Bassists are often the unsung navigators on voyages of musical discovery. Among the foremost of these adventurers in recend decades is Roger Waters, one of the founders of Pink Floyd, whose bio we present herewith, thanks to Wikipedia.
Ed.
George Roger Waters (born 6 September 1943) is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. He is best known as the bass player, lyricist and co-lead vocalist of the rock band Pink Floyd. Following the departure of fellow founding member Syd Barrett in March 1968, Waters became the band's lyricist, principal songwriter and conceptual leader. The band subsequently achieved worldwide success in the 1970s with the concept albums The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and The Wall. Although Waters' primary instrument in Pink Floyd was the electric bass guitar, he also experimented with synthesisers and tape loops and played electric and acoustic guitars in recordings and in concert. Amidst creative differences within the group, Waters left Pink Floyd in 1985 and began a legal battle with the remaining members over their future use of the group's name and material. The dispute was settled out of court in 1987, and nearly eighteen years passed before he performed with Pink Floyd again. It is estimated that as of 2010, the group have sold over 200 million albums worldwide.
Waters' solo career has included three studio albums: The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking (1984), Radio K.A.O.S. (1987), and Amused to Death (1992). In 1986, he contributed songs and a score to the soundtrack of the movie When the Wind Blows based on the Raymond Briggs book of the same name. In 1990, he staged one of the largest rock concerts in history, The Wall – Live in Berlin, with an estimated 200,000 people in attendance. In 1996, he was inducted into the US and UK Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Pink Floyd. He has toured extensively as a solo act since 1999 and played The Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety for his world tours of 2006–2008. In 2005, he released Ça Ira, an opera in three acts translated from Etienne Roda-Gil and his wife Nadine Delahaye's libretto based on the early French Revolution. On 2 July 2005, he reunited with Pink Floyd bandmates Nick Mason, Richard Wright, and David Gilmour for the Live 8 benefit concert, the group's only appearance with Waters since their last performance with him 24 years earlier. In 2010, he commenced The Wall Live, a worldwide tour that features a complete performance of The Wall.
Waters has been married four times and has three children.
Early years (1943–1964)
Roger Waters was born on 6 September 1943, the younger of two boys, to Mary and Eric Fletcher Waters, in Great Bookham, Surrey. His father, the grandson of a coal miner and prominent Labour Party leader, was a schoolteacher, a devout Christian, and a Communist Party member. Fletcher was a conscientious objector who drove an ambulance during the Blitzkrieg and the first years of the Second World War. He later changed his stance on strict pacifism and joined an infantry regiment of the British Army, and eventually died in combat with The Royal Fusiliers Company C at Anzio in Italy in January 1944, when Roger was four months old. Following Fletcher's death, Mary, also a teacher, moved with her two sons to Cambridge, and raised them there.
"I hated every second of it, apart from games. The regime at school was a very oppressive one ... the same kids who are susceptible to bullying by other kids are also susceptible to bullying by the teachers.“
Waters attended Morley Memorial Junior School in Cambridge, and later the Cambridgeshire High School for Boys (now Hills Road Sixth Form College) with Syd Barrett, while his future musical partner, David Gilmour, lived nearby on the city's Mill Road, and attended The Perse School. At age 15 Waters was chairman of the Cambridge Youth Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (YCND), having designed its publicity poster and participated in its organisation. He was a keen sportsman and a highly regarded member of the high school's cricket and rugby teams. Waters knew Barrett and Gilmour from his youth in Cambridge and met future Pink Floyd founding members Nick Mason and Richard Wright at the Regent Street Polytechnic school of architecture, where he enrolled in 1962 after a series of aptitude tests indicated he was well-suited to that field.
