Roger Waters is the co-founder of the progressive rock band, Pink Floyd – hands down one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful groups in music history. He was their lyricist, co-lead vocalist and conceptual leader of the band.
Over the many decades that his career has spanned, Roger Waters has used his voice for more than singing songs. He has used it to speak truth to power. Never shy to address the elephant in the room, Roger Waters has unabashedly used the pedestal that his musical pedigree has provided him to make us all stop and think for a minute – and perhaps even care.
Most recently he turned down Facebook’s huge financial offer to use his song “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2” for an Instagram ad – calling them “an insidious movement trying to take over everything.”
The takeout from this is that music has the potential to heal, and then also the power to effect change. And that when that music articulates a truth, it captures a cultural zeitgeist and preserves a moment in time. And the best music like that – the kind that Roger Waters makes – then becomes timeless. And it makes perfect sense that big companies want to commercialise the soundtrack to revolution by buying the rights to lyrics like “We don’t need no education.” And it’s honourable that Roger Waters preserves his musical integrity by not ‘selling out’ – preferring instead to shine the spotlight on the more important social issue at stake.
He’s done it for Palestine too. As an impressionable teenager he visited the Middle East, and then again in 2006, in the twilight of his career, he visited Gaza. A few years later he supported the Gaza Freedom March and has campaigned ever since for the removal of the West Bank barrier – drawing global attention to the plight of the Palestinian people when he could simply be resting on his laurels, playing his electric bass guitar in the basement of his mansion.
Roger Waters lost his father during World War 2 in the Battle of Anzio in Italy when he was just 5 months old. His father was a conscientious objector during the war, and drove an ambulance around when the Germans were bombing London during the Blitz. For most of his performing career Roger would allocate free seats and sections of the stands at his concerts for army veterans.
His first wife was his childhood sweetheart who died of cancer in 2001. His band also involved a fair amount of heartbreak, with a much-publicised breakup in the mid 80s over irreconcilable creative differences with his band member David Gilmour.
Roger Waters wasn’t actually the first lead singer of Pink Floyd – that was Syd Barrett who left the band after indulging in too many psychedelic drugs over a prolonged period of time, resulting in a mental breakdown. The 26-minute song “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” is a nine-part composition tribute to his friend after his untimely death.
Young musicians in Gaza and indeed the world can look to Roger Waters as living inspiration of what it means to love your craft, achieve fame and fortune and handle that along with the loss of loved ones and all that a long, hard life will throw at you. You don’t have to love his music, or even listen to it. You don’t even have to agree with his political views.
If you’ve never heard of Roger Waters or Pink Floyd, do yourself a favour. Consider these lyrics to the song ‘I wish you were here’. Recorded at Abbey Road Studios, it was also written with Syd Barrett in mind. It could be about the Battle of Anzio in 1944 or life in Gaza right now. It is testimony to the power of music to transport us away from our daily battles to a world where anything is possible.
So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from hell?
Blue skies from pain?
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
Did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
Did you exchange
A walk-on part in the war
For a leading role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here
We’re just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl
Year after year
Running over the same old ground
What have we found?
The same old fears
Wish you were here
If these lyrics strike a chord, and you know how to play a chord, then believe that love will always triumph over fear. And that making your own music can be your own personal soundtrack to a life less ordinary. One filled with the guarantees of today’s hard work and the promise of tomorrow.
