91 Blinco Grove, Cambridge CB1 7TX, United Kingdom
Waters attended Morley Memorial Junior School in Cambridge.
College/University
Gallery of Roger Waters
Hills Rd, Cambridge CB2 8PE, United Kingdom
Roger Waters studied at the Cambridgeshire High School for Boys (now Hills Road Sixth Form College)
Gallery of Roger Waters
Search Results 4–12 Little Titchfield St, Fitzrovia, London W1W 7BY, United Kingdom
Roger Waters studied at the Regent Street Polytechnic (later the University of Westminster) school of architecture.
Career
Gallery of Roger Waters
1965
Roger Waters, Nick Mason, Syd Barrett and Richard Wright.
Gallery of Roger Waters
1967
London, England, United Kingdom
Pink Floyd's Nick Mason, Rick Wright, Syd Barrett And Roger Waters pose outside EMI House in London.
Gallery of Roger Waters
1968
Los Angeles, United States
Pink Floyd pose for a portrait shrouded in pink in August of 1968 in Los Angeles.
Gallery of Roger Waters
1970
Woodhouse, Leeds LS2 9JT, United Kingdom
Waters performing with Pink Floyd at Leeds University in 1970.
Gallery of Roger Waters
1971
Pink Floyd in 1971; this picture was used on the inside cover of the album Meddle.
Gallery of Roger Waters
1980
David Gilmour (Dave Gilmour) and Roger Waters at the mic performing live onstage during The Wall concert.
Gallery of Roger Waters
1990
Berlin, Germany
Roger Waters performs The Wall in Berlin, with Ute Lemper and Jerry Hall, to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall eight months earlier.
Gallery of Roger Waters
2005
Hyde Park, London, England, United Kingdom
Dave Gilmour, Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Rick Wright on stage at Live 8 in Hyde Park, London.
Gallery of Roger Waters
2006
Jåttåvågveien 11A, 4020 Stavanger, Norway
Waters playing "In the Flesh" on his Dark Side of the Moon Tour at Viking Stadion, Stavanger, 26 June 2006.
Gallery of Roger Waters
2009
Gendarmenmarkt, 10117 Berlin, Germany
Klaus Meine, Rudolf Schenker and Matthias Jabs of the band the Scorpions and Roger Waters attend the "Cinema For Peace Berlin 2009" during the 59th Berlin International Film Festival at the Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt on February 9, 2009, in Berlin, Germany.
Gallery of Roger Waters
2010
Paris, France
Roger Waters performs in Paris, part of a series of shows celebrating the 30th anniversary of The Wall.
Gallery of Roger Waters
2010
Waters performing "Comfortably Numb" during The Wall Live in Kansas City, 30 October 2010.
Gallery of Roger Waters
2013
Roger Waters and his son Harry.
Gallery of Roger Waters
2014
Roger attends commemorations for his father.
Gallery of Roger Waters
2018
Olympic Blvd, Melbourne VIC 3001, Australia
Roger Waters played Rod Laver Arena Melbourne on Saturday 10 February 2018.
Klaus Meine, Rudolf Schenker and Matthias Jabs of the band the Scorpions and Roger Waters attend the "Cinema For Peace Berlin 2009" during the 59th Berlin International Film Festival at the Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt on February 9, 2009, in Berlin, Germany.
George Roger Waters is an English songwriter, singer, bassist, and composer, best known as one of the founders of the progressive rock band Pink Floyd. He was the driving force of the band behind albums Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, The Wall, and The Final Cut.
Background
Roger Waters was born on September 6, 1943, the younger of two boys, to Mary (née Whyte; 1913–2009) and Eric Fletcher Waters (1914–1944), in Great Bookham, Surrey. His father, the son of a coal miner and Labour Party activist, was a schoolteacher, a devout Christian, and a Communist Party member. In the early years of the Second World War, Waters' father was a conscientious objector who drove an ambulance during the Blitz.
Waters' father later changed his stance on pacifism, joined the Territorial Army and was commissioned into the 8th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers as a Second Lieutenant on 11 September 1943. He was killed five months later on 18 February 1944 at Aprilia, during the Battle of Anzio, when Roger was five months old. Following her husband's death, Mary Waters, also a teacher, moved with her two sons to Cambridge and raised them there. Waters' earliest memory is of the V-J Day celebrations.
Education
Waters attended Morley Memorial Junior School in Cambridge and then the Cambridgeshire High School for Boys (now Hills Road Sixth Form College) with Syd Barrett, while future Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour lived nearby on Mill Road and attended the Perse School. At 15, Waters was chairman of the Cambridge Youth Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (YCND), having designed its publicity poster and participated in its organisation. He was a keen sportsman and a highly regarded member of the high school's cricket and rugby teams. Waters was unhappy at school, saying: "I hated every second of it, apart from games. The regime at school was a very oppressive one ... the same kids who are susceptible to bullying by other kids are also susceptible to bullying by the teachers."
