Hello? Is there Anybody In There?

Roger Waters Goes Off The Deep End

Crazy
Over the rainbow, I am crazy
Bars in the window
There must have been a door there in the wall
When I came in
Crazy, over the rainbow, he is crazy¹

The first album I ever bought with my own money was Pink Floyd’s The Wall. I remember the first time I heard, “Another Brick in the Wall” on the radio in my dad’s rusted out Volkswagen bug; the pulsing bass, the monotonous verses leading into that power chord just before “HEY! TEACH-AHR, LEAVE THOSE KIDS ALONE!” and David Gilmour’s scale back down to the monotonous droning of the chorus. Magic. I had to get the album.

We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teacher, leave them kids alone

Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone
All in all, it's just another brick in the wall
All in all, you're just another brick in the wall²

My parents wouldn’t allow it. Not only did they have a better sense what the whole thing was about (which was way beyond my 7 year old mind) but it was a DOUBLE album, meaning it cost more (“Money, so they say, is the root of all evil today”³). So I saved and used my birthday money to buy it. First needle drop I heard that slow cackle of the turntable and then that grand opening to the song “In the Flesh,” (“So you, think you, might want to go to the show? To feel the warm thrill of confusion that ‘space cadet’ glow”⁴—Yes, yes I did). After having it for a week and playing through it a few times (some songs I clearly liked better than others), I inadvertently scratched the first record across Side A of the first album; “The Happiest Days of our Lives” would skip straight through to “Mother.”

Mother, do you think they’ll drop the bomb.

Mother, do you think they’ll like this song?⁵

The main point of that story is that I have been a Pink Floyd fan since the very first day I discovered music. There’s an attachment that anyone has to their first. They open your mind to the possibilities of what music can do. Over the course of the next decade I would love all different types of music, but would always come back to Dark Side of the Moon or Wish You Were Here. There’s a reason they are one of the best selling bands of all time.

In 1985, Pink Floyd broke up. Always a dysfunctional group, guitarist David Gilmour depicted singer/bass player Roger Waters as a bitter megalomaniac, dictating to everyone else only that they play the songs he writes. The irony of the whole thing is that “The Wall” is about a singer of a rock band who increasingly gets more alienated, isolated, angry, and detatched and irrevocably blows up and goes off the deep end in an authoritarian, fascist fit of rage. Essentially Gilmour was saying that Roger Waters WAS the character from The Wall.

Don't be surprised when a crack in the ice
Appears under your feet.
You slip out of your depth and out of your mind
With your fear flowing out behind you
As you claw the thin ice.⁶

The divorce would last years.⁷ Pink Floyd would reunite without Waters for subsequent albums and Waters would tour with his own stuff and earlier work, mostly from “The Wall.” Since then, the only time they appeared together again was at the Live 8 Concerts following the death of founding member, Syd Barrett.⁸ During one of his more recent tours about five years ago, I went and saw Roger Waters perform. As far as a show, it was one of the most impressive I’ve witnessed, overwhelming the senses. He got far more political than I cared for, but the music, stage show and a fully engaged crowd made for an excellent and entertaining performance.

Nowadays though, Roger Waters is not in the news for his music. He’s in the news for his political positions.

• Waters has been exceptionally critical of Israel, and a huge supporter of the “Boycott, Divest, Sanction” movement against it. He has consistently sided with Palestinians, including when they physically resort to violence.

• He has been a puppet for Russian propaganda and talking points, particularly in opposing Ukraine. He has repeatedly stated Ukraine is at fault in the war and that the west (especially the United States) only want to perpetuate the war for nefarious and financial reasons. He sees the US as the biggest impediment to a peace deal on Ukraine and sides with Russia unequivocally.

• He considers Joe Biden a War Criminal.

• He believes Taiwan is a part of China and that China can do with it as it chooses. He has routinely turned a blind eye to human rights abuses by Chinese.

• He has repeated many anti-Semitic tropes and themes.

• He’s smeared the “White Helmets” in the Syrian Civil War; these are volunteer rescue workers who have saved over 100k people. He called them “jihadists.”

• He believes COVID shutdowns were meant to be an assertive action of control over the populace altogether, taking away their freedoms intentionally for no reason.

And if the cloud bursts thunder in your ear
You shout and no one seems to hear
And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon⁹

This is really fascist stuff (and I rarely use that term; dropping hyperbole too often mitgates it’s impact, but here it seems to be warranted). He tries to present it as defending of particular groups of people, but he turns a blind eye to the malfeasance and violence these regimes cause and then disparages the victims when they defend themselves. It’s so out of sorts with the socialist, progressive, uber-liberal ideals he claims to uphold that you can only look at it and shake your head trying to reconcile the two. In most of these cases, he sides with the authoritarians. In the one that he doesn’t (Israeli-Palestinian conflict), he condones many of the actions against Israel and dabbles in Anti-Zionist, Anti-Semite propaganda instead. It’s duplicitous and offensive. He seems unable to recognize right from wrong these days.

