Words by Riley Fitzgerald
Graphic by Press

“For me, personally it’s a very important song,” Roger Waters tells Rolling Stone.

“I wrote that when I was 29 years old,” he continues, “the bits in the song where it goes, ‘No one told you when to run/You missed the starting gun,’ it’s about my experience of being 29 years old and certainly going, ‘Fuck me. It’s the middle of life. I’ve been told that I was preparing for something.'”

“But suddenly I realized that I was aimless,” the Pink Floyd co-founder reflects. “The reason it’s a good song is because it describes the predicament of anybody who, growing up — if we’re grown up at all — suddenly realizes that time is going really, really fast. It makes you start to philosophize about life and what is important and how to derive joy from that.”

Waters, now 76, then offers a bit of wisdom. “Whether we should let the pigs and dogs spend all our energy trying to fuck other people and steal from them or whether we accept the truth of this fact: If you help another human being, it brings joy to your life,” he states. “And the act collectively brings more joy to your life than to act selfishly. It’s as simple as that.”

The full interview here.