Roger Waters Interview w/Chris Salewicz, June 1987


On June 15th,1987 Roger Waters released his second solo album
entitled "Radio KAOS." I believe this interview took place short after
its release and before the Radio KAOS Tour kicked off at Rhode Island,
on august 14 1987.
Roger Waters (RW) was interviewed by Chris Salewicz (CS).


CS: When was the last time you had a single out?  It must have
    been "Another Brick In The Wall."

RW: No, it was the "Pros And Cons Of Hitchhiking." And the only
    other significant single in my career was "Money" from
    Dark Side Of The Moon. That was the only other one that made
    any impact at all.

CS: What about the early hits, Arnold Layne and See Emily Play?

RW: Well, they were Syd's.

CS: Do you really look on them as that?

RW: Oh yes. They were his songs. Actually, we did release one of
    my songs as a Pink Floyd single short after he had left, a
    thing called "Point Me At The Sky." And there was a Syd Barrett
    failure before that called "Apples And Oranges." But I remember
    that by the time we reached the elevated heights that we did not
    long after, our sense of snotty purity (laughs) was so great that
    we wouldn't even have a single out.

CS: It was very 'uncool' in those days to release singles. Led Zeppelin
    always refused to put them out.

RW: Oh yes, it was very uncool. That's why we wouldn't do it. But
    we all get older.

CS: When did you asume the leadership of the Pink Floyd?  Was it 
    when Syd went?

RW: Yes, It was straight after we had split up with Syd. I'm sure you
    would get arguments about that from the other 'boys', but I simply
    took responsibility, largely because no-one else seemed to want to
    do it, and that is graphically illustrated by the fact that I started
    to write most of the material from then on, I'm perfectly happy being
    a leader. In fact, I know I can be an oppressive personality because
    I bubble with ideas and schemes, and in a way it was easier for the
    others simply to go along with me. We rarely used to see each other
    socially, although I used to get on with Nick Mason alright. For a
    limited time, in the early days of the group, we did mix socially.
    Because there is something rather appealing about a group together on
    the road. But that soon palls. And things like families make sure that
    cycle comes to an end.


CS: Was it difficult replacing Syd as a leader of the Pink Floyd?
    Did you feel very much in his shadow?

RW: Well, replacing Syd as leader of the Pink Floyd was OK. But Syd
    as a writer was a one-off. I could never aspire to his crazed
    insights and perceptions. In fact, for a long time I wouldn't
    have dreamt of claiming any insights whatsoever. But I'd always
    credit Syd with the connection he made to his personal
    unconscious and to the collective, group conscious. It's
    taken me fifteen years to get anywhere near there. But what
    enabled Syd to see things in the way he did? It's like why is
    an artist an artist? Artists simply do feel and see things in a 
    different way to other people. In a way it's a blessing, but it
    can also be a terrible curse. There's a great deal of satisfaction 
    to be earned from it but often it's also a terrible burden.
    In spite the fact that he was clearly out of control when making his    
    two albums, some of the work is staggeringly evocative. Dave Gilmour   
    and I worked with him on the first one [The Madcap Laughs]; 
    there was a backlog of material he'd written before he flipped.
    It's the humanity of it all that is so impressive. It's about
    deeply felt values and beliefs and feelings. Maybe that's what
    Dark Side Of The Moon was aspiring to. A similar feeling.
    That's what I get from the musicians who I really care for:
    Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young - that
    intense passion.

CS: What is Syd Barrett doing now?

