The 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” We’re breaking it down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85 days!
That sound. That unending sub-bass thrum, vibrating through bones and brain and soul as Pink Floyd‘s song “Welcome to the Machine” opens. It is the sound of dread, the sound of not-too-distant madness inescapably approaching; it may well be the sound of Cthulhu’s first eyelid opening. While it took several exceptional musicians to breathe life into the psychedelic musical innovations of Pink Floyd, songwriter ROGER WATERS (1944- ) stands at the forefront of the band’s most enduring and influential weirdness — for instance, his screenplay for the hallucinatory experience that is the film version of The Wall, brain-eating worms and all. And then there’s fact that Waters made the band perform The Wall live from behind an actual wall. Freak-o…
Actually, Waters’ screenplay for the film was ten pages of rather roughly scribbled notes, with the final result being pretty much Alan Parker’s imagination running riot with the album. As it stands, Waters’ work has essentially been about resolving the mix of his absent-Daddy issues (well, Dead Daddy) and his disopprobrium with Authority, mainly as represented by the military side that he blames for the loss of his father. As far as his lyrics go, he’s not all that good; Leonard Cohen delivers deeper weirdness and more coherence than Waters any day of the week.
The true bizarre heart of the Floyd was Syd Barrett.
I must disagree, as I find Waters to be a superior lyricist during his time with Pink Floyd and if anything, it is Cohen who I find less coherent (Cohen is fine, I just fail to see how say, “Hallelujah” is any more coherent than say, “Wish You Were Here”). Barrett himself I do not find particularly interesting as a musician or lyricist.
The example I usually give is the refrain from “Another Brick in the Wall” where in each part, the phrase grows in its sense of anger, blame and resentment, despite starting off at a very bleak point:
“All in all it was just a brick in the wall
All in all it was all just bricks in the wall”
To:
“All in all it’s just another brick in the wall
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.”
To:
“All in all it was all just bricks in the wall
All in all you were all just bricks in the wall.”
The degree to which these parts of the same work interact with each other and flow from one to the other is something not often seen in music today, and usually not seen at all unless you’re looking for it.
I bow down humbly in the presence of such greatness.