can we please move on from the fucking
*Crusades*?  It's good smokescreen material for the powers that be, but it
doesn't help us ordinary people one little bit.  It's no help to anybody,
except him, of course."
	Waters counts himself among the ordinary; the car outside the mansion
is a bare-bones little rented grey number.  In his art, though, he's never met
the plight of the ordinary halfway.  But unlike, say, "Pigs," or virtually
anything from mid-period Floyd, he's siphoned off some of the venom, and in
several pieces on *Amused to Death*, uses descriptive suggestions and real
scenes along with metaphor as tools to create the images.  The softly
sarcastic "It's a Miracle" was the last song written for the record.  "We
based it on the rhythm from the middle of 'Late Home Tonight,'" he remembered,
"where there's Graham Broad playing lots and lots of drums with me shouting in
the background, pretending to be a mad Arab leader.  We did a very uptempo
version, and Flea played a great bassline, but it wasn't right.  Then Pat
Leonard started playing it on piano in half-time, and I started singing it in
the tempo it now exists in.  I put the cassette in the car and got that
*buzz*; I was blown away.  I played it six times on the way back to the house
and then sat outside and played it three times more just because I adored it.
And two days later I got Jeff Porcaro in, and he played those drums, which
were amazing.  And that was that."
	"I went to Porcaro's funeral," I told Roger.  "They buried him with his
sticks, put them right inside the casket."
	"Very Hollywood," he replied.
	"You'd used him before.... was he on *The Pros and Cons of
Hitchhiking*?"
	"No."
	"Wait, he was on *Momentary Lapse* - oh, and *The Wall*!"
	Roger clicked his tongue and put his finger on his nose.  "There you
go.  He played 'Mother.'  There was a keyboardist and Lee Ritenour and Jeff.
His father Joe played the military snare in 'Bring the Boys Back Home.'"
	"Now, why credit everyone on your solo albums but put such scant
information on the Pink Floyd records?"
	"I don't know.  I can't answer that.  There was a whole big thing
about credits on *The Wall*, and I think we were fighting such serious
internal battles that we didn't have time for anybody else's feelings, you
know?  Andy Fairweather-Low was out to dinner the other day; I gave him the
first of the CDs and he said, 'I think finally we've got the credits right.'"
	"Is James Johnson actually Jimmy Johnson, the great five-string
bassist?"
	"Yeah.  He likes to be called James.  I call him Steve.  He's a very
gentle man, and on 'What God Wants' I was going, 'This has got to have more
aggression.  What you're doing is too "Jimmy"; I want this to be more
"Steve."'  He's a great player.  But the part I wanted more 'Steve,' somebody
else played it.  It's interesting, because it's the same bassline as 'Another
Brick'; listen to it."
	"In the video you're playing bass."
	"Well, it's a pretend, but those videos always are, eh?  I'd always
thought it would be nice just to have cameras running the whole time we were
recording, so that it was real.  That would be the most watchable.  But these
things get made largely for MTV, and I'm not sure that they'd be interested in
that sort of thing.  They're much more interested in style and tennis shoes
and baseball hats than music.
	"I was never a bass player.  I've never played anything.  I play guitar
a bit on the records and would play bass, because I sometimes want to hear the
*sound* I make when I hit a string on a bass with a pick or my finger; it
makes a different sound than anybody else makes, to me.  But I've never been
interested in playing the bass.  I'm not interested in playing instruments and
I never have been."
	"As a concept man, I'd think it might have riled you that at least
in the earlier years, Floyd was considered more of a jazz-rock experimental
band."
	"No," Roger said, "I was quite happy standing there thundering about,
playing whatever I could - that's *fun*.  And I see young bands occasionally
now doing the same thing.  I think it's called *thrash* now.  It's the same
thing:  It's just kids who can't play, pissing about.  It's terrific.  That's
all we were doing.  I mean, Dave could play a little bit, but none of the rest
of us could.  And we all developed slight individual things.  But I wasn't
thinking like that.  I didn't start conceptualizing and writing until
post-Syd, and after that it became - well, maybe not...I was going to say it
became controlled very quickly.  I mean, it's only like five years between Syd
leaving and *Dark Side of the Moon*, and I suppose there's a little bit of
that on *Dark Side of the Moon*, but very little.  What's the track called
with the AMS Synthier?"
	"'On the Run.'"
	"Yeah, that.  Well, that was just a Synthier, and then you turned it
up and it went from going ch-ch ts-ts deh ts-ts to dudududedele-deh.  'Hey!
