{"id":582248,"date":"2026-05-13T19:23:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T19:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/582248\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T19:23:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T19:23:12","slug":"the-1987-album-that-sidetracked-roger-waters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/582248\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1987 album that “sidetracked” Roger Waters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Roger<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ YouTube Still<\/p>\n

Wed 13 May 2026 14:00, UK <\/p>\n

Whether you like them or not, one thing that will always be true about the music of Pink Floyd<\/a> is that they approached each project with the utmost ambition, and that each of their releases felt as though they\u2019d tried their hardest to be focused on the concept at hand.<\/p>\n

That is, up until The Wall, which was arguably the last Pink Floyd project that didn\u2019t find itself either crumbling under the weight of the members\u2019 ambitions, or suffering due to there being one or more key members missing due to them having walked out on the band. After over a decade together as a band, only losing steam at this point is nothing to be sniffed at, but it sometimes happens to even the best of acts.<\/p>\n

The Final Cut marked what many call the true end of Pink Floyd<\/a>, with Roger Waters leaving the band afterwards, having let his relationship with David Gilmour disintegrate to a point where it was unsalvageable. The album itself wasn\u2019t as coherent in terms of its overarching themes and ideas, and it seemed as though the band felt that they were no longer able to realise anything to their full potential in this incarnation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Waters would, of course, go on to make records on his own while the others continued under the old band name, and while these solo ventures were still quite ambitious, not having the others around him to bounce ideas off meant that he was getting swallowed up by the ideas that he had.<\/p>\n

When asked in a 1992 interview with The Los Angeles Times in advance of the release of Amused to Death what he was aiming to achieve with his latest album, he admitted that sometimes, the temptation to follow certain paths has ended up proving itself to be a distraction, and that approaching things in an uncomfortable way, while providing a challenge, doesn\u2019t always yield the best results.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s different than Radio KAOS,\u201d he said, comparing it to his previous studio album<\/a>, released in 1987. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think it\u2019s different than anything before that. I think on Radio KAOS I got sidetracked slightly by the available technology and the imposed notion that I ought to get a bit more with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, he would then go on to argue that external pressures were also getting in the way of his creative spirit, and that Radio KAOS was ultimately prevented from being as good as it could have been as a result of industry involvement and tampering with Waters\u2019 approaches to the point that they became unrecognisable to him.<\/p>\n

Further reading: From The Vault<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to remember it was right in the middle of all the Pink Floyd litigation and I guess I got a bit insecure about what I was worth and who I was and all that,\u201d he added. \u201cI let them push me down roads that I shouldn\u2019t have gone down really. I was absolutely certain when I started Amused to Death that I would make it in absolutely bone-simple traditional methods with real people playing real instruments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Considered by many to be the best release from Waters after departing from Pink Floyd, Amused to Death did end up taking things back to basics, for want of a better word. Perhaps after almost three decades working on ambitious works and trying to outdo himself, a disappointment like Radio KAOS was exactly what he needed to convince him that doing things the way he knew best would ultimately be the most rewarding thing.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ YouTube Still Wed 13 May 2026 14:00, UK Whether you like them or not,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,15742,34789,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-582248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-pink-floyd","tag-roger-waters","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}