The Pink Floyd song written about Roger Waters’ father(Credit: Alamy)
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Roger Waters names the only important singles he ever wrote: “That made any probably fair to say that Pink Floyd were not a singles band. Insistent on writing conceptual works that flowed from one song to another, or simply writing far too many songs that ran over the 20-minute mark, it never really felt appropriate to draw their songs away from the context of an album in favour of gaining chart success.
The success they had from releasing a consistent string of exceptional albums was enough, so why would the band ever feel any need to pander to a different audience by creating short and snappy radio-friendly songs if it meant abandoning their main principles as a band? This would have been the complete antithesis of everything that Pink Floyd stood for, but at the same time, they were hardly in a position to release the entirety of ‘Echoes’ in all its 23-minute glory in the traditional single format.
That said, they buckled under the pressure to put out a handful of singles during their career. While a number of these were from the early psychedelic period with Syd Barrett at the helm, they did opt to release a few after his departure, with some only being exclusively released in certain countries. However, the majority of these were not successful ventures into the charts, and the paltry amount of top 40 conquests that they achieved as a band only goes to highlight their apathy towards releasing music in this manner.
Bassist and songwriter Roger Waters was particularly disdainful towards the idea of releasing singles, and even after he chose to pursue a solo career following his departure from the band after the release of The Final Cut in 1983, he continued to evade the pursuit of chart success. Granted, his solo output was nowhere near as successful as the work he produced alongside his Pink Floyd bandmates, but a name the size of Waters is one that you’d imagine would still be able to reach the upper echelons if he tried.
On the promotional cycle for his second solo album, 1987’s Radio KAOS, Waters was interviewed by American journalist Chris Salewicz, where he was questioned on when he had last had a single release. Salewicz noted that “it must have been ‘Another Brick in the Wall’”, referring to the biggest single that Pink Floyd ever released as a group. However, Waters was quick to correct this mistruth, stating that it was ‘The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking’, which was taken from his 1984 solo album of the same name.
When a journalist isn’t even sure of the last single you released as an artist, whether a fan or just an avid researcher, it goes to show that this aspect of Waters’ and Pink Floyd’s output is one that is neglected not only by the artists but by the consumers themselves. Waters would go on to add that in addition to the hit from The Wall, “the only other significant single in my career was ‘Money’ from Dark Side Of The Moon. That was the only other one that made any impact at all.”
Singles really weren’t a big deal to him or his former bandmates, and he’d go on to note this later in the interview. “Our sense of snotty purity was so great that we wouldn’t even have a single out,” he laughed. “It was very uncool. That’s why we wouldn’t do it.” Clearly, by this point, he wasn’t quite as bothered by scoring cool points, and when he’d already had an illustrious career to feel proud of, who could blame him?
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Pink Floyd
Roger Waters
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