(Credits: Far Out / digboston)
Fri 13 March 2026 14:00, UK
Roger Waters has never been known as the most diplomatic artist that has ever lived whenever you get a microphone in his face.
I mean, who are we kidding here? This is the same guy who spat at one of his fans when he felt that they were getting too close to the stage and would routinely tell people wanting to hear ‘Money’ to piss off whenever they came to a Pink Floyd show. Naturally, he had a little bit of an aversion to the more nonsensical aspects of rock and roll, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t lean into that style every now and again when making some of his masterpieces.
After all, what is The Wall if not a beautiful condemnation of stadium rock? It’s still one of the most entertaining shows that anyone has ever put on, but the core part of the story is about how Waters wanted to vent a lot of his frustrations about being so far removed from the audience whenever he was performing. That probably explained why he had to revamp his entire setup when performing solo, but even when he was filling venues everywhere, it’s not like he was comfortable leading thousands of people in a singalong.
All of his musical statements needed to mean something, and if you look at the heroes that he followed in, a lot of them felt the same way. The likes of Led Zeppelin had helped bring out the harder side of rock and roll, but given Waters’s disdain for heavy metal and especially people like Ozzy Osbourne, it’s not like he was going to write any of the traditional sex, drugs and rock and roll songs that would make Spinal Tap proud.
He had grown up in a different world, and while Syd Barrett helped steer the Floyd ship at the very beginning, Waters was also looking at what was coming out of the singer-songwriter scene at the time. Floyd’s music was a lot more cerebral than what most of the James Taylors of the world had to say, but when you look at Waters’s lyrics, they do apply to the same thing. Both genres are about looking at the humanity behind people, and that was what he got out of people like Neil Young.
And aside from the main singer-songwriters of the world, Waters felt that there was no other genre that really needed the time of day as far as he was concerned, saying, “I’m not very up on rock history. I’m not interested in most popular music. There are certain people that I am big fans of, the singer-songwriters. People like Dylan and Neil Young. It’s that end of the spectrum that I’m more interested in. I’m not so much interested in loud rock and roll, which some people are and they love it, but I’m not particularly interested.”
Then again, even in mocking the genre on The Wall, Waters still delivered some of the greatest songs that the stadium rock world had ever seen. His music may have been more at home on songs like ‘Mother’, but even when making fun of the entire practice on tracks like ‘In the Flesh’, he was still making the kind of grand statement that anyone else would have killed to have written.
But Young and Dylan do have their fair share of fans for a good reason. Their music was for people that were listening more to the stories that were put into every one of their songs, and there’s a good chance that Waters could get more of a thrill out of hearing Dylan go on one of his episodic musical journeys than worrying about what the next U2 album was going to sound like or what glorious riff Angus Young has come up with.
Both of them are worthy art forms in their own right, but Waters seems content to leave the more rambunctious side of rock and roll where it is. The genre had its day in the sun, being one of the most energetic genres of music in the world, but Floyd didn’t exist to give everyone songs to pump their fists in the air to. It was about making an epiphany go off in the audience’s heads as they tuned into every show.
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