Artistic integrity is the thing that has always made Roger Waters tick.
That’s exactly why the artists he respects the most have never given two fucks about political censorship or its consequences, doing whatever the hell they wanted in pursuit of an elusive artistic ideal.
Then again, being such a consummate artist doesn’t always equate to being the most accommodating bandmate all the time. As much as Waters loved the idea of making brilliant portraits of everyday life through his music, making those intense character studies like on Animals and The Wall was never going to sit well with the four other guys that felt like they also had something to say.
But for all of the Floyd albums made under Waters’s vision, you couldn’t say that he didn’t get the sound that he wanted. If anything, he would have been considered the most punk prog musician who ever lived for going up against the big business and critiquing the musical machine that so many bands often get forced into. And that all came from him listening to other people who went against the grain.
The punk revolution may have begun in the 1970s, but Waters’s dreams to stick up for his art always came from listening to people like Bob Dylan half the time. Dylan never bothered to censor himself, and even if half of his audience turned their back on him when he went electric, he would have been more proud to go down the tubes doing what he loved to do than have to worry about pleasing the audience on the next record.
If Dylan was the true precursor to punk, though, Neil Young should hold the distinction as the first authentic punk rocker. Nothing that he ever made was meant to be part of an industry package, and the more that you listen to his records, the more you start to realise how little the charts appealed to him. Young was his own artist, and he would gladly tank his own reputation with an album he knew was terrible than try to satisfy whatever it is that the label executives wanted him to do.
And for all the controversy he stirred up, that’s what made Waters such a fan of Young’s, saying, “I’m a huge fan of Neil Young. Why? Because he can’t stop himself from expressing his real feelings about things. That’s why ‘Powderfinger’ [works]. I love his love songs, I love Harvest Moon, I love everything he’s ever done. He really is a national treasure.”
The same could be said about Waters as well. Even though he has gone down roads that were far from the conventional rock and roll structure, he always said what was on his mind, whether that was trying to reinvent Dark Side of the Moon for a new generation or even when he made masterpieces about the dangers of technology like on Amused to Death.
Although Waters has considerably less content to work with in his solo catalogue compared to Young’s, that speaks to the key difference between what he does and what Young might be working on. Waters will not rest until his vision is done to absolute perfection every time he makes a record, but if Young had the right idea and was able to get it down on tape in the span of a few weeks, there was nothing stopping him from putting it out in whatever musical state he could think of.