That sounds good - record it!"  It's a bit like these young groups now, who I
have *no* interest in at all, the ones that get a Roland 808 [drum machine] out
of the box, plug it in and it goes bum-petek, bum-bum petek, and say, 'Oh,
*wow*! We're a band!'  And then they talk over it and it's called music.  I
don't get that at *all*.  In a way, that stuff on *Dark Side of the Moon* was
that.  Except it kind of express something to do with that theme of chasing
your tail.  What was important about that record is what it was *about*, in my
view.  The recording was very ordinary, really.
	"You hit puberty," he continued, "decide you want to be a rock star -
in my case probably because my father was dead, to be simplistic about it -
and you feel you need all that applause and money to validate your life.  And
although we hadn't achieved much success before *Dark Side of the Moon*,
nevertheless we'd had our fair share.  But we had traveled an enormous amount,
and we saw a lot more of how other people lived than you do if you leave
school, go to college and get a job in town.  And I suppose I was starting to
ask some of the larger questions of, 'Well, hang on a minute.  What's the
*point* of all of it?'  That's what *Dark Side of the Moon* is about, and
maybe that's why it survived.  That last thing I wrote on *Dark Side of the
Moon* was 'Eclipse' - 'all that you touch and all that you see, all that you
taste, all you feel' - so I was getting kind of Buddhist about it.  so what
caused it?  I suppose all the un-Buddhist *stuff* of living in a van, seeing
what the world was like, and being faced with one's ambitions and what they
actually *were*."
	As the band matured, so did those aspirations, though the basis of
Waters' song-writing had crystallized.  "Yeah," he said, "I didn't like old
men dying in doorways.  I still don't.  My political persuasions, although
they've changed in the last 20 years, are still that I think  we need to be
kinder to each other.  At the moment the profit-motivated free market implies,
'We can really see about this trickle-down theory.'  *I* know it doesn't
fucking work, and so does everybody else, but there's a pretense that a
*global* free-market economy is good for everybody.  It's good for businesses
in rich countries selling shit to poor countries.  But it's not good for
people born into disadvantaged situations.  And it *isn't* true that as long
as you're given enough freedom you will achieve your potential and lead a
fulfilled life.  No, you won't - if you're in Somalia you'll die before you're
a year old.  And if you're born in south central L.A. you'll probably end up
like one of the 22 people killed last weekend.  It's a question of whether
human beings are interested in orgranizing their society in a way that really
does give people a chance - not just in terms of what they do with their
lives, but whether they're allowed to understand what their situation *is*, in
a way that doesn't necessarily involve wearing a baseball hat from back to
front and air-pump Nikes and shooting people.  Because that's the message
we're giving: 'This is the way to live.  And it's cool: Put on a pair of these
basketball boots and blow people away and you'll be okay.'"
	If Waters openly concedes a lack of faith in the average person's
ability to make upright choices when they're shot full of media, how can he
possibly be anti-censorship?  How could he oppose moral control for people
without the benefit of good parenting, education or sense?
	"Well, I'm *not* anti-censorship," he said.  "I'm anti-censorship if
it affects me and my point of view.  You know, I'm on dangerous ground here
... it  might be that if I lived in Idaho I would feel compelled to put on a
helmet and break the printing presses of the neo-Nazis hunkered down there
spreading their shit over *my* land.  Which is a form of censorship.  In 1934
the communists fought running battles with the blackshirts in the east end of
London - I'd have been in with breaking heads, and if I could destroy their
right to free speech I would have.  There comes a time when you have to stand
your ground and say, 'What that guy's printing is wrong.'  You can't climb
onto cattle trucks shouting 'Everybody's entitled to their opinion.'  No
fuckin'way - they're *not* entitled to that opinion.  However, I'm very
anti-*People Who Try And Stop Us Saying 'Fuck' On The Radio*, because that is
smokescreening.
	"I was in L.A. for the riots.  I didn't watch TV much, but I watched
occasionally to see people having dialogues in the streets.  I found it
*fantastic*."
	"I thought the dialogues were disheartening," I said.  "In front of
the smashed stores, people blithely looting and smiling."
	"That didn't worry me.  What was interesting was that they would take
*anything* - it didn't matter what - and then come out and wave at the cameras
on the way to the car.  I thought that was actually rather *heartening*."
	"Jeez..."
