Roger Waters says two albums make him feel ‘relaxed’ by the success of The Dark Side of the Moon

Two albums which followed the release of The Dark Side of the Moon make Roger Waters feel “relaxed” by the success, he says.

The smash hit of Pink Floyd‘s 1973 release led to a series of as good albums from the group, including Wish You Were Here and Animals. But neither album was cited as a reason to feel “relaxed” by Waters, who says two much later releases proved there was life in him and the band yet. Speaking to TVNZ about the albums to follow The Dark Side of the Moon, Waters singled out two released which, to him, proved he could continue creating. Fans would likely agree with his choices and songs from both the albums in question are still part of Waters’ live shows. It would take eighteen years for Waters to feel “pretty relaxed” about the quality of his songwriting and the consistency of it, citing both The Wall and Amused to Death as the albums which made him comfortable with the success of The Dark Side of the Moon.

He said: “Maybe if it was the only one it would, but of course it was in 1973 or 4 and then there was The Wall in 1979, and that was much bigger than The Dark Side of the Moon and it’s probably just as well. Since then, I’ve done what I think is an important album of my own in 1992, called Amused to Death.

“So, no, really, at this point, I’m pretty relaxed about the whole thing. I’ve got tonnes of songs that I’ve written and half recorded and whatever, and there’s a couple more albums in the old dog yet, and I will make them at some point.

“But they need to be coherent in some way. I am stuck with my attachment to the idea that records being whole pieces of work that have a beginning and a middle and an end, so the concept album as it’s sometimes rather derisively called, is a format that I’m pretty well stuck with.”

Waters would release just four albums after Amused to Death. In 2005, he released Ça Ira, an opera recorded between 1988 and 2005. He followed this up with Is This the Life We Really Want?, Igor Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale, and a much-derided version of a Pink Floyd classic, The Dark Side of the Moon Redux.

Before the release of Amused to Death is arguably Waters’ strongest work as a solo artist, with both The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking and Radio K.A.O.S released in 1984 and 1987. He would also contribute songs to the soundtrack of Where the Wind Blows.

Waters would name The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall as half of the “big four” albums he was proud of making with Pink Floyd. He said: “Yeah, well, you know, those kind of classic albums from the middle years, The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish you Were Here, The Wall, whatever, Animals maybe, they do seem to have stood the test of time, and they do seem to have affected successive generations in a way… you know, in a good way.”