For any progressive rock musician, life is all about being able to find something new in the wild. It can get pretty monotonous trying to make the same song every time you walk into the studio, and it’s usually worth it to see what the other flavours of rock and roll are doing before deciding to create anything from scratch. Every band needs their songs to fall back on as well, and Roger Waters knew to always keep an eye on artists that had something a bit more interesting going on underneath their melodies.
But for all of the strange time signatures throughout Pink Floyd’s material, they were always the most simplistic prog-rock band out in the wild. No casual listener may have had the time to listen through every single section of ‘Dogs’ or ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’, but listening to Waters’s greatest hits for the band, the magic of playing a simple song on an acoustic guitar was never lost on him.
Even when making The Wall, the different pieces of the story could work brilliantly on their own. ‘Comfortably Numb’ is the obvious standout thanks to one of David Gilmour’s most breathtaking solos, but listening to Waters sing ‘Mother’ elicits a lot more emotion, whether that’s Gilmour singing the mother’s perspective or Waters sounding like the beaten-down kid being subjected to his helicopter parent’s behaviour.
If there’s one thing that coats all of Waters’s songs, it’s empathy. He always wanted to see if there were people out there who felt the same way he did, and when he heard other folk songwriters talking about their own problems, he wasn’t simply a fan. He had found musical confidantes that he wouldn’t soon forget.
And despite the music world changing more than a few times since he started, it always came down to a few songwriters who kept Waters excited about creating music, saying, “I don’t really listen to very much music and certainly not much contemporary pop music anyway. It’s not to say that I don’t think it’s any good. It’s just my interest lies in other areas. I still listen to music. I have my few favourite sort of songwriters who, when they produce new work, I’ll sort of listen to it. So I always buy the new Dylan album and the new Neil Young album and the new John Prine album, and I’ll sniff around one or two other things.”
But the beauty of listening to all of those artists is to see how they evolve. While John Prine always kept up a reputation of being a stellar songwriter in every respect, Young is always exciting because no one ever knew where he was going to go. He was able to ride the wave of success for years, but even when he wasn’t at the top of the charts, he was still there doing whatever he wants to do.
And when it comes to Dylan, most people are looking for his outlook on life half the time. He already had the revolutionary albums under his belt, like Highway 61 Revisited and Bringing It All Back Home, but there are also albums in his later catalogue like Time Out of Mindthat show different shades of himself that no one ever would have been brave enough to share with the public.
It’s one thing to look at those songs as a fan, but for Waters, his favourites are a good indicator of how he should conduct himself as a songwriter. Everyone wants to hear a catchy tune, but the key to a lasting career is to watch someone grow every time they come out with a new record.