RW: I last saw him about ten years ago. But my mother still lives
    in Cambridge and I get to hear about him from time to time.
    He's not doing very much at all.
    What happened with Syd was that we were being managed by Andrew
    King and Peter Jenner of Blackhill Enterprises, for whom I
    still have a very soft spot. When Syd flipped I had this theory
    that we could go on with Syd still being a member of the group
    if he could become Brian Wilson and simply be a backroom boy.
    But Syd had other ideas: he wanted to get in two sax-players
    and a girl singer. To which we resolutely said no!
    But Peter and Andrew both thought it couldn't happen without 
    Syd and stuck with him. Which is how the Pink Floyd came to be 
    managed by Steve O'Rourke. Bryan Morrison was our agent when we
    were with Blackhill, and Steve O'Rourke was a booker who worked 
    for him, Bryan Morrison wanted to sell the group to NEMS (Brian
    Epstein's Company), but we'd never had an official contract
    with him. So the night before the deal with NEMS was to go
    through, he persuaded us to sign a contract: "just a legality,
    boys - we won't be able to legally book the Amarican tour
    otherwise, so you'll never tour the States." The next day he 
    sold the agency. One lives and learns. Steve O'Rourke went to
    NEMS as part of a package. He ran a management department at
    NEMS, and when we left NEMS we took Steve with us. After all,
    he was about ten times cheaper than a Robert Stigwood - those   
    were the days when managers would try and get forty per cent of
    the gross.
    And it all worked very well for quite a long time. Steve is an
    effective hustler, a man in a man's world. And we should be
    jolly pleased with each other. And to give him his due Steve
    O'Rourke never gave up his job of trying to get me to fill
    stadiums. But his attitude was rather summed up when I saw him
    giving an interview on TV, when he was still managing me. He'd
    taken on the task of managing a British Le Mans racing team.
    Steve said (adopts Arthur Daley-like voice), Management is
    management. It doesn't matter whether it's a pop group, a 
    motor-racing team or biscuits. I thought, 'Oh, you arsehole.'
    He'd obviously got a little carried away with his role.

CS: Why do you think Dark Side Of The Moon was such a colossally
    successful record?

RW: It's very well-balanced and well-constructed, dynamically and
    musically, and I think the humanity of its approach is
    appealing. It's satisfying. I think also that it was the first
    album of that kind. People often quote S F Sorrow by The Pretty
    Things as being from a similar mould - they were both done in
    the same studio at about the same time - but I think it was
    probably the first completely cohesive album that was made.
    A concept album, mate! I always thought it would be hugely
    succesful. I had the same feelings about "The Wall". Towards the
    end of the studio work, at about the time I'd be putting the 
    tracks together, there was a very good feeling of satisfaction
    on both records. You'd stand back from them and they'd each 
    feel very complete.
    But of course, Dark Side Of The Moon finished the Pink Floyd 
    off once and for all. To be that succesful is the aim of every
    group. And once you've cracked it, it's all over. In hindsight, 
    I think the Pink Floyd was finished as long ago as that.

CS: Apart from that, what were the main problems associated with
    such immense success?

RW: Mainly the one of what to do with all the money! You go through
    this thing where you think of all the good you could do with it
    by giving it away. But, in the end, you decide to keep it!

CS: How comfortable are you about making solo records? Does it concern
    you that you will probably not be as succesful pon the same immense
    scale as the Pink Floyd?

RW: Yes, but it's a concern I try to resist. But I confess that I
    harbour a fantasy that there might be enough in my writing -
    because my writing is so passive - that has something to do
    with some sort of group unconcious that I might make another
    record that would appeal to millions. I always feel it is a
    kind of extraodinary coincidence that it happened twice with 
    the Pink Floyd, with Dark Side Of The Moon and The Wall.


CS: You didn't see that as a logical continuation?

RW: Well, no . I mean, yes I do, I see it very much as a logical
    continuation in terms of the writing involved. But  the fact
    that those records got to far more than the 8 to 14-year-olds
    that are supposed to be the record market, that they both 
    reached some part of human beings that made them rush out and
    buy them in unbelievable quantities, is extraodinary. And you
    can't explain it simply by the fact that each had a hit single
    and that they had some good tunes. There are masses and masses
    of records that have good tunes.
    But very occasionally you get a record that strikes some chord
    that transcends generation gaps. Rock 'n' Roll is growing up,
    and its original audience is getting older with it. And if you
    can provide stuff that is simulating enough for grown-ups to
    buy then they'll buy it.

