Roger Waters would wait for ‘glazed-over’ feeling to start writing music on two instruments

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The songwriting process differs for every artist, but Roger Waters says he would wait for a “glazed-over” feeling that would overwhelm his senses. It marked a unique process, with the Pink Floyd frontman submerging himself in a bathtub to get himself in the mood for music. He outlined the songwriting process when speaking of his departure from the band and how Pink Floyd had peaked all too early.

Waters would also say he needed to take an active role in the songwriting process and that there was a need to switch off and clear his mind before he began the writing process. He also tipped off two instruments which served him best of all when writing songs, and that they were the most helpful for his work.

He said: “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.”

Waters would go on to say that he could write at almost any time of day, but that it was beyond the realm of possiblity for him to note anything down in the latter stages of the day. He explained: “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.”

The veteran songwriter would go on to suggest that he was not as competent a songwriter as his ex-bandmate, Syd Barrett. Waters would write some of the band’s very best work, including The Wall, The Dark Side of the Moon, and Wish You Were Here.

But even those highlights proved to be a very different sound from what Barrett had provided the group with The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Barrett was hailed by Waters in an interview where the Another Brick in the Wall hitmaker outlined the crucial differences between the two songwriting styles.

Waters said: “”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.”