George
Roger Waters was born on 6th September, 1943, in
Great Bookham, Cambridge. He attended the Cambridge
High School For Boys and, later on, the Regent Street
Polytechnic, where he studied Architecture and met Nick
Mason and Rick Wright. A few artists showed a cloudy
and depressed vision of the modern society like him.
Many of his songs are about the Second World War, where
his father, Eric Fletcher Waters (to whom "The
Final Cut" was dedicated) died during the British
invasion of Anzio, Italy.
Roger Waters started playing in the
group "The Abdabs" (1965), which later evolved
to Pink Floyd. After the absence of Syd Barrett, he
gradually began to take more control over the Floyd's
lyrics, until "The Dark Side of The Moon",
where all lyrics are his. This continued through "Wish
You Were Here", and "Animals", until
"The Wall", where he began to take control
over the music side too. For "The Final Cut",
its often been said that the album is almost totally
"his own work".
After The Final Cut, Roger left the
band, and expected the others to do likewise, but was
surprised to find them wanting to carry it on. In the
mid 80s, he engaged in a protracted legal battle, arguing
that the other members of Pink Floyd could not continue
using the name without him in the band. A few law suits
were involved, but resulted in Roger getting not as
much as he expected.
He continued with his solo career,
with two quite successful solo ventures (The Pro's and
Con's Of Hitch Hiking and Radio KAOS) and recently "revived"
The Wall in Berlin for charity. He has done two collaboration
pieces, one with Ron Geesin, and one with various other
artists, the film soundtrack to When The Wind Blows.
His most recent work, Amused to Death, was not the sales
success it was hoped it would be, despite its commercial
hype. This was to the great disappointment of many of
his fans, who thought that Amused To Death was his best
work yet. In 1999/2000 he went on a long United States
tour and the results of it were In the Flesh, a double
CD set, that was released in December, 2000, and a DVD
has been released in 2001.
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