CS: I find it interesting that you define your work as "passive":
    that certainly  is one of its dominant qualities - it doesn't
    bludgeon you around the head.

RW: I wouldn't say the work is necessarily passive, but the act of
    the writing is extremely passive. And at certain points on each 
    record that passivity seeps through. The activity is certainly
    passive. I never come steaming in here and say (Basil Fawlty-
    like voice), 'right, I'm going to write a song about Margaret
    Thatcher.' If I get up in the morning and I'm lying in the bath
    and I can feel myself going into a strange, detached, glazed-
    over state, then I know it's worth coming in here and sitting
    quietly with the biro and pad, and whatever instrument - well, 
    it's always a piano or a guitar. And I just sit here until the 
    song appears.
    I can write at almost any time of day. But it's almost never late 
    at night. It can be difficult for the people who are around 
    you, because you have to be very blank as far as anyone 
    else is concerned.

CS: You were talking about how your "passive" writing comes from 
    the unconcious. Do you read much philosophy or psychology?

RW: No. I'm quite interested inthose areas but I was put off books
    early on, and I find it very difficult to read. As a child I
    never got into the habit of reading. I went through a period
    when I was a teenager of reading people like James Joyce,
    because it was hip to do so. Then I got a very basic grounding
    of what there was in literature that might be enjoyable. But
    now, if I'm sitting on the beach I'd rather be reading A Ship
    Must Die or something of the nature. I'm very fond of those
    very involved English Second World War naval stories in the
    Hornblower tradition.

CS: You studied Architecture. Were you good at Art?

RW: Not at school, no. Now I can draw a bit. I feel quite strongly   
    about education. I went to school in Cambridge, one of those
    grammer schools that Thatcher is going to bring back, where I
    was considered without question to be a complete twat at almost
    everything, particularly English. And the Art teacher was so
    ineffectual that he was practically not there at all.
    Most of the teachers were absolute swines, and the school was 
    only concerned with University entrance, particularly Oxbridge.
    It was a real battery farm. I hated it. All they would do was
    look at your most obvious aptitude and cram you into that
    pigeon-hole. I found Physics and things like that quite easy to
    cope with and so I was pushed down that road. When I left
    school I was all set to go to Manchester University to do
    Mechanical Engineering. But suddenly the thought of another
    three years of the sixth form was more than I could stand.
    So I took a year off. My career choice was made by the National
    Institute of Industrial Psychology where I took a whole bunch
    of aptitude tests - so I was completely passive about that as
    well. They told me I would do well at Architecture, which
    didn't sound as dull as Mechanical Engineering. So I said OK.
    Then I had to learn to draw, because they wanted a portfolio of
    drawings for your interview.

CS: They didn't say anything about music?

RW: Oh no, they didn't spot that. But music is only mathematics
    anyway. It is another way of interpreting maths. Musical
    intervals are also mathematical intervals. If you double the
    frequency of a note it rises by an octave. We call it music, 
    but our brain is going, Oh, that's twice as fast as that!
    But let me say that I never saw any music in maths. It was all
    complete drudgery to me. I was completely uninterested in it.
    I could never see the beauty of mathematical relationships.
    I started studying Architecture but they slung me out after two 
    years for refusing to attend History of Architecture lectures.
    I was very bloshie. I must have been horrible to teach. But the
    History lecture that I came up against was very reactionary,
    so it was a fair battle. I said I wouldn't do exams because
    the guy refused to talk to me. He'd tell us to sit down and
    copy a drawing off a blackboard. And I asked him if he could
    explain why, because I couldn't see the point in copying 
    something off a blackboard that he was copying of a
    testbook. It was just like school. I couldn't handle it. I'd
    hoped I'd escaped all that. When you go to university, you
    expect to be treated like little grown-ups.
    But there are architects who are involved in natural materials
    and in domestic architecture, especially in America where there
    is that woodsy thing which has developed from the California A-
    frame mentality, which is very easy to sneer at but is actually
    very good.
    I mean (he touches the wooden frame of the mixing desk), this
    piece of mahogany here, for example: it would be very nice to
    be in this house for twenty years and watch its wear and tear.
    You can derive great pleasure from looking at a piece of wood
    if you live with it all the time. That's what is so attractive
    about bread-boards hanging in kitchens - they really look very
    nice as they begin to gradually get hacked and worn. There's
    something very nice about the human body slowly eroding a piece
    of timber. I always like pieces of wood that are worn from
    having had horses tethered to them and that have become lovely
    and smooth, allowing you to see the grain.

