Words by Riley Fitzgerald
Graphic by Press

“We dreamt the dream,” Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters shares in a new interview with The Global Consortium for Sustainable Peace, “and then we lived it…. for a bit”

“We went to see a pop concert at the Gaumont State [Theatre] in Kilburn,” he continues, “I can’t remember who the headliner was, but the Rolling Stones were on [the bill].”

Waters and Barrett, still attending Cambridgeshire High School for Boys together, were left inspired.

“Going home to Cambridge after, we started drawing the band and what we would have,” Waters recounts, “Syd and I had it completely figured out. I remember sitting there and doing these drawings with him. We made an agreement that when were both at college in London we’d start a band together.”

Rogers, having arrived first, formed an outfit that counted future Pink Floyd members Nick Mason and Rick Wright amongst its ranks.

“He came up a year or two after me and moved into an apartment I had with Rick and Nick,” Roger adds.  “And that was sort of the start of  it.”

“[Syd] was full of ideas,” he then states, “and deeply attached to the west coast experimental stuff that as going on with Love and other bands. And the rest is history.”

When Syd left, Waters was thrust into the role of the band’s chief creative visionary.

“It was sink or swim,” he reflects, “David might have a different opinion this, but a band can only survive if somebody is writing.”

In the interview, over an hour in length, Waters also breaks down the moments that inspired Pink Floyd to create The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall as well as later exiting the band, contending: “I left because it was completely impossible to continue,”

He also reveals he is working on a memoir.

The full interview here.