That punk Roger Waters

Roger Waters, now a fresh eighty-year-old, has always been a punk. A real one, no mohawk or safety pins required. Brazen, anarchic, with a mocking sneer, foul-mouthed, over the top: Roger never compromises and tells everyone and everything to fuck off, keeping up his fiery battles with undiminished vigour. It kills me listening to him talk, with that Cambridge accent of his and his constant fucks, his attitude, his laugh, his strength, the way he lashes out at the powerful and the self-righteous without caring what anyone thinks, always proud and convinced of himself. I can feel it in my bones: his whole being is punk.

After all, it takes both self-assurance and ambition to quickly become the driving force of a band called Pink Floyd. Launched with great expectations and considerable chart success, within a year the band was at risk of falling apart because of a composer/singer/guitarist too sensitive for the ruthless world of the music business, a state of mind that pushed him to overdo the acid until he lost all grip on reality.

This is the other Roger in the band, surname Barrett, known to everyone as Syd. The charismatic, brilliant young man who within a few months had drifted away from the world, to the point where there was no way to keep him playing and singing decently. At that point Waters had taken matters into his own hands and realised he had to do the impossible to keep the reins of a project he felt was destined for enormous achievements, unable to rely on the less proactive personalities of his bandmates Nick Mason and Richard Wright, the drummer and keyboardist respectively.

Roger, on the other hand, plays bass; he's self-taught and happy to be so, playing with exactly the same spirit as those who would burst onto the scene in 1976: he makes up with ideas what he lacks in technique, and he couldn't care less about being a virtuoso—he makes that bass howl with nothing but the sheer force of his big hands.

Within a few weeks Syd Barrett was let go, replaced by his friend David Gilmour, who, paradoxically, had taught him his first guitar basics. Gilmour plays divinely, in a highly personal style, sings with an enchanting voice, and is also good-looking, always a useful trait when working in the world of pop. But the mastermind behind Pink Floyd remained Roger Waters, who, with his stubbornness and a certain dictatorial streak that increasingly came to the fore (meant only to spur on his more placid bandmates, not to bully them, at least for now), took it upon himself to offer his vision whenever it came time to put together new albums, making sure they were always original. For instance, it was his idea to record a double album like "Ummagumma", with one record captured live and the other made up of four distinct sections, one for each member.

In concert he's the flashier one, singing, screaming, making incredible sounds with his mouth, often abandoning the bass to savage the cymbals during the improvised passages. You can see him at Pompeii, the blazing sun behind him, delivering violent blows to the gong, passionate, furious, at one with the delirium and power of the music.

Over time Waters also discovers he has a particular gift for lyric writing: from the psychedelic visions of the band's early days, his words shift toward a close exploration of the human soul, empathy between people, their role within society, alienation, madness and the failure of communication. Gifted with a poetic style that gets its point across immediately in just a few lines, Roger writes his lyrics alongside his own music, quickly becoming the most prolific composer within the band.

From this point on, Waters pens many of the gems that, starting with “The Dark Side Of The Moon”, officially make him the band's leader. That peak, both artistically and commercially, is also the point of no return for a harmony within Pink Floyd that had always been shaky, made up of things said and unsaid, as well as resentments. Since he's a sloppy, imprecise bassist, it falls to Gilmour to play his parts in the studio. Vocally too, compared to the melodious guitarist and keyboardist, Waters comes across as harsh and imperfect, which draws criticism whenever it's his songs being performed. This stokes his anger: despite everything he has brought to the group, cementing its stratospheric success, he feels misunderstood by his bandmates, and in turn becomes ever more cynical, aloof and dictatorial.

A war orphan, his father killed when he was just five months old, the son of a mother fiercely aligned with the British Labour Party, a regular at marches and among figures who represented the very best of the era's politics and culture, Roger Waters feels his musical, social and political ideas growing, maturing, becoming explosive, while Wright, Mason and Gilmour think only of squandering their earnings without a second thought. All this while he has drawn them into the concept of non-communication on “Wish You Were Here” and divided human beings into dogs, pigs and sheep on “Animals”, a violent, abrasive album that would even lead people to dub the band Punk Floyd (and so everything comes full circle).

The others, however, don't share his fire, and this stokes a burning anger in him, especially toward Richard Wright, who will be fired for his lack of productivity. Mason isn't one to seek confrontation, and Gilmour tries to stay afloat, contributing musically and making great strides as a composer by the time “The Wall” is released — a melting pot of all the best Floydian ideas, and at the same time the paranoid delirium of a Waters in the midst of a marital crisis, feeling ever more crushed by the machinery of show business, the very thing that had driven his friend Syd to lock himself away in a corner of his own mind and throw away the key.

From here there's no turning back: Pink Floyd renew their success, but the machine finally jams for good. There's still room for a splendid postscript in “The Final Cut”, which sees Waters carve the word “end” into the band's tombstone. But Gilmour won't have it: if Roger thinks he's said all he has to say, that's his business — he can leave, and Pink Floyd will keep playing with new musicians.

And so it goes: Waters loses the lawsuit over the name, and the other three, relieved of the cumbersome, tormented figure of the bassist, put out two albums that are all smoke and no fire, with the absence of that Waters-ian spark felt in every note.

Having come to terms with the defeat, Roger devotes himself to a solo career made up of few (but prestigious) albums and many concerts, in which he revisits the band's material he contributed to most — which is to say, its biggest hits. Meanwhile, his political fervor grows ever stronger. An anti-capitalist and proud man of the left, he despises everything that smacks of oppression, selfishness and lust for power. His invectives — amplified in concert by huge illuminated slogans — against Bush, Trump, Biden, Margaret Thatcher and her Falklands campaign are legendary. He has voiced his opposition to Israel's separation barrier, thrown his support behind the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza and the Palestinian cause (drawing furious accusations of antisemitism, inflamed by his wearing a kind of Nazi uniform during the live staging of “The Wall”), and has tried to encourage dialogue between Russia and Ukraine, which has made him the target of scathing criticism from Polly Samson, David Gilmour's wife, who is particularly sensitive to the Ukrainian tragedy since her daughter-in-law Jana Pedan, wife of adopted son Charlie, is from that very region.

But Waters couldn't care less about anyone's criticism; he carries on his battles with tenacity and courage, convinced to his core that only dialogue can lead humanity one step further toward peaceful coexistence.

Will he succeed? Is he right? Is he wrong? Everyone can make up their own mind; he, certainly, is never short of ideas — plenty of them, all born of a critical spirit that never dims. Having just turned 80, he even has the nerve to release a brand-new version of “The Dark Side Of The Moon”, reworked according to his own standards and perspectives, musical and otherwise. Proof that he's as combative as ever from every point of view, and anything but inclined to surrender to age or injustice.

If that's not punk, Roger, then tell me who is.

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