CS: There's a rather obvious connection to be made here- the
    architecture student who went to compose The Wall...

RW: Well, maybe. Maybe the architectural training to look at things
    helped me to visualise my feelings of alienation from rock 'n'
    roll audiences. Which was the starting point for The Wall. The
    fact that it then embodied an autobiographical narrative was
    kind of secondary to the main thing which was a theatrical
    statement in which I was saying, "Isn't this fucking awful?
    Here I am up onstage and there you all are down there and isn't
    it horrible! What the fuck are we all doing here?"

CS: I thought that, as a theatrical work, The Wall was
    marvellous. When I saw it at Earls Court, I thought it was the
    first rock 'n' roll show I'd seen that made full and proper use
    of one of those arenas.

RW: I put it together with Gerry Scarfe, who designed all the
    puppets and made the animation with me, and of course with Mark
    Fisher and Jonathan Park, who did all the detailed design work
    of the set. They designed the brick; they built the wall; they
    designed the man lifts that went up and down at the back so
    that people could actually build the thing. Mark designed the 
    way it fell over, and Jonathan did all the engineering, Gerry's
    puppets and animation were half of the show.
    We were all working furiously up until the first night. And
    first time we had the wall up across the arena with some fil
    on it was four days before the first show. I went and walked
    all the way around the top row of seats at the back of the 
    arena. And my heart was beating furiously and I was getting 
    shivers right up and down my spine. And I thought it was so 
    fantastic that people could actually see and hear something
    from everywhere they were seated. Because after the 1977 tour I
    became seriously deranged - or maybe arranged - about stadium
    gigs. Because I do think they are awful.
    They are about statistics. For the public, it seems to me, the
    enjoyment comes from two things. I think it's partly that they
    are in the presence of the legend - whether it's Bruce 
    Springsteen or another proven brand name doesn't really matter
    so long as it's the presence of someone you can identify as
    being 'legendary'. There's also the statistical thing of being
    able to say, Yeah, there were 85,000 of us here: you couldn't
    move. You couldn't get to the bar (guffaws with laughter). We
    all had to piss standing up, crushed together. It was fucking
    great!
    And, of course, onstage and backstage all that's going on is,
    Do you know how much we've grossed, boys, how many T-shirts
    we've sold? That's absolutely it. That's all it's about -
    money. And you go down in the Guiness Book Of Records for
    having played before the biggest audiences ever blah-blah-blah.
    And...oh dear, fuck that, I mean, alright, I can understand
    that motivation. But I don't like it.

CS: When was the first time you ever played stadiums?

RW: 1977

CS: How did that actually feel? Which was the first one that you
    ever played?

RW: I honestly can't remember, (pause). We did Anaheim, JFK,
    Philadelphia...a whole load of them. And the final one was the
    Olympic Stadium in Montreal. Before that we did Soldiers' Field
    in Chicago. Before the gig started I went up and stood on the 
    bleachers at the back of the stage and looked down at the
    audience. And Steve O'Rourke came up and stood beside me and he
    said, Guess how many people are in here? I said, I dunno. And
    he said, sixty-three thousand. But by this time I'd done enough
    big shows to know what sixty thousand people looked like, And I
    looked down and said, No. There's at least eighty thousand, if
    not a hundred thousand. He said, I'll go and check. And the box
    office told him it was completely sold out to an audience of
    sixty-three thousand.
    So we immediately rented a helicopter, a photographer and a
    attorney and photographed it from the air, with affidavits from
    the helicopter pilot and the attorney, sworn, sealed and
    delivered. And it turned out that there were ninety-five thousand
    people there. So where were the thirty-two thousand people?
    Six hundred and forty thousand dollars!