	"Because it showed you they weren't ashamed; it was like the were
*shopping*, they just weren't spending any money.  It made you realize their
lives were such that they didn't feel any guilt, at the time.  Apparently a
lot of them did later on: 'Hang on, maybe that was stealing.'  Maybe I'm
talking out of my ass, but I get a sense that in tough downtrodden communities
like south central L.A., a large part of the population have adopted some
Christian ethic, and are very moral, proper American people who probably hang
onto church and what that means in far more Christian ways than George Bush
does.  George Bush says, 'Jesus *wants* us to go murder people in Iraq.  I
happen to know that.  We can go do whatever we like, secure in the knowledge
that Jesus is on our side.'  What a load of crap.  A lot of those people are
going, 'I don't think Jesus wants us to rob.  Jesus wants us to help people,'
all that passive stuff.  So I had a lot of respect for the people stealing
stuff and waving at the cameras.
	"What happened with Rodney King was just a bunch of bullies beating
somebody up.  It was pure, simple *West Side Story*.  It had nothing to do
with the *law*.  L.A. is an unbelievably racist town, and it's exacerbated by
the influx of a recently arrived, economically strong Asian community.  I had
people not too far from the making of this record complaining about all the
Japanese in their kid's schoool.  Whose land is this?  Is it any more yours
than it was the Indians'?  And why is it any more yours than the Japanese's,
just because you're of European descent?  You're all Americans.  There's a
weird thing developing about the Japanese just because they're good at making
cars.  Well, wake up!  You taught them!  You went in there after World War II
and said, 'Guys, this how you do it.'  You destroyed their ancient culture, if
you like.  All right, they were a warlike people; they were expansionist -
it's *inevitable*.  That's what happens when you get a powerful and
intelligent people who live on a tiny island.  They learned how to do it, and
they're doing it within the law.  So just swallow it!"
	"Well," I said, swallowing, "forgive me, but the same argument can be
used to justify the recent actions of Gilmour, Mason and Wright."
	"How?"
	"You taught them, you introduced the industry, they're expanding
within the law.'  Look at Pink Floyd as an industry, an institution; it
continues, takes its lumps, absorbs your disdain.  That you see it as a fraud
parallels American prejudice against a cheap Japanese product.  Slicker
version, cheaper price."
	"I don't ... for you to work for a magazine called *Musician* and
attempt to make that connection shows how desperate you are to get me to talk
about Pink Floyd.  I can't make a connection between what I do...writing songs
and recording them, making films, putting on rock'n' roll shows, whatever it
is I might want to do - I started writing poems and a bit of prose as well - I
think that's intrinsically different than making automobiles.  I don't see
Dylan Thomas and Henry Ford as being in the same business.  One tries to
explain our condition, and by virtue of explaining it to himself, explains it
to the rest of us, and the other is making motorcars, which explain nothing."

	What need has Roger Waters for subjection to such "journalism"?  Like
Benny, a put upon character from his second solo record *Radio K.A.O.S.*, he's
been treated somewhat unjustly; Benny throws a rock in protest and goes to
prison, while his crippled brother, who can receive radio waves
telepathically, prevails and changes the world.  In this futuristic sketch,
the innate desire to communicate is rewarded, if not with approval, then with
peace.  Waters' most optimistic, stylized statement was rewarded with the
distinction of being the least memorable thing he's ever done.
	"You're absolutely right," he said.  "I allowed myself to get pushed
down roads that were uncomfortable for me.  I should never have made that
record, Matt.  I love some of the songs-'Home' is one of the best things I've
ever written.  'The Powers that Be' is great.  And it comes out icky-prissy,
because it's sequenced.  I remember the producer saying one day, 'Oh no- that
sounds old-fashioned,' and alarm bells went off in my head.
	"After my experiences with *Pros and Cons* and *K.A.O.S.* - I would
play in Cincinnati to 2,000 people in a 10,000-seat hall while my colleagues
were playing in a football stadium down the road to 80,000 people, and it was
a bit galling.  But what I cling to from that *K.A.O.S.* tour is kind of like
Henry V-'The Fewer guys in the battle, the greater the share of glory.'  I
like the fact that of those 2,000 people in the hall-and there were *loads* of
them all over the middle west - it was kind of a little exclusive club.
Because the people who came were fans.  There was a strong feeling of
connection I got."
	Roger's colleagues Dave Gilmour, Nick Mason and Rick Wright - in that
order - continued as Pink Floyd after Waters declared the group creatively
bankrupt in 1986 and began full-time work on his first solo album *The Pros
and Cons of Hitchhiking*.  The album's story came to Roger in the same writing
spurt as *The Wall* seven years earlier, and though it was the *less*
autobiographical, was rejected by the group.