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from hell?
Blue skies from pain?
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

Did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
Did you exchange
A walk-on part in the war
For a leading role in a cage?¹⁰

Now, when it comes to art and artists, I have always found it easy to separate the two. I can appreciate R.Kelly singing “I Believe I Can Fly” and also think R.Kelly is a mysoginist pig who is rightfully locked up in jail. I can look at a Picasso without considering who he was as a person. I can like Matt Damon in Rounders and The Martian without images of that Cryptocurrency commercial. I can usually listen to a song or watch a movie and still leave the singer’s/actor’s politics out of it. It’s easy for me to suspend disbelief in that regard and just appreciate the art on it’s own terms.

You better make your face up in
Your favorite disguise
With your button down lips and your
Roller blind eyes
With your empty smile
And your hungry heart
Feel the bile rising from your guilty past
With your nerves in tatters
When the conch shell shatters
And the hammers batter
Down your door¹¹

However, I find it much more difficult separating the two when it comes to Roger Waters. The character he plays when singing “The Wall” is a disillusioned, vile character. He has serious flaws and goes astray in a major way. When you listen to it, you’re listening to it from a more objective position, observing how this human utterly collapses. The “enjoyment” of the story (if you can call it that) is felt more cathartically; you see the downward spiral and the consequences based on how far down he goes and you appreciate him getting his comeuppance at the end and ultimately redemption at the realization where he went wrong.¹²

Take off this uniform and leave the show
And I'm waiting in this cell because I have to know
Have I been guilty all this time?¹³

But here? David Gilmour seems increasingly correct—Roger Waters IS the character in Pink Floyd The Wall. And in that, I find nothing redeemable about it. It’s one thing to play a chracter, another thing entirely to BE that character, particularly when that character is as unlikeable and mentally unstable as the one from the Wall.

Since, my friend, you have revealed your
Deepest fear
I sentence you to be exposed before
Your peers
Tear down the wall¹⁴

As a result, I just can’t appreciate The Wall in the same way as I used to. It remains an amazing piece of musical art that transcends the genre, but I just continue to see more and more baggage with it. Maybe once Roger Waters moves on, I can get back to appreciating it again, but until then, I’m going to listen to Gilmour’s solo work.

When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown
The dream is gone
I have become comfortably numb¹⁵

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PurpleAmerica’s Recommended Stories

Here is CNN’s Michael Smerconish’s interview with Roger Waters. It’s pretty enlightening and gets at many of the problems I’ve been talking about above.

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PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day

Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” has been on the album charts longer than any other recording, and will pass 1000 weeks in total later this year. That amounts to almost 20 full years on the record charts

Number 2 on the list is Bob Marley, Legend at 775 weeks.

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PurpleAmerica Cultural Criticism Corner

Pink Floyd – The Wall (the Movie) is a 1982 film directed by Alan Parker, based on Pink Floyd's 1979 album The Wall. The screenplay was written by Pink Floyd vocalist and bassist Roger Waters. The Boomtown Rats vocalist Bob Geldof¹⁶ plays rock star Pink, who, driven to insanity by the pressures of stardom and traumatic events in his life, constructs a physical and emotional wall to protect himself. However, this coping mechanism eventually backfires, and Pink demands to be set free.

I have seen this film more times than I can count.

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Outstanding Tweet

What prompted me to write this piece was a tweet thread I saw. It really is eye opening how far Waters has gone down the rabbit hole. I encourage all of you to check out the thread.

https://twitter.com/P_Kallioniemi/status/1663254936593760281?s=20

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Footnotes and Parting Thoughts

Let me know what you think of the page. Please share and comment!

1. “The Trial,” Pink Floyd, The Wall.

2. “Another Brick in the Wall,” Pink Floyd, The Wall.

3. “Money,“ Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon.

4. “In the Flesh,” Pink Floyd, The Wall.

5. “Mother,” Pink Floyd, The Wall.

6. “The Thin Ice,” Pink Floyd, The Wall.

7. To my shock, Gilmour stated how much he hated The Wall. He depicted it as a “singular vision” and aside from the two or three songs Waters “allowed” him to contribute the album is not on par with more of their earlier works. Over time, and becoming more familiar with their catalog, I still think The Wall is my favorite but I have to concede his point. Musically, Wish You Were Here was a better album and Dark Side is easier to listen through.

8. Barrett had a breakdown just as Pink Floyd was starting to make it big. Many of the songs from their subsequent albums are inspired by Barrett, and the “Wish You Were Here” album was entirely about their relationship with the troubled musician.

9. “Brain Damage,” Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon.

10. “Wish You Were Here,” Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here.

11. “Run Like Hell,” Pink Floyd, The Wall.

12. One of the more interesting things about the album is that it starts with the line “We came in” and ends with “This is where…” demonstrating a cyclical nature to it all. So aesthetically speaking, you can say he realizes his error just as he is about to go through the whole thing again.

13. “Stop,” Pink Floyd, The Wall.

14. “The Trial,” Pink Floyd, The Wall.

15. “Comfortably Numb,” Pink Floyd, The Wall. This has always been my favorite song. Unlike most songs on the Wall, it was written primarily by David Gilmour, and has an airy quality to it compared to the rest of the album. It also contains two of the greatest guitar solos ever.

16. Geldof would go onto later fame as the founder of “Band Aid” who put together “Do They Know it’s Christmas” for Ethiopian famine relief, and as the organizer of the Live Aid concerts.