CS: But I heard that the rest of the Floyd wanted to do The Wall
    tour in stadiums. And that was one of the reasons you
    ultimately knocked the Pink Floyd on the head...

RW: Yes, in 1980 when we finished in New York, Larry Maggid, a
    Philadelphia promoter - I remember him promoting us there at
    The Electric Factory when we were supporting Savoy Brown -
    offered us a guaranteed million dollars a show plus expenses to
    go and do two dates at JFK Stadium with The Wall. To truck
    straight from New York, where we'd been playing Nassau 
    Collosseum, to Philadelphia. And (laughs) I wouldn't do it.
    I had to go through the whole story with the other members. I
    said, "You've all read my explanations of what The Wall is
    about. It's three years since we did that last stadium and I
    saw then that I would never do one again. And The Wall is 
    entirely sparked off by how awful that was and how I didn't
 
    feel that the public or the band or anyone got anything out of
    it that was worthwhile. And that's why we've produced this show
    strictly for arenas where everyone does get something out of it
    that is worthwhile. Blah-blah-blah. And, I ain't fuckin'
    going!"
    So there was alot of talk about whether Andy Bown could sing
    my part. Oh, you may laugh - this is what's happening now,
    isn't it? And in the end they bottled out. They didn't have
    the balls to go through with it at that point.

CS: So that was presumably a crucial incident in terms of the
    ultimate break-up of the group.

RW: Ummm...I didn't see it as that at the time. It was just the way
    the band was. I always made those decisions, so it didn't seem
    strange at all. Now, of course, you can see the irony of it.
    But at the time it seemed perfectly natural.

CS: In fact, the live Wall show did seem like a real piece of
    conceptual art, which would have been impossible to reproduce
    in a larger setting.

RW: Certainly that's how I saw it. There was an attempt made to put
    it on to video, and I have consistently stamped on any moves to
    get that video out because it does not do justice to what was a
    very theatrical event. Maybe in twenty years time, as sort of
    archive material, I might be prepared to release it. But I
    quite like the fact that the people who went to the shows
    copped it for what it meant to be, where it was meant to be,
    and nobody has been allowed to sell a third-rate, tacky
    version on video.

CS: Of course, almost from the very start the visuals, the total
    presentation, were part of the Pink Floyd's live presence.

RW: It's always been there. I remember the Games For May concert we
    did at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in May 1967. I was working in
    this dank, dingy basement off the Harrow Road, with an old
    Ferrograph. I remember sitting there recording edge tones off
    cymbals for the performance - later that became the beginning
    of Saucerful Of Secrets. In those days you could get away with
    stuff like chasing clockwork toy cars around the stage with a
    microphone. For Games For May I also made "bird" noises
    recorded on the old Ferrograph at half-speed, to be played in
    the theatre's foyer as the audience was coming in. I was always
    interested in the possibilities of rock 'n' roll, how to fill
    the space between the audience and the idea with more than just
    guitars and vocals.

CS: Then there was the giant inflatable  pig in 1977 that slipped
    its moorings at Battersea Power Station and was spotted by an 
    airline pilot at 40,000 feet.

RW: The pig was specifically for the concerts that went with the
    Animals record. Actually, I think the 'boys' thought I'd gone
    the way of Syd when I said that we needed a giant inflatable
    family and a load of inflatable animals.

CS: You've always been perceived as a bit miserable...