	The biggest creative conflict Waters experienced during Pink Floyd's
latter years was over two versions of *The Wall*'s "Comfortably Numb," one
recorded by Dave to replace the initial, "sloppier" backing arrangement
against which the orchestral parts were recorded.  "None of us went," Waters
says.  "They were done in New York by [Bob] Ezrin and Michael Kamen.  And when
they brought it back, I thought the chart was great; Dave thought it was
sloppy.  So when Ezrin and I went off to do vocal parts, Dave spent a week
rerecording the track.  I remember it came over on the 24-track tape and Ezrin
and I were both really expecting it to be great, hoping he'd improved it, and
we put it on and looked at each other and ... -" Roger mimes a yawn.  "Because
it was just awful - it was stilted and *stiff*, and it lost all the passion
and life the original had.  And that became a *real* fight.  It's most
interesting that Ezrin completely agreed with me.  But Dave obviously felt
very, very strongly about it, and we ended up using the intro from the old
one, the first few bars from the new one.  That's all we could do without
somebody 'winning' and somebody 'losing.'  And of course, who *lost*, if you
like, was the band, because it was clear at that point that we didn't feel the
same way about music."
	"At some point along the way," I asked, "did you feel they, or
Gilmour, lost the requisite sense of Pink Floyd drama?  There obviously *was*
a time when the music was fully realized and intriguing.  Or was it, as he
explained to me, that you finally just didn't want to write with him?"
	Roger paused.  "Dave and I never wrote together.  I don't ever
remember writing with Dave.  Sometimes he'd bring in a chord sequence and I'd
the make a song out of it.  Or he'd bring a guitar riff in and I'd make a song
out of it, like 'Wish You Were Here.' I love that riff, it's fantastic.  But
we never wrote together, ever.  Never.  And Dave was never interested in
drama, ever.  In my experience.  He never showed any interest at all, *ever*,
in drama.  Of any kind.  Certainly not."
	"I posed to Dave, 'Perhaps Roger didn't think the band should continue
after his departure because he thought it wouldn't do justice to
"Gilmour/Waters," not just because it wouldn't do justice to "Waters."'  His
response was that he didn't think you wanted to work with him."
	"Look, I read that piece that you did with him in your magazine,
and....what do you want me to do, shoot him in the other foot?"
	"No, my interest is in exploring misconceptions of how the band made
its music; if *that* wasn't beloved, the interaction between its creators
wouldn't make much difference to anyone."
	"All right," Roger said sharply.
	"I think I took a pretty nonpartisan stance.  In fact, when I
apologized to you about all the brouhaha at the premiere of *Amused To Death*,
you said, 'No problem - everybody's got to make a living.' I thought, 'Gee, is
that venom for me or Dave?'"
	"That was directed at you.  Why is that venomous?  I mean, you only do
that article...you want to sell copies of the magazine.  If I sit here and
give you the same kind of interview that Dave gave you, it's...I'd rather not
talk about it.  I take your point about students of the music being interested
in where it came from.  In order to answer those questions, it brings up all
the other questions, and I'd rather not talk about it.  I *am* interested in
drama, I like my new record, I hope to go on tour with it.  People can listen
to *Momentary Lapse of reason* and to what I do, and to the old stuff, and if
there are questions, well, just listen and make your own mind up about what
it's all about.  And that history will never be written because I'm not going
to waste my life writing it.  It gets written by *other* people, none of which
I authorized, and most of which, I have to say, is a load of shit.  I don't
accept the view painted of me in any of it, but I understand why it's painted.
I feel okay about myself and my work.  I know what I did and didn't do.  I
made my position very clear in 1987 about how I felt about the use of the
name, and my position hasn't changed.  But the name is owned by other people
and that's all there is to it.  There's nothing I can do about it.  So I'd
rather *not* do anything about it, you know?  There are certain fights
worthwhile to fight whether you can win them or not, and this isn't one of
them.  God forbid that we should all be put through *two* of those
interviews!"
	"But I don't want to get off Pink Floyd yet because there's so much..."
	"I don't mind talking about Pink Floyd at all," Roger said.  "For
instance, I don't mind answering your 'Comfortably Numb' question.  But I'm
not interested in a debate with Dave Gilmour.  I'm not interested in a private
debate, I'm not interested in a public debate.  If you are representing
people who read your magazine who are interested in the work I did when I was
in that band, well then, I'm happy to talk to you about that, because I have a
connection with them:  They're interested because they like my work, and I'm
interested in talking through you to them.  What I don't want to get into is,
'Dave said this' or 'Dave said that.'  I don't want to butt heads with
anybody."