Whereas Waters knew Barrett and Gilmour from his childhood in Cambridge, he met future Pink Floyd founder members Nick Mason and Richard Wright in London at the Regent Street Polytechnic (later the University of Westminster) school of architecture. Waters enrolled there in 1962, after a series of aptitude tests indicated he was well-suited to that field. He had initially considered a career in mechanical engineering.
While pursuing his studies, Waters took up the guitar, and within a year he had joined a group called the Sigma 6, with Mason, Wright, vocalist Keith Noble and bass player Clive Metcalfe. Noble and Metcalfe soon left the group, which went through various other iterations and names, including the Abdabs, the Screaming Abdabs, Leonard’s Lodgers, Spectrum Five and the Tea Set. By 1966, Syd Barrett had joined the group, which had finally settled on the name Pink Floyd.
With Barrett serving as its frontman and primary songwriter, Pink Floyd’s sonic explorations and hallucinogenic light shows began to win them a significant following in the emerging psychedelic scene. They quickly signed to EMI Columbia and in 1967 released their first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Now considered among the most important and influential albums of the era, Piper featured such classics as Interstellar Overdrive, Astronomy Domine and Lucifer Sam, as well the only Waters-penned track, Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk. Though the album would only scratch the surface of the charts in the U.S., it reached the Top Ten in the U.K.
But, despite Pink Floyd’s budding success, by the time they had release their sophomore offering, A Saucerful of Secrets (1968), Barrett’s steadily deteriorating mental health had led to his departure from the group. He was replaced by his longtime friend David Gilmour, who would serve as both vocalist and guitarist in the group’s new incarnation. For his part, Barrett embarked on a brief solo career before choosing to live in seclusion until his death decades later.
Despite Barrett’s departure, over the next 15 years, Pink Floyd would record some of the most important and lasting albums of the era. Initially continuing in the chaotic, psychedelic vein for which they had become known, with 1969’s Ummagumma and 1970’s Atom Heart Mother, Pink Floyd changed course with the 1971 album Meddle, which featured the mellower, more commercial, more ambient sound that would characterize much of the group’s future work. This new sound was accompanied by a greater focus on their live shows as well, which included steadily more elaborate light shows and sets.
As the group’s popularity grew, so too did Waters’s control over its creative direction. He was the primary conceptual architect for 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon, for which he also wrote most of the music and all of the lyrics. Featuring classics such as “Money,” “Breathe” and “Us and Them,” the album was a breakout hit reaching No. 2 in the U.K. and No. 1 in the U.S. Remaining on the charts for more than a decade, it would eventually go multiplatinum and become one of the best-selling albums of all time.
Pink Floyd followed on the heels of Dark Side with 1975’s Wish You Were Here, which was also penned primarily by Waters. In part a tribute to former bandmate Syd Barrett, it featured the tracks “Shine on You Crazy Diamond,” as well as the popular title song, and further established Pink Floyd’s rock stardom, topping the charts in both the U.S. and U.K.
Their next album, Animals - based loosely on George Orwell’s Animal Farm—was less accessible than Pink Floyd’s previous offerings but still topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. However, despite their growing success, which now saw the band playing to stadium-size crowds, tensions among its members were beginning to grow as well.Channeling those tensions and his feelings of ambivalence toward Pink Floyd’s stardom, Waters developed the concept for their next album, the rock opera double-album The Wall, which featured the semi-autobiographical character Pink and his experiences in a repressive dystopian society. Released in 1979, the album featured the No. 1 single “Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2” and standout tracks such as “Comfortably Numb,” The Wall topped the charts around the world and would go on to achieve multiplatinum status internationally as well. Along with Dark Side of the Moon, it remains one of Pink Floyd’s best-known and best-selling albums.
The success of the album would also lead to an equally popular and critically successful movie. Released in 1982 and directed by Alan Parker, Pink Floyd - The Wall was written by Waters and starred British musician Bob Geldof in the role of Pink.
But these continued successes did little to resolve issues within the band, and Wright left the group. Shortly after releasing their 1983 album The Final Cut, Waters declared Pink Floyd “a spent force” and in 1984, he released his first solo album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking - which featured Eric Clapton on guitar - and began touring. The album and the tour were poorly received, however, and Waters lost more than $600,000 on the endeavor.
Waters officially left the group in 1985, and the following year he initiated a legal battle to prevent the remaining members from using the name Pink Floyd. Waters ultimately lost the case, and Gilmour, Wright and Mason continued to tour and record successfully as Pink Floyd. However, Waters did manage to retain full rights to The Wall.
Carrying on his solo efforts, Waters recorded several songs for the soundtrack of the animated featured When the Wind Blows (1986), which also featured contributions by David Bowie, Paul Hardcastle and Squeeze. The following year, Waters released his second album, Radio K.A.O.S., which fared somewhat better than its predecessor, peaking at No. 25 in the U.K. and No. 50 in the U.S.
In 1990, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Waters mined his earlier work by staging “The Wall - Live in Berlin,” an elaborate charity concert that included performances by Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Cyndi Lauper, Bryan Adams and Sinéad O’Connor, as well as an East German orchestra, a Soviet marching band and U.S. military helicopters. It was attended by hundreds of thousands of concertgoers, and more than 1 billion more watched the television broadcast.
