While some bands inspire other artists through their consistent sound and aesthetic over the years, Roger Waters and his former band, Pink Floyd, received their greatest inspiration from artists who did the exact opposite. Rather than staying true to whatever sound garnered them fame in the first place, one of Pink Floyd’s most significant influences regularly pushed against the public’s expectations of them, sonically and aesthetically.
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Moreover, this iconic band pushed against industry standards, opting out of the typical tradition of performing pre-written songs and focusing primarily on their eccentric original catalogue. Without this groundwork laid in the late 1960s, Pink Floyd might have never been the same.
The Album That Would Turn An Entire Generation On Its Head
Although Pink Floyd would reach the height of their fame years after the Beatles broke up, the two bands were technically contemporaries. When the Beatles were recording their seminal eighth studio album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a fresh-faced Pink Floyd was down the hall cutting their debut, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. When the Fab Four’s experimental album came out, Waters jumped at the chance to listen in his car. “I remember when it came out, pulling the Zephyr 4 over into a lay-by and listening to the whole thing,” Waters recalled during an interview with Howard Stern. “Just sitting there with my mouth hanging open.”
Waters said the accomplishment of such a complete concept album was astonishing. “It had a ton of ideas and a ton of narrative in it, and I feel, more than any other record, it was the record that gave me and my generation permission to branch out and do whatever we want to. If they can do it, we can do it. We don’t need Tin Pan Alley anymore. We can write our own stuff.”
The former Pink Floyd bassist shared similar sentiments in a different radio interview, saying, “I learned a lot from protest music when I was a young teenager. But I learned from John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison that it was okay for us to write about our lives, what we felt, to express ourselves. That we could be free artists and that there was a value in that freedom, and there was. We didn’t need someone to tell us what to sing.”
Roger Waters Said Pink Floyd Took Several Cues From This Band
For Pink Floyd, the band behind such massive works as Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, the Beatles’ permission to explore concept albums as chart-worthy releases was groundbreaking. But the inspiration to make a concept album wasn’t the only influence the Fab Four had over this psychedelic rock band. Former bassist and founding member Roger Waters admired the Beatles’ unwavering commitment to their artistic development. The Fab Four that made its Ed Sullivan Show debut in the mid-1960s was miles away from the version of the band that would see their final breakup.
To Waters, that willingness to transform was monumental. “They instigated their own revolution,” Waters told Howard Stern. “Obviously, when they started off, it was all “Please, Please Me,” you know, whatever. They transcended all that. And they transcended all the nonsense of Shea Stadium and, you know, girls screaming and nobody being able to hear anything. Making songs that people really wanted to hear because they’re really, really smart, clever, beautiful, and musical songs.”
Even at their most avant-garde, we tend to categorize the Beatles and Pink Floyd into two different levels of rock ‘n’ roll experimentation. But without the former, one could argue the latter would have ceased to exist as we know it.
Photo by Andrew Whittuck/Redferns
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