	Dave said just yesterday that among Roger's allegations against
Gilmour's "fake" Floyd is that there was a lunch over which a record man
chided Gilmour about his music "not sounding Floyd enough" to be released under
the group's name.  After self-consciously repairing the tracks, the story
goes, Floyd released *A Momentary Lapse of Reason*.
	"Did Roger tell you about that?  Absolute fantasy," Dave said drily.
"They got the date correct, October of 1986.  October '86 is when I was doing
the very first demos, and Bob Ezrin and I were still at the stage where we
hadn't even made decisions about doing a group album or a solo album - we were
at the beginning of *thinking* about doing a *record*.  Nothing could have
been projected from hearing the stuff.  So the date itself disproves him right
there.  The guy said he was going to see Roger that afternoon; we said, 'Give
him our best.'"  Those present at the lunch, however, corroborate Waters'
claims.
	Gilmour's Floyd prevailed at the box office, but the band simply can't
escape Waters - they still perform under a giant pig, Dave still sings about
dogs and war.  Five years later, neither Dave nor Roger wants to surrender the
legacy, though Waters was appeased eventually with a hefty buyout, and a
heftier confidence he brings to his solo work.  Both have me convinced that
they work because they love to work, and their work has convinced me that
either can do quite well without the other.  All of *that* convinces me that
egos, not a want of inspiration, are what destroyed their partnership.
	"Your voice has many timbres," I told Roger that afternoon, "though
I'm surprised that *Amused* has a collection of guest vocalists.  Did you feel
Dave was the best conduit for your lyrics, or was that transference just a
necessary evil of playing in a band with another talented musician?"
	"No, there's nothing evil about it.  When we were both in Pink Floyd,
we were both vocalists:  I sang some songs and he sang some songs."
	"As in'Dogs,' there was a nice counterpoint between your characters
that..."
	"Well, yeah, was there? Yeah, good.  I mean, great.  One thing about
*being* in a group is that you have different elements and you give different
things to it, and if two of you can sing, great.  *Rick* used to sing too, you
know.  He used to sing harmonies, but rarely sang any lead on his own.  So the
three of us sang.  That's what being in a group's about:  You do all what you
can for the greater good.  That's the buzz, as anybody who's ever been in a
group will tell you.  Of *course* he had to sing my stuff, because he doesn't
write....but that's okay.  It's all right for somebody to write and several
people to sing."
	"When Rick was expelled in 1979," I said, " the band dynamic changed; a
rock quartet losing its keyboardist leaves a very crucial element of its sound
to an outsider, like a session player.  That alone is a real indication that
you were effectively disbanding the group even then."
	There was a very, very long pause.
	"I think you could say that 'Wish You Were Here' was written,
partially specifically about Syd, but largely about my sense of the absence of
one from another, and from the band.  So as far as I'm concerned, *Wish You
Were Here* was the last Pink Floyd album.  *The Wall* was my record and so was
*The Final Cut*, and who played or didn't play on it - though I don't want to
belittle Dave's contributions to *The Wall*.  He played some great stuff, and
wrote a couple of great guitar riffs as well: 'Run Like Hell,' the intro to
'Young Lust.'  But by and large, those records were nothing to do with anybody
but me.  And certainly Ezrin's contribution to *The Wall* was far greater than
anybody in the band.  He and I made the record together.  And he was a great
help.  You know, Rick had drifted out of range by that point.
	"In 'Wish You Were Here,' we *weren't* there.  All of us at different
points had left, and I think in a way that's why it's a good record, because
it honestly expresses that.  The reason *The Wall* is a good record is because
it's an honest autobiographical piece of writing of mine.  And the machinery
in place that enabled me to make that record was good.  But it was only
machinery by then;  There was no question of there being a *group* anywhere.
And the same with *The Final Cut*.  And with the next one.  And clearly, the
problem with the *next* one is that it's a lot easier to replace a keyboard
player than a writer.  And if you don't write, it's very hard to produce art.
You can do it, but's *really* hard - you have to get *other* people to write
it for you.  And then it becomes really, really difficult.  I *suspect*.
That's not something I've had to do, because I write.  That's the only way I
can answer this specific question about Rick.  You know, Rick had left *long*
before the summer of '79 - *long*, long before.  He was *gone*.  We split up
years before.  And it wasn't the unilateral and heinous, wicked thing that
gets described in the *unofficial* histories."