Waters then turned his attention back to new work, releasing Amused to Death in 1992, which featured contributions by guitarist Jeff Beck and vocal appearances by Don Henley. Amused proved to be Waters’s most successful solo album to date, reaching the Top Ten in the U.K. and No. 21 in the U.S.
In 1996, Pink Floyd was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but Waters boycotted the event, due to lingering resentments between him and his former bandmates. Several years later he embarked on a lengthy run of tour dates, at which he played both his solo work and Pink Floyd material. Indeed, much of Waters’s career since has found him vacillating between new projects and reimaginings of earlier endeavors.
In 2004, Waters was heavily involved in a 2004 Broadway adaptation of The Wall and also recorded two new antiwar songs, “To Kill the Child” and “Leaving Beirut.” In 2005, Waters released his first studio album in more than a decade, a three-act opera about the French Revolution titled Ça Ira, and later that same year reunited with Pink Floyd to perform a brief set at the Live 8 benefit concert in London.
The reunion was as brief as their set that night, however, and in 2006 Waters struck out on his own once more for a two-year tour featuring The Dark Side of the Moon. It was so successful that in 2013 he toured The Wall as well, to equally lucrative results. Two years later The Wall was the subject of a documentary film, and in 2016 a new, surround-sound version of Amused to Death won a Grammy Award.
On 16 February 2017, Waters announced his fourth solo album, Is This the Life We Really Want?. It was released on 2 June 2017, his first solo album since Amused to Death almost 25 years earlier. The album was produced by Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich; Godrich was critical of Waters' earlier solo work, and encouraged him to make a concise album showcasing his lyrics.
Waters was raised in a Christian family, but he became an atheist. He is an outspoken critic of religion and its negative affects on the human race as a whole.
Politics
Waters is very active politically. His political activism, at least the bits of it that are publicized, seems to revolve around the environment and Israel. His position on both these issues would make the conservative right in America cringe, which is why he would easily be classified as liberal. He has said of American politics: "I watch the workings of politics [in the US] and particularly the Republican Party. They work with the axiom that you can tell as many lies as you want – and often the bigger the better – and eventually they will believe."
Views
In June 2007, Waters became a spokesman for Millennium Promise, a non-profit organisation that helps fight extreme poverty and malaria. He wrote an opinion piece for CNN in support of the topic. In July, he participated in the American leg of the Live Earth concert, an international multi-venue concert aimed at raising awareness about global climate change, featuring the Trenton Youth Choir and his trademarked inflatable pig.
Quotations:
"I'm in competition with myself and I'm losing."
"I always used to look at books and wonder how anybody could come up with so many words. But my divorce and then falling in love with somebody else has released in me an ability to write in other ways apart from songs."
"I could have been an architect, but I don't think I'd have been very happy. Nearly all modern architecture is a silly game as far as I can see."
"Who is the strongest, who is the best, who holds the aces, the East or the West. This is the crap our children are learning."
"All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be."
"I think there are things in my story that have helped my creativity. Your father being killed, for instance, is one of the best things that could happen to a kid if he's going to write poetry or songs."
"Everybody's got somewhere they call home."
"Envy is the bond between the hopeful and the damned."
"But that's not to say that the potential for the sun to shine doesn't exist. You know? Walk down the path towards the light, rather than walk into the darkness."
Membership
Roger Waters is a member of "Millennium Promise."
Millennium Promise
Personality
Waters has a reputation for being overbearing. Nick Mason, Pink Floyd’s drummer, wrote in his autobiography: "Once he sees a confrontation as necessary he is so grimly committed to winning that he throws everything into the fray – and his everything can be pretty scary." Gerald Scarfe, The Wall’s illustrator, has described Waters (admiringly) as a "megalomaniac."
Physical Characteristics:
Roger had dark brown hair previously.
Quotes from others about the person
Dave Kilminster: "He's funny as hell, incredibly intelligent, sharp witted and a great story teller. He's also amazing with accents. When Ian Richie played saxophone with us on the Dark Side tour, he used to say that Roger's Scottish accent was better than his... and he's Scottish!"
Interests
Sport & Clubs
cricket, rugby, Arsenal
Connections
In 1969, Waters married his childhood sweetheart Judy Trim, a successful potter. They had no children and divorced in 1975. Trim died in 2001.
In 1976, Waters married Lady Carolyne Christie, the niece of the 3rd Marquess of Zetland. His marriage to Christie produced a son, Harry Waters, a musician who has played keyboards with his father's touring band since 2002, and a daughter, India Waters, who has worked as a model. Christie and Waters divorced in 1992. In 1993, Waters married Priscilla Phillips; they had one son, Jack Fletcher. Their marriage ended in 2001. In 2004, Waters became engaged to actress and filmmaker Laurie Durning (born 1963); the two married on 14 January 2012 and filed for divorce in September 2015.