Roger Waters: Concepts, Conflict, and Control

From Pink Floyd Architect to Polemicist: Concepts, Control, and the Cost of Authorship

De: Caius D. Merrow

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Roger Waters has never been content to play the role of bassist. Across six decades, he became one of rock’s fiercest architects of sound and meaning, building albums as systems and concerts as confrontations. Roger Waters: Concepts, Conflict, and Control traces his journey from Cambridge childhood and the loss of his father in World War II to his rise as Pink Floyd’s commanding voice, the architect behind The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, The Wall, and The Final Cut.

This book dives deep into the machinery of authorship that defined Waters’s career. It follows the collapse of Syd Barrett, the growing dominance of Waters’s conceptual vision, and the unprecedented scale of Floyd’s 1970s experiments. It examines the fractures—creative, personal, and legal—that split the band, leading to Waters’s acrimonious departure in 1985 and the courtroom battles that followed.

Beyond Pink Floyd, the narrative captures Waters’s solo projects—The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking, Radio K.A.O.S., and Amused to Death—as well as his colossal live productions, from The Wall – Live in Berlin in 1990 to the record-breaking Wall revival tour in the 2010s. It explores his late-career radicalization, his outspoken politics, and his role as one of music’s most polarizing dissenting voices.

With historian’s precision and cultural analysis, this book gives readers both a visceral sense of Waters’s concerts—the roar of the crowd, the hum of amps, the walls literally rising on stage—and a clear understanding of the battles over authorship, control, and meaning that shaped his career. For fans of Pink Floyd, students of rock history, and readers interested in the collision of art, power, and politics, this is the definitive account of Waters’s uncompromising legacy