(Credits: Far Out / digboston)
Fri 30 January 2026 17:30, UK
What’s at the core of a band? The guitarist? The singer? The drummer holding it all together? Different people might argue for different roles, but ultimately, it all comes down to the song. Without strong material, nothing else stands. Roger Waters understood that better than most.
He knew that when Pink Floyd began, and he especially knew it when Pink Floyd was collapsing in the late 1960s. At first, the band was completely built around the song as Syd Barrett helmed the project, leading from the front with the songs he was writing.
Barrett had vision. Taking rock and roll and mixing it with psychedelic sounds and folk influences, he had so much vision that it was something new and instant gripping, quickly gathering the band a cultish following as they started performing around London. But then, the very thing that Barrett thought gave him that creative spark also took it away as his drug use and worsening mental health made him less and less and less reliable.
By 1967, the band was at a crisis point so bad that they needed to bring in an extra pair of hands. At first, David Gilmour was brought in to prop Barrett up, but quickly, as the original leader kept getting worse, he and Roger Waters were taking on more responsibility across both guitar playing and songwriting.
That’s a thing few other acts would survive. A changing of songwriters isn’t like changing a player; it’s a complete rearrange as you bring in a whole new creative mind. As evidence by the band’s growing success after they cut Barrett loose, clearly Pink Floyd didn’t just survive but thrived, but Waters knew it was a huge risk.
He also remained certain that if anything was going to bring him down, it would be making the mistake of attempting to emulate Barrett. He knew he never would, knew he’d never live up to that vision, so he simply didn’t try.
“Replacing Syd as leader of the Pink Floyd was OK. But Syd, as a writer, was a one-off. I could never aspire to his crazed insights and perceptions,” Waters said as it was clear to everyone that the old leader was a singular talent as he added of his old collaborator’s mind, “In fact, for a long time I wouldn’t have dreamt of claiming any insights whatsoever.“
That was what made the decision to fire the old leader so tough on them all. They knew in that moment that the band would never be the same again as Waters continued, “I’d always credit Syd with the connection he made to his personal unconscious and to the collective, group conscious. It’s taken me 15 years to get anywhere near there. But what enabled Syd to see things in the way he did? It’s like, ‘Why is an artist an artist?’”
To him, Barrett was a natural, whereas he had to strive to get anywhere near the levels he hit with ease. It was a gift and a curse in Waters’ eyes as he mused, “Artists simply do feel and see things in a different way to other people. In a way, it’s a blessing, but it can also be a terrible curse. There’s a great deal of satisfaction to be earned from it, but often it’s also a terrible burden.”
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