Why Roger Waters Felt ‘Constrained’ by Pink Floyd
Roger Waters discussed his feelings of being “constrained” while he was a member of Pink Floyd.
He also said he felt “under pressure” to perform some of the band’s classic tracks at his solo shows, although he balanced that against his enjoyment of playing them.
“Audiences are far more attentive to what I have to say now than they were then,” Waters – who split with Floyd in 1985 – told the Globe and Mail in a recent interview. “And, also, I say it more coherently and clearly now than I did then, because now I’m not constrained by the rock group that I was with then. They were always trying to drag me back from my natural instinct, which is to tell the truth.”
Waters is in the midst of his This Is Not a Drill tour and noted he's played "a lot of The Dark Side of the Moon, to some extent against my better judgment. I am under pressure from all of those people to actually deliver some of that to them.”
“I enjoy it," the rocker continued, "because I wrote the songs and I still like them and I stand by what I said in ‘Us and Them’ and ‘Money’ and ‘Eclipse.’ I have no problem performing those songs and ‘Comfortably Numb’ and ‘Wish You Were Here’ with this band.”
When asked about a woman in the audience at one show who’d said she’d hoped for a more “upbeat” experience, Waters responded: “[I]f that lady you mentioned wanted to come to a rock ’n’ roll show and listen to old Pink Floyd songs and be comfortably numb, it shows that she never understood the work I was doing in Pink Floyd back then.”
Waters’ This Is Not a Drill tour continues until Oct. 15.