RW: I don't think the humour of the work has ever really escaped in
    the way it might have. The political subject matter on top of
    it has been generally dour. I suppose I have always appeared as
    a rather melancholy person. But I'm not. My situation is like
    the opposite of the cliche of the comedian who when he's not 
    performing is a miserable sod.
    Hopefully this Radio KAOS show will have a similar effect to
    The Wall. It's the same team, although Gerry Scarfe isn't
    involved in this one. I've toyed with the idea of playing in a
    legitimate theatre but I've shied away from it because I
    suspect that to me rock 'n' roll would seem just as
    uncomfortable in a 1,500 seater with a proscenium arch as it
    does in an 80,000 seat stadium. The arena feels like a good
    place to be. You can put a decent-sized sound system in and
    make it loud without hurting people. It's going to be a
    travelling radio show. So it will be like being in Radio KAOS
    with Jim Ladd providing links between all the songs, and my
    Bleeding Heart band being the live band inside the radio
    station. We hope to have a dialogue with the audience who'll be
    able to make calls to the stage from phone booths in the auditorium.

CS: What is the central theme of the Radio KAOS album?

RW: Included in this program is a map of the northern hemisphere,
    showing all the western listening devices, where they are and
    what they are, and including an exploded map of South Wales
    where BILLY, the main character, comes from, and an exploded
    map of LA, where he goes to. It's a bit like the map in the
    frontispiece of Winnie The Pooh, in that it has dotted lines
    showing Billy's route, where great-uncle David's house is, and
    where Radio KAOS is in Laurel Canyon. It is lend credence to
    the idea that in there somewhere is a story, if you care to 
    search for it.
    To answer your question of what the main themes of the record
    are, Ian Ritchie, who produced the record, is quite distressed
    that I didn't call it Home, which for a long time was the
    working title, because one of the things that the record is
    about is what home is. Is home keeping out of the weather?
    Being reasonably well fed? Being safe? Is home doing those
    things in the context of a family? We all think we understand
    what we mean by the idea of home. But is home the most
    important thing to a human being in the sense of belonging to a
    certain thing or person? Having that sense of security and the
    feeling you are not going to be moved on or blown to pieces?
    The feeling that you have the right to a continous existence
    within the context of the society to which you belong from the
    moment you are born to the moment you die in order to arrange
    yourself into a good shape to die in?
    I don't know. I know there is a utopian idea that the
    possibility exists for communities to exist where people try to
    look after one another, and co-operate with one another, in the
    hope that they can get from the cradle to the grave, and at
    some point along the way feel fulfilled. And that we can reduce
    the percentage possibility of some truly appalling trauma, be
    it the Bomb, AIDS, a minor invasion, or simply being told you 
    have no worth, we don't need you, piss off. I just feel we
    could be doing a lot better than we are if we off-load the idea
    that the only route to progress, the cause of human happiness,
    is competition.
    I'am concerned with the idea in this piece that rampant,
    unrestricted market forces are trampling over everybody's
    fucking lives and making the world a horrible place to live in
    and also increasing the potential risk of us all blowing
    ourselves up because we've become so frustrated in our efforts
    to compete with each other. Which is why I have great concerns
    about the proliferation of nuclear weapons and why I think it
    essential that Europe becomes a nuclear-free zone. Because one
    of these people who think they're not getting a fair slice of
    the cake is going to get hold of these weapons and fucking well
    let them off. What's Reagan going to do if one of his frigates
    is blown up by Gaddafi using a nuclear weapon? I hate to think.
    They've already gone out and quite happily bombed Tripoli. In
    the preamble to this record I talk about that, because one of
    the other parallel concerns in the record is the idea of
    politics as entertainment. The idea that by isolating the high-
    profile enemy like Gaddafi you can entertain the electorate
    into polling booths to put the X in the right place is what I
    call the soap opera of state.

CS: Your first record after Pink Floyd was The Pros And Cons Of 
    Hitchhiking. How did that sell?

RW: The record sold six hundred thousand copies. But the Hitchhiker
    tour sold appallingly in Europe. Even in London I had to use
    almost all the money in advertising to get people to buy
    tickets. I cancelled loads of shows. And my budget was based on
    selling out loads of shows. So I was about four hundred grand
    down at the end.

CS: You had that tax problem with the Pink Floyd. Did that
    severely hit you?