	"Do you take solace in the fact that a band shaped by your writing
could continue so successfully as an institution?"
	"What's all this about an institution wanting to continue?  How does
the institution suddenly develop a personality and an ego?  Do institutions
make decisions about what they want to do?  Institutions are controlled by
individuals.  It's not an institution.  Pink Floyd has no feelings - it's two
words.  I mean, it only exists as a label to describe something.  I would
prefer that it was used to describe what happened between 1965 and 1977, but
that's not the case.  It is being used to describe other things.  Well, so be
it.  I made an attempt to stop that happening.  I thought it was wrong that
label be used to describe something other than what I felt was the real deal,
which was a group that Dave Gilmour and Nick Mason and Rick Wright and myself
and Syd Barrett, in one form or another, were all part of over a period of
20-odd years.  That's all.  The institution hasn't decided anything.  Various
other *institutions* have."

	Roger took a break, returned to the den and asked to run the recorder.
"You can draw a line between what I'm interested in and what I'm not
interested in," he said. "On one side you can name Dylan and Lennon, who
observe the world and have *feelings*, and write songs directly from those
feelings.  On the vapid side you have pop groups who need material and write
songs to fill the hole, rather than getting somebody else.  But the might just
as well get somebody else, because it's a manufacturing process.  It's not
poetry, because it doesn't spring from heart or guts or wherever John
Lennon's or Dylan's songs came from.  And in my view - I seem to always wind
up attacking poor Phil Collins," he laughs, "but it's only because he's so
visible - he's symptomatic of an awful lot of if.  He might well disagree and
so might his fans, but the *feeling* I get is that he's pretending to be a
songwriter or a rock'n'roller.  It's an act.  That's why it's unsatisfying.
And those videos underscore that feeling.  If you cared about what you were
doing, you would *not be able* to do that silly walk, one behind the other,
because you would find it impossible to ridicule your work in that way.
'Mister Picasso, we think it would sell this work if you hung by your heels
from a crane and held it upside-down with your trousers down.'  Pablo's not
gonna do that because he's serious about what he does.  Just a passing tought.
That's taken over an awful lot of the business. You could say, 'Well, why
shouldn't it?'  Absolutely *no* reason, so long as it doesn't take over and
*squeeze* out the Lennons and Dylans because they're too good for it.  They
*won't* take their trousers down and do silly walks on the beach."
	When Roger sings "God wants Semtex," it sounds like "God wants
subtext," which could just as well be the pivot for his concept, and the last
five years of his career.  "'Semtex' is, in England, almost in common usage
like 'Hoover,'" he said. "It's the most popular plastic explosive.  Semtex was
used to blow down Pam Am 103, and set against the other
lyrics,'sedition,''sex' and 'freedom,' it's shcoking.  But with all due
respect to the people who lost relatives on the flight, what's really shocking
is that the guys who put the Semtex on the plane were also doing *what God
wanted*.  They were fighting for freedom and for God in the same way as the
American pilots who incinerated those people fleeing on the road to Basra.  I
can't turn my camera, or my brush, away from those ironies.  They become the
stuff of news stories, we assimilate them and we become inured to the horror.
Of course, the women and children on Pan Am 103, and all the soldiers and
their families on the road to Basra - maybe 2000 families - are completely
fucked, for the rest of their lives.  And who gains?  What's the point?  It
confuses me."
	"Is it less cathartic to write about subjest that present themselves
so clearly, that can't really be transmuted by your art?"
	"I don't know.  I like working.  Not all the *time*- I like fishing as
well, and all kinds of other things.  But I enjoy the process.  As I said,
I've been writing some poetry and prose, and what a surpise *that* is:  You
write, you read it, you say, 'This is all right, I think.  I don't know; maybe
it's not.'  I always question stuff I do.  There's a moment after making a
demo of a song and sticking it on in the car when I really get off on it, but
it doesn't last very long.  And then when it's in a finished record and you
listen to it once or twice, it's there, but again, it doesn't last.  I think
it is in the nature of all people who do these things - in the Lennon, the
Dylan, the Pete Townshend manner, that come from the heart - that the
gratification doesn't stay with you and you feel compelled to go start the
process all over again.  I think that is the burden all artists carry
around."


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Huy Nguyen                        | "It's not nearly enough to survive,
wee@darkside.uoknor.edu           |  But to live." - M.M.
-
DISCLAIMER:  My views are my own and have nothing to do with who I work for.
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