Roger Waters and Pink Floyd: The Concept Albums

by Phil Rose

Overview

Beyond its elucidation and critique of traditional ‘notation-centric’ musicology, this book's primary emphasis is on the negotiation and construction of meaning within the extended musical multimedia works of the classic British group Pink Floyd. Encompassing the concept albums that the group released from 1973 to 1983, during Roger Waters’ final period with the band, chapters are devoted to Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977), The Wall (1979) and The Final Cut (1983), along with Waters’ third solo album Amused to Death (1993). This book's analysis of album covers, lyrics, music and film makes use of techniques of literary and film criticism, while employing the combined lenses of musical hermeneutics and discourse analysis, so as to illustrate how sonic and musical information contribute to listeners’ interpretations of the discerning messages of these monumental musical artifacts. Ultimately, it demonstrates how their words, sounds, and images work together in order to communicate one fundamental concern, which—to paraphrase the music journalist Karl Dallas—is to affirm human values against everything in life that should conspire against them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611477603
Publisher:	University Press Copublishing Division
Publication date:	01/14/2015
Series:	The Fairleigh Dickinson University Press Series in Communication Studies
Pages:	278
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Phil Rose teaches in the Department of Communication Studies at York University in Toronto.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: Dark Side of the Moon
Chapter 2: Wish You Were Here
Chapter 3: Animals
Chapter 4: The Wall
Chapter 5: The Final Cut
Chapter 6: Amused to Death
Appendix: Interview with Roger Waters
Works Cited and Consulted
Album Information
Index
About the Author

Editorial Reviews

In this articulate and nuanced investigation, Phil Rose reveals how the concept albums of Roger Waters and Pink Floyd, in both their musical structure and lyrics, provide a space of prolonged thought and a mode of mediation by which people can come to see their own culture through outsider eyes. Rose deftly discloses how these albums enable an affirmation of hope for the human spirit in the face of obstacles, adversity, and despair. This interesting and interdisciplinary book will be of great interest to serious fans of Roger Waters and/or Pink Floyd, and also to musicologists, cultural critics, popular music theorists, and humanities scholars more generally.

Corey Anton

Drawing from the concept albums, interviews, and music critics, Rose shows how Pink Floyd is able reject the alienation of contemporary culture and celebrate the generative power of the individual—a powerful critique that is communicated by a complex interplay of sound-shapes, lyrics, and tone that Rose makes approachable and downright fascinating. This is a very ambitious project, of interest to anyone who has listened to Pink Floyd and struggled to explain how exactly they pulled off these art-rock masterpieces. Rose’s reflection on Pink Floyd’s concept albums is timely, reminding us that what is sold to us as the good life is often crazy or misguided; Pink Floyd, with Waters at the helm, uses every available tool, from stagecraft to synthesizers to critique a neurotic culture, and Rose’s analysis walks us through the craft of their musical masterpieces.

David Franke

Phil Rose writes about the work of Roger Waters and Pink Floyd with both sweeping synthesis and painstaking attention to detail. Well-versed in music theory and recording technology, Rose provides an in-depth analysis of musical structure, lyrical content, