I have loved Pink Floyd since I was ten years old. At 56, I remain a devotee, especially of the frisson-and-trance-inducing body of work they produced from 1966 through 1975. I love the playful prodromal psychosis of Syd Barrett’s Floyd in songs such as “See Emily Play,” the terrifying grandeur of “Careful with That Axe, Eugene,” the mythic quality and vicious groove of “Echoes,” the strange, uneven beauty of the rest of Meddle, and the acid-rock obscurity of Obscured by Clouds. I could continue in this vein for quite a while, but you don’t care.

I will also mention the crème de la crème, Wish You Were Here. In that masterpiece, Waters permanently established himself as a serious artist and paid a beautiful, grief-stricken tribute to the brilliant and terribly damaged friend who had founded his band.

This is music I have carried around for 46 years. It has become part of the architecture of my mind.

Roger Waters has since become harder to tolerate. He increasingly resembles the Judge in Gerald Scarfe’s wonderful animation for The Wall: a grotesque authority figure with an asshole instead of a mouth. That is Rog now, squatting over public life, pooping out antisemitism and looking ridiculous.

Long before that degeneration, Waters made a very good point about technology and art. In the documentary footage included in Pink Floyd at Pompeii, the band is challenged about its reliance on electronic equipment.

It’s like saying, ‘Give a man a Les Paul guitar and he becomes Eric Clapton.’ And of course that’s not true. And if you give a man an amplifier and a synthesizer… he  doesn’t become us.

It’s like saying, ‘Give a man a Les Paul guitar and he becomes Eric Clapton.’ And of course that’s not true. And if you give........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)