When Good Albums Happen to Bad People: Roger Waters, “Amused to Death”
Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 by Matthew Bolin
You probably won’t be surprised when I tell you that this has been the hardest post for me to write since Popdose started. I mean, it’s been a damn month: what’s the holdup? Well, the truth is I discovered it is a lot easier to write about straight-up criminals like the members of Mötley Crüe, or hardcore divas like Diana Ross, than smug, pretentious assholes like today’s subject, Roger Waters. Simply put, it’s rather entertaining to write about individuals in the former categories. To write about Waters, however, is as trying a task as actually listening to his solo work in an attempt to find if any of them are worth talking about in this column. But I was able to find a good one, or a “good” one, depending on one’s ability to stomach conceptual prog joints. First though, a refresher on Herr Waters’ crimes of pomposity.
-Waters became the default main writer in Pink Floyd after Syd Barrett’s descent into mental illness, apparently exacerbated by a horrible LSD experience. And while Waters often spoke about how he wished to find and kill the man who gave Syd bad acid, this level of care did not apply to the addictions of other members of the band. Waters made the unilateral decision to fire founding Floyd member and keyboardist Richard Wright during sessions for The Wall, when he deemed Wright’s addictions too much of a distraction. Then, as an added slap in the face, he hired Wright back as a session musician to complete the album and go on the abbreviated Wall tour. In other words, Wright was not messed up enough that his talents couldn’t be used, but was messed up just enough that Waters wished to symbolically disassociate himself from him. Charming.
-More than just the main lyricist, Waters made himself de facto leader of the Floyd, taking complete creative control of the direction of the group. This culminated in refusing to put any Gilmour’s songs in 1983’s The Final Cut, then leaving the group after its release and declaring them over, with that album as their final, definitive statement, as if the rest of Pink Floyd really wanted to have their last album be a de facto Waters solo album: The record jacket even said “The Final Cut by Roger Waters, performed by Pink Floyd.” Waters then sued the other members of Pink Floyd to stop them from carrying on under that name after he left the group. His defense was that Pink Floyd should not be allowed to continue because he was the creative leader of the band, and additionally there remained only one original member (Nick Mason) who wanted to carry on. In other words, though Gilmour had been the musical centerpiece of the group for two decades, he was still nothing more to Waters than a hired hand to replace Syd Barrett, so f-all what he wanted. (more…)



When thinking about Rick James nowadays, it seems easy to slip into one of two moods: One is the enjoyment of the way Dave Chappelle satirized his life so humorously, making the phrases “I’m Rick James, bitch!” and “Cocaine’s a hell of a drug” part of the pop culture vernacular for umpteen months. The other is a sense of pity and sadness at a man who was cut down before his time, first by a stroke in 1998, then by death itself in 2004 at age 56.
[Note: Tom Werman, the producer discussed in this post, has disputed several elements of the story. To read his response,
It seems almost mind-blowing to think this now, but at the end of the 1980s there was no bigger star in the pop sky than Bobby Brown:
Berry Gordy is a powerful man. Not only did he found Motown Records, building a musical empire that allowed blacks to crossover into what had pretty much been a white-controlled music industry, but almost as amazing, he was able to convince a young Diana Ross that her crap doesn’t stink, and she has not deviated from that belief one iota over the past 45 or so years. In an industry of big egos, the one belonging to Miss Ross (remember, she must be addressed as such or you will be thrown out — and don’t you dare look her in the eyes!) is likely the biggest, and she has wielded it to not only obtain her huge success, but to build herself into a prick so immense that it would make porn stars gasp. Here are but a few examples of Miss Ross in action:
“That’s Leonard’s Jeep,” Robert said as we walked his dog past the monastery. My wife and I had driven north about ten miles, most of it curving two-thirds of the way up Mt. Baldy, to watch my professor’s cabin while he was away on a business trip. The most important part of the job was to make sure his old dog, Toby, was looked after, and walked twice a day. As he showed us the normal route that Toby liked to go, he pointed over to the Buddhist monastery right across the street, halfway between his cabin and the public campgrounds. There were a few vehicles outside the building, all of them likely part-time visitors who would come up for a few days at a time to gain peace and wisdom at the feet of the monks. Among the vehicles there was a silver Jeep, which was likely bought by the unofficial Poet Laureate of Canada to make his nearly-weekly trips from Los Angeles to Baldy, trying to shake a depression, a “cloud” that had settled over him sometime in the early 1990s, and had literally kept him unable to create anything new, either on the page or in the studio, for nearly a decade.
The theme to Moonlighting (1985-1989) was one of those great TV theme songs that was able to set the mood for the program that followed it. In
Rod Stewart’s 1991 cover of Robbie Robertson’s “Broken Arrow”
It is an inescapable fact that while George Michael left Andrew Ridgeley far behind in his rearview mirror, and while the Faith album proved Michael was capable of being the British Prince — writing, playing, and producing virtually everything, and doing it well — a certain craving for musical partnership has kept him coming back to collaboration time and time again. You can definitely see it here in the tracks connected to this, the fifth and final post of my All Wham! weekend.
When I was 17 years old, I had my first serious makeout session. When George Michael was 17, he wrote the song that has arguably led to more makeout and baby-making sessions than any other ’80s song: “
Popdose represents the coming together of a veritable who's who of music bloggers and an ever-expanding roster of writers who've made it their mission to experience the best and worst in pop culture — from music to movies, TV, and books, with a dash of current events thrown in for good measure — so you don't have to. Popdose delivers coverage both in-depth (the all-encompassing