RW: Oh yes, It was a company called Norton Warburg, run by a guy
    called Andrew Warburg. The idea was to take gross income and
    run it through a finance company to protect it from the
    immediate payment of tax on the grounds that it was being used
    to finance venture capital situation. It was all legal. But
    what Norton Warburg did was to move money from account to 
    account and take huge management fees each time they moved it.
    We were going bankrupt. We lost a couple of million quid -
    nearly everything we'd made from Dark Side Of The Moon. Then we
    discovered the Inland Revenue might come and ask for us 83 per
    cent of the money we had lost. Which we didn't have.
    So we had gone from fourteen-years-olds with ten quid guitars
    and fantasies of being rich and famous, and made the dream come
    true with Dark Side Of The Moon, and then, being greedy and
    trying to protect it, we'd lost it all. So on those grounds we
    decided to go abroad to make the next record, The Wall, and try
    and get some cash to pay this potential tax bill. Mind you,
    Rick Wright left in the middle of that, in mid-1979. That was
    the decision of all three of us. I see that he's back with the
    others now, to make it all seem kosher, like a proper group.
    But he's on a wage.

CS: There was a story that I heard that was used to illustrate
    the differences between yourself and the rest of the Pink Floyd.
    Supposedly, during the making of The Wall, the rest of the
    members were in the studio somewhere, whilst you stood on a
    hill in the south of France, playing your instrument which was
    bounced by satellite into the studio.

RW: That's apocryphal, I'm afraid.

CS: You say you felt very satisfied after completing Dark Side Of
    The Moon and The Wall. But do you generally feel reasonably
    pleased with what you've done?

RW: I think Radio KAOS is some of the best stuff I've ever done.
    Pros And Cons was bitty. The Wall I was very happy with. The
    Final Cut was absolutely misery to make, although I listened to 
    it of late and I rather like a lot of it. But I don't like my
    singing on it. You can hear the mad tension running through it
    all. If you're trying to express something and being prevented
    from doing it because you're so uptight...It was a horrible
    time.
    We were all fighting like cats and dogs. We were finally
    realising - or accepting, if you like - that there was no band.
    It was really being thrust upon us that we were not a band and
    had not been in accord for a long time. Not since 1975, when we
    made Wish You Were Here. Even then there were big disagreements
    about content and how to put the record together.

CS: When did you realise it was finally the end?

RW: Well, there are those who contend it's not over, of course
    (laughs wryly). But making The Final Cut was misery. We
    didn't work together at all. I had to do it more or less
    single-handed, working with Michael Kamen, my co-producer.
    That's one of the few things that the 'boys' and I agreed
    about. But no-one alse would do anything on it.
    It sold three million copies, which wasn't a lot for
    the Pink Floyd. And as a consequence, Dave Gilmour went on
    record as saying, "There you go: I knew he was doing it wrong
    all along." But it's absolutely ridiculous to judge a record
    solely on sales. If you're going to use sales as the sole
    criterion, it makes Grease a better record than Graceland.
    Anyway, I was in a greengrocer's shop , and this woman of about
    forty in a fur coat came up to me. She said she thought it was
    the most moving record she had ever heard. Her father had also
    been killed in World War II, she explained. And I got back into 
    my car with my three pounds of potatoes and drove home and 
    thought, good enough.

CS: What was your favourite period of the Pink Floyd?

RW: It's hard to remember that far back. But I think probably pre-
    Dark Side Of The Moon. In those days it was a band. I'm sure
    that at that point we all agreed about the same things, like,
    We'll only play the new material. We won't play any of the old 
    material anymore. We'll only do this album and the one before,
    and that's it. There was a certain integrity and what was 
    important was the work. And that is still exactly how I feel
    now, although I do confess I do old tunes onstage now.
    Nevertheless I feel exactly the same about the work. I just
    don't (laughs) have to argue with anyone about it now.
    I can just get on with it.

CS: What is your artistic purpose?

RW: There is no purpose. We do whatever we do. You either blow your
    brains out or get on with something.