Pink Floyd (1965–1985): Formation
By September 1963, Waters and Mason were starting to lose interest in their studies and they moved into the lower flat of Stanhope Gardens, owned by Mike Leonard, a part-time tutor at the Regent Street Polytechnic. Waters, Mason and Wright first played music together in the autumn of 1963, in a group formed by vocalist Keith Noble and bassist Clive Metcalfe. The group usually called themselves Sigma 6, but they also used the name, the Meggadeaths. Waters played rhythm guitar and Mason played drums, Wright played on any keyboard he could arrange to use, and Noble's sister Sheilagh provided an occasional vocal accompaniment. In the early years the band performed during private functions and rehearsed in a tearoom in the basement of Regent Street Polytechnic.
When Metcalfe and Noble left to form their own group in September 1963, the remaining members asked Barrett and guitar player Bob Klose to join. By January 1964, the group became known as The Abdabs, or The (Screaming) Abdabs. During the autumn of 1964, the band used the names; Leonard's Lodgers, The Spectrum Five, and eventually, the Tea Set. Having lost Noble and Metcalfe's vocal abilities, Klose introduced the band to singer Chris Dennis, a dental technician with the Royal Air Force. By September 1964, Mason had moved out of Stanhope Gardens, and Klose had moved in. Waters and Klose were joined at the flat a few months later by Barrett, a childhood friend of Waters, who moved into Stanhope Gardens during the late-autumn to early winter of 1964.
According to Mason, the group's first recording session took place in December 1964. The band at that time included Klose on lead guitar, and was calling itself the Tea Set. They had managed to secure some recording time through a friend of Wright's who worked at a studio in West Hampstead, and let them use some studio time for free. The four-song recording session was their first demo and included the 1957 Slim Harpo song "I'm a King Bee"; two Barrett originals, "Butterfly" and "Lucy Leave"; and "Double O Bo", a group composition which was, according to Mason, "Bo Diddley meets the 007 theme."
Waters' primary instrument in Pink Floyd was the electric bass guitar. He briefly played a Höfner bass but replaced it with a Rickenbacker RM-1999/4001S, until around 1970 when he switched to Fender Precision Basses. First seen at a concert in Hyde Park, London in July 1970, the black P-Bass was rarely used until April 1972 when it became his main stage guitar and as of 2 October 2010, the basis for a Fender Artist Signature model. Gilmour's guitar-tech Phil Taylor replaced the white pickguard with a black one around 1976; this is visible on The Wall Tour, In the Flesh Tour, and The Dark Side of the Moon Live. He often plays bass using a pick but is also known to play fingerstyle. Waters uses RotoSound Jazz Bass 77 flat-wound strings, and Samson wireless systems. Throughout his career he has used Selmer, WEM, Hiwatt and Ashdown amplifiers, also employing delay, tremolo, chorus, panning and phaser effects in his music. For The Wall Live tour, Roger is using a pair of Ampeg SVT 7 Pro amp heads and Ampeg PN 4x10 HLF cabinets side by side with one ready to go as a backup should his main rig fail.
Not only a bassist and vocalist, Waters experimented with the EMS Synthi A and VCS 3 synthesisers on Pink Floyd pieces such as "On the Run" and "Welcome to the Machine", and he played electric and acoustic guitar on Pink Floyd tracks using Fender, Martin, Ovation and Washburn guitars. He played electric guitar on the Pink Floyd song "Sheep", from Animals, and acoustic guitar on several Pink Floyd recordings, such as "Pigs on the Wing 1 & 2", from Animals, "Southampton Dock" from The Final Cut,[136] and on "Mother" from The Wall. He has used synthesiser and tape effects in "Welcome to the Machine" and elsewhere. A Binson Echorec 2 echo effect was used on his bass-guitar track in "One Of These Days".
Discography
Music from The Body (with Ron Geesin) (1970)
The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking (1984)
When the Wind Blows (various artists soundtrack) (1986)
Radio K.A.O.S. (1987)
The Wall – Live in Berlin (1990)
Amused to Death (1992)
In the Flesh – Live (2000)
Flickering Flame: The Solo Years Volume 1 (2002)
Ça Ira (2005)
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