Roger Waters says one Pink Floyd song is based on ‘dark and desperate moments’ in his life

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Where many of the songs from Pink Floyd were a glimpse into Roger Waters‘ personal life, one spotlighted a “dark and desperate” moment.

The bassist would confirm One of My Turns from The Wall is a reflection on when he was left bouncing “off the walls” when his first wife left him. Waters married Judith Trim in 1969, though the pair divorced in 1975. Though the pair were together when The Dark Side of the Moon was released, Waters would say the “beginnings of the end of that marriage” occurred in the summer of 1974. Speaking with radio host Jim Ladd during a celebration of The Wall, Waters confirmed the break-up with his first wife was a devastating moment which he reflected on by using the character of Pink on the album. Ladd asked: “One of my Turns, in the original, because now I have to think of the broader interpretation of it…

“In the original, this is where we start to get a glimpse of Pink’s dark side. He’s starting to have a moment here. Did you ever go through a moment like this?” Waters confirmed he had experienced this before to some extent.

He said: “Yeah I had some pretty dark and desperate moments. Some of the story, a lot of the story, relates directly to what was going on in my life. When the first wife left over the phone, I was devastated, and I just sort of bounced off the walls for quite some time.”

Waters would also use The Wall to come to terms with the death of his father during the Second World War. He told Ladd: “Yeah, it’s an issue that’s been resolved in my mind. Though, I confess, I’m in my 60s now, I tear up less often than I did when I was a kid, or a teenager, or in my 20s.

“Nevertheless, I experience the loss of my father more in terms of empathetic reactions that I have to other people who are experiencing the same thing that I did when I was a little kid in the same way. So I think that my father stays with me in my reaction to the senseless loss that is engendered by the wars that we’re not quite sure really what they’re for. 

“I mean, I hear that song almost every day now because we’re working on visuals for the show right now. So when I hear that song, I don’t actually think about me at all, or my father, I think about what’s going on now.”

Despite the hang-ups Waters had to deal with when making The Wall, he was certain it was going to be a hit album. He said: “I remember when we finished it off, thinking it would be a huge hit. I honestly don’t know why. I just did. It had a lot of class, but it was also deeply appealing. And of course, Money was seriously embraced by the AM radio; the cash register thing struck a chord.

“But I like to think there’s a political dimension of honesty about the whole record that gives it a flavour of truth. That’s also a contributing factor to its longevity. People understand immediately when they hear it that there’s nothing contrived about it.”