"But I have a quite steep learning curve, and it doesn't take me very long to catch on to what's going on. It came as an enormous shock to me that the public at large, and the record-buying public in particular, didn't associate me with any Pink Floyd stuff. "It would be nice if a million people rushed out and bought the record," he says, "but I learned a big and somewhat painful lesson with 'Pros and Cons.' Not that it was the kind of record that was ever going to be an enormous commercial success, but I was surprised by the complete lack of interest. So it's not surprising that Roger Waters, 43 and still intensely protective of his private life, is a little perplexed by his diminishing returns, though he insists it concerns him "only up to a point. "There's a price to pay for everything, but I think the pros have outweighed the cons." Still, it makes you wonder if people were paying attention to just who was doing just what in Pink Floyd. Pink Floyd kept a low media profile over the years - interviewed about as often as Howard Hughes, more frequently a critical target than subject - and Waters concedes that may have been a drawback. A new Waters-less Pink Floyd album, "A Momentary Lapse of Reason," hits the stores next week and will probably shoot to the top of the charts. Meanwhile, the Waters-less Pink Floyd - guitarist David Gilmour, drummer Nick Mason and keyboardist Rick Wright - are well on their way to selling out a four-night stand at Cap Centre in late October and sold all 180,000 seats for three September shows in Toronto. His most recent album, "Radio K.A.O.S.," is only in the 60s on the Billboard chart and the new world tour, complete with a stunning multimedia stage show by Fisher and Park, has not been selling out at arenas like Philadelphia's Spectrum or the Capital Centre, where Waters and his new Bleeding Hearts Band play tonight. Waters' subsequent solo effort, however ("The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking," a muddled concept album about sexual politics), sold only 600,000 copies, and a world tour (with an expansive production designed by Mark Fisher and Jonathan Park, who also did Pink Floyd's "Animals" and "The Wall" tours) was ill attended. Which should have been the end of one story and the beginning of another. PHILADELPHIA - Roger Waters knows what's in a name - and that a Floyd by any other name won't sell as sweet.Īs the conceptual visionary, principal songwriter, singer and bassist for Pink Floyd for 16 years, Waters was used to stadium sellouts, instant platinum record sales and the attention of Floydophiles around the world, a still-expanding universe that has bought more than 60 million Pink Floyd albums and has kept one of them, 1973's "Dark Side of the Moon," on the pop charts for an astounding 692 consecutive weeks (and counting).īut after years of escalating intraband tensions, Waters left Pink Floyd in 1983.
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