Roger Waters says he has ‘no artistic purpose’ but had to ‘get on with something’ after Pink Floyd

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While he would leave the band he founded in 1985, Roger Waters kept on working on new music despite not having any “purpose” or reason to do so.

Waters’ departure from Pink Floyd is as acrimonious a split as it gets, with David Gilmour, Richard Wright, and Nick Mason continuing on without the long-serving bassist. It would not be the end of either Pink Floyd or Waters when he left the group, with A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell releasing after The Final Cut. The 1983 album would mark Waters’ last studio collaboration with Pink Floyd, and his decision to leave led to a series of solo works that vary in quality. The bulk of his discography is solid, with Waters even suggesting one album is better than a bulk of the work he did with Pink Floyd, but it and the rest of his albums were born out of a need to do something with his time.

He said in 1987: “There is no purpose. We do whatever we do. You either blow your brains out or get on with something.” Waters’ rather macabre view of his solo works coincided with a bit of praise for himself in later interviews, where he compared the likes of Radio K.A.O.S. to Pink Floyd projects.

Despite the quality releases from the group, Waters believes that one of his solo albums is close to his greatest achievement. He explained as much when he was asked about where Radio K.A.O.S. and Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking ranked in his discography with Pink Floyd.

The ranking comes as quite a surprise, with Waters suggesting that Radio K.A.O.S. is up there with “the best stuff I’ve ever done.” It seems to have trumped his work on Animals and Wish You Were Here, while matching up to the quality of The Wall.

Waters said: “I think Radio KAOS is some of the best stuff I’ve ever done. Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking was bitty. The Wall I was very happy with. The Final Cut was absolute misery to make, although I listened to it of late and I rather like a lot of it. But I don’t like my singing on it. You can hear the mad tension running through it all. If you’re trying to express something and being prevented from doing it because you’re so uptight…It was a horrible time.”

Audience numbers dropped massively for Waters at the time too, who made the most of a bad situation and says he appreciated the smaller-scale shows he could put on as a solo artist.

He explained: “There were times… like when I was in Cincinnati, and I was playing to a half-empty arena, 3,000 people in a 6,000-capacity venue, and Pink Floyd were playing to 80,000 people the next night – this was the Radio Kaos tour, it was 1987. 

“I felt like Henry the Fifth, ‘We happy few, we band of brothers. For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother’, meaning that because there are only a few of them there, it is sweeter. Because of the camaraderie. And there was definitely that feeling from the 3,000 people that were there.”