Roger Waters explains the meaning of music as Pink Floyd founder suggests playing well is not necessary

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Playing instruments well is not necessary to make quality music, Roger Waters says, as he believes something else is much more important.

The veteran performer behind The Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall, and Amused to Death suggested it’s communication that matters most in music, not the quality of a performer’s instrumental abilities. Waters would joke that some of his critics pointed out his lack of professional training, a “fallacy” that had been “picked upon by my enemies”, though it didn’t matter all that much. Being able to act on music within the genre you want to create in was deemed much more important than being able to “play Chopin preludes” according to Waters. In an interview with Rocky Mountain News, the Pink Floyd bassist would confirm his thoughts on what it meant to be a professional musician, and the band that completely changed how he recorded music.

He said: “Just because you’re not a virtuoso guitar player doesn’t mean that you’re not a good musicians. It’s a sort of fallacy that has been picked upon by my enemies from time to time (laughs). Music is actually about communicating feelings to human beings.

“If you do that within the genre it doesn’t matter if you can’t play Chopin preludes on the piano. You’re still a musician.” Waters would also note the influence of The Band and their album, Music from Big Pink.

Waters added: “I always say to people the thing that changed everything for me was the Beatles and (The Band’s) Music From Big Pink. Music From Big Pink changed the whole way that musicians felt about recording. You can so hear how large a contribution (Helm) made.

“Obviously everyone in the band was great. Robbie (Robertson) wrote great songs. But Levon was for me the heart and soul of the thing. They were all great, Rick (Danko), Garth (Husdon) and Richard (Manuel), they were all fantastic.”

It comes as David Gilmour says he didn’t learn an iconic guitar solo from one of Pink Floyd’s best-known songs, instead preferring to improvise it from show to show. Gilmour would say the reason for his lack of instrumental preparation with Comfortably Numb is nothing more than wanting to excite himself in the moment.

He said: “I’m not thinking about the audience and what they want, to be honest. I just like it starting the way it starts, and the rest of it sort of so ingrained in me that the various parts of it are going to find their way into what I’m doing.”

“But I’ve never learned it. Yeah, I’ve never learned that guitar solo.” Gilmour would go a step further and say he’s not sure whether the song is more or less popular because of his guitar part. The former Pink Floyd member, who was frontman of the group following Roger Waters’ departure in 1985, suggested he isn’t sure which version people would rather here.

He explained: “I mean, there are a lot of guys who can play that. But I don’t play it. To me, it’s just different every time. I mean, why would I want to do it the same? Would it be more popular with the people listening if I did it exactly like the record?

“Or do they prefer that I just wander off into whatever feels like the right thing at the time? I don’t know. I suspect they like they prefer it to be real, and to be happening, you know? There are cues within it, which I use to tell the band, ‘We’re going to end’, or, ‘We’re going to do this.’ And so, they crop up as being the same every time, pretty much.”