Roger Waters heard what everyone at Genesis was saying about him. In a 1975 interview around its release I wish you were herethe Pink Floyd bassist and singer responded to his peers' suggestion that they were targeting real art, while Pink Floyd, whose records were now selling millions, had become more interested in appealing to the lowest common denominator and fading into the background.
While the word “diplomatic” is rarely used to describe Waters, he has managed to meet this criticism with a distinct lack of rancor. Here's what he claims: An unlikely scenario, but if Genesis—a whimsical prog band that had just lost its visionary frontman and who would release, within a year, an album inspired in part by Emily Brontë's novels—someday achieved the mainstream success enjoyed by Pink Floyd—a band so popular that calling them “prog” is somewhat of an understatement, like calling Star Wars a “science fiction” film—then there's a good chance they too will loosen the distinctions between high and low art.
Then, in his early 30s, Waters was testing a theory about how rock stars might age gracefully in this miserable industry. Less than a decade had passed since Pink Floyd's artful and inventive 1967 debut The Piper at the Gates of Dawnbut they had already endured enough transformations, subverted so many expectations, and achieved so many artistic highs that they felt their best work might well be behind them. Looking back at the huge hit of 1973 The Dark Side of the Moon—a commercial and creative breakthrough that changed their lives forever—understood what makes art connect with the masses. For better or worse, he decided, humans were drawn to the chase: the ambition that drives us to even believe we can make something like Dark Side of the Moon. Once you do, the story is over. “I wish you were here“, he explains, “it came from us continuing despite the fact that we were done.”
In the beginning, the creative process was as arduous as it sounds. The band – Waters, David Gilmour on guitar and vocals, Richard Wright on keyboards, Nick Mason on drums – was lost. Furious. New songs emerged, but lacked any unifying theme. When they tested new material on the road, music journalists did what we sometimes do, which is to turn our backs on good bands when they become very popular, repeat them based on their reputation and suggest that the edge is gone – if ever there was an edge!—and, to say the least, what once seemed like magic has grown stale. “The Floyd actually seem so incredibly tired and seemingly bereft of real creative ideas,” wrote Nick Kent in a 1974 issue. NME“one wonders if he really cares about their music anymore.”
