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6 comments & 0 Trackbacks of "Roger Waters (Pink Floyd)... amazing music + terrible politics?"

Roger has been writing political songs since '85, with The Final Cut. To go to a RW concert hoping that he wouldn't play anything political is like going to a Toby Keith concert and hoping he's not going to play anything country.

Posted by scott2185 25 Sep 2006, 00:54

I just saw the same show at nissan pavillion in Virginia and feel exactly the same. Also when he did When Pigs Fly they had the American flag on both sides of the pigs rear with impeach Bush on the tail. I can only hope that due to the fact that you could barely make out his vocals at this point that that was why I heard people cheering. But then again I guess for some the trip never ends. I recently saw the Blues Travelers and once again the political statements flew. I enjoy music and pay the asking price but if the industry thinks this is their forum for spewing there ignorance they have recieved the last dollar from me. Thanks for letting me vent.

Posted by Jim King 25 Sep 2006, 19:45

Leaving For The Bathroom
(Based on the crappy live version of “Leaving Beirut”)

Cartoon images show a rock star on stage, singing a meandering, plodding new song. Dialogue bubbles show the audience saying: “Oh no. Not this garbage.” “I’m going out for a smoke.” “Yeah, I’m going to the bathroom. Holy crap, look at the line out there!”

When I was 17 and I first heard “The Wall,” I had to go and get
Every Pink Floyd album at the mall
Now on your latest tour, you did “Dark Side of the Moon”
The glory of when you were the tops
And really had your writing chops
But first we had to sit through the new song “Leaving Beirut,”
I’d have to say it was a bigger bomb
Than the one we dropped on Hiroshima
You were an Englishman abroad ignoring all our boos
The horseshit had us running like we smelled the stink of old refuse

It was kind of sad to watch you bomb
I’ve been a fan so very long
I agreed when you sued your former band,
I’ve ignored lip-synching, and opera that was pretty bland
But this song was bad, bad and long
I hope you hear our plea
This crap should never be put on CDs
Oh Roj! Oh Roj!
Your ideology won’t let you see you’re still spitting on some of your fans

Is common sense too much for you?
Not once in your whole song
You dare criticize
The killers that are Hezbollah
Every time a suicide bomb does its job to kill innocents
You think it’s someone else’s fault and logic in your lyrics falls
Al Qaeda, Jihadists, they want to rule us all
They kill artists and poets, young boys and girls,
They killed Todd Beamer
They killed Daniel Pearl
They killed Theo van Gogh
They kill all races, all religions, they kill all
You know it’s the right of the Allied might to keep us safe
From extremists all over the world

Blame America First, you wealthy rock star you,
Your bullshit is still bullshit even when it has a catchy tune
You’ve lost the art of writing with subtle metaphor
Now you are Noam Chomsky, Oliver Stone, and Michael Moore
Back in ’61, an Arab family fed you food
You had to think back that far to remember
Arabs who were nice to you?
As I think back in time, from now until then
When did your talent end?

Posted by Bobby Blume 02 Feb 2007, 23:09

Well. If you think that Dark Side of the Moon or The Wall were something separate from Roger's "political beliefs", then you completely missed the point about them in nineteen-seventy-whatever.

Songs like "Us and Them" and "Money" were almost pure political statements, in a very similar vein to Leaving Beirut (and The Fletcher Memorial Home is almost indistinguishable in sentiment from the new song). They're about his feelings of empathy with ordinary people (regardless of the political system they live under, or their ethnicity or class status) and the walls and suffering we create when we shut ourselves off from those feelings, as most of us do. His recent lyrics are a reaction to recent events, but the underlying process and motivation are identical, whether in 1973 or 2007.

The world is full of performers who can't or don't express themselves in this way - by all means don't buy more RW tickets or albums if you don't want to, but let's let the man do his thing - it's what he's done his whole life and it's what made him great in the first place. The lyrics of Pink Floyd without him seem to be about how nice it is to take flying lessons.

Bobby Blume - very nice verse, but I think Roger knows that Al Qaeda wants to kill us all and that would by why Mr. Bin Laden is up there in his concert graphics along with Stalin, Bush, Nixon, and the other "tyrants and kings" he's been having a go at since the 70s. In this regard, nothing has changed in Roger's motivation or method in thirty years, the only difference is that in 2007 he's pointing the finger in some places that make you feel uncomfortable.

Posted by Sean 02 Jun 2007, 13:29

And another thing...

It strikes me that some of those great old Floyd albums that our first poster waxes so lyrically about contained some considerably less defensible (certainly less mainstream) political statements than his recent ones.

For example, in The Wall and Dark Side of the Moon, Roger rails against the generals and "Kind Old King George" (the British One) from WW2, with lines like "and the Anzio bridgehead was held for the price of a few hundred ordinary lives", and in The Final Cut he lambasts Thatcher for her sinking of the Belgrano in the Falklands ("and Maggie, over lunch one day, took a cruiser with all hands, apparently to make him give it back"). Are we to infer from this that he thinks we should not have fought against fascist Germany and Italy in WW2, or that Britain had no right to retaliate against Galtieri's invasion of its sovereign islands? I've always rather assumed (especially as Waters' father died at Anzio) that these are simply song lyrics which expressed Roger's feelings of despair, loss, anger, helplessness and so on, and I've never seen the need to criticize them as though they were a political manifesto or foreign policy proposal. But if you want to get all serious and literal about them, then it's hard to argue that Roger suddenly got all fringe-political in the last few years.

By contrast, the notion that Mr. Bush got something wrong when he invaded Iraq is hardly a fringe political opinion in the world, and his current 30% approval rating in the US must look like unbridled popularity from many other countries.

Posted by Sean 02 Jun 2007, 16:05

I saw Roger Waters at Summer Fest in Milwaukee Wi. last night, and I was in an interesting position.......in that one of my best friends and the person who introduced me to Pink Floyd in the first place and I hold diametricly opposed view points politicly............I'm the bleading heart and he's the righty. Now here's the thing, that was 20 years ago, well befor the current world situation, but I came from Punk and I found PF rather sedate, but then I listened to the lyrics, and I guess it really baffles me that anyone could listen to anything they have put out, more so Waters since The Wall and not tuned into his politcs, there is nothing subtle about it, he's a lefty through and through....as I said I was a punk, that state of mind was mine.....what I don't understand is how you can go to see him and not expect exactly what you get, which is an amazeing show, with a unabashed actuly proud slant to the left.

Posted by Dave 03 Jul 2007, 19:48