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Roger Waters, co-founder and principal songwriter
of the archetypal progressive rock band Pink Floyd,
will perform "The Dark Side Of The Moon"
in its entirety during his highly-anticipated upcoming
North American Tour.
Set One will be a comprehensive overview of Waters'
music including early Pink Floyd material; classic
compositions from the masterpiece "The Wall";
beloved pieces from "Animals," "Wish
You Were Here," and "The Final Cut";
and songs from Waters' solo tour de force: "Amused
To Death."
Set Two will consist of Roger Waters and full band
performing "The Dark Side Of The Moon,"
one of the defining works of rock music history, from
start-to-finish.
Roger Waters was a primary creative force in Pink
Floyd from 1965 to 1983. He first met Syd Barrett,
who would become the band's lead singer and guitarist,
during his school days when both attended a Saturday
art class. He moved to London to study architecture
at Regent Street Polytechnic and there formed a band
with drummer Nick Mason and keyboardist Rick Wright;
he played bass and sang. Barrett joined them, forming
Pink Floyd. Though Barrett was the band's main songwriter
at first, Waters wrote or co-wrote three songs on
the first LP, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (August
1967), including the sole composition "Take Up
Thy Stethoscope and Walk." By the time of the
group's second album, A Saucerful of Secrets (June
1968), Barrett had been replaced by David Gilmour
and Waters had begun to take a more prominent role,
contributing three songs and one co-composition to
the LP. He also wrote or co-wrote all but one of the
tunes for the band's soundtrack to the film More (July
1969), while his first solo work came on Ummagumma
(November 1969), a two-LP set that consisted of one
disc of live recordings and a second disc on which
each bandmember contributed his own tracks. As of
Atom Heart Mother (October 1970), Pink Floyd began
to work up its material as a group, though Waters
still contributed the sole composition "If."
Working with Ron Geesin, he wrote the soundtrack for
The Body (December 1970), his first work outside Pink
Floyd. The band's next album, Meddle (November 1971),
was entirely group written. But Waters wrote or co-wrote
eight of the ten selections on Obscured by Clouds
(June 1972), Pink Floyd's soundtrack for the film
The Valley.
Pink Floyd's recordings were moderately successful
through 1972. But The Dark Side of the Moon (March
1973), for which Waters wrote all the lyrics and some
of the music, was a commercial breakthrough that became
one of the most successful albums in rock history.
(He was the sole author of the album's Top Ten hit,
"Money.") He took an increasingly dominant
role in the writing of subsequent Pink Floyd albums,
writing all the lyrics and collaborating on the music
for Wish You Were Here (September 1975), writing most
of Animals (February 1977) and The Wall (November
1979), and writing all of The Final Cut (March 1983).
All were million sellers, with The Wall in particular
rivaling the sales of The Dark Side of the Moon. (Waters
was the sole author of "Another Brick in the
Wall, Pt. 2," a gold, number one single drawn
from The Wall.)
Following the release of The Final Cut, Pink Floyd
broke up and its members launched solo careers. Waters
re-emerged with The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking (April
1984), which went gold. He followed with Radio K.A.O.S.
(June 1987) and went on tour to promote the release.
Meanwhile, David Gilmour's solo album About Face (February
1984) was also a gold seller, but he was discouraged
by that showing and recruited Mason and Wright to
re-form Pink Floyd. Waters sued, seeking an injunction
to prevent the trio from touring as Pink Floyd without
him, but he lost the case, and the Gilmour-led Pink
Floyd went on to tour and recorded successfully without
him.
Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Waters organized
an all-star performance of The Wall in Berlin on July
21, 1990. It was filmed and recorded, resulting in
the album The Wall: Live in Berlin (September 1990).
He released a third solo album, Amused to Death (September
1992), but did not tour, though he made an appearance
at a benefit concert in 1993. He spent much of the
1990s working on an opera, Ça Ira, set during
the French Revolution. But in July and August 1999,
he mounted his first U.S. tour in 12 years. It was
so successful that he returned for a second leg in
June and July 2000, and the concerts served as the
basis for the two-CD set In the Flesh Live. Waters
was not heard from for several years after that, although
a collection of singles and album tracks, Flickering
Flame: The Solo Years, Vol. 1, appeared internationally
(but not in the U.S.) in May 2002. In July 2005, Waters
reunited with Gilmour, Mason, and Wright for a one-off
Pink Floyd performance at the Live 8 benefit concert
in London's Hyde Park. Ça Ira finally emerged
on disc in October 2005 and topped the Billboard magazine
classical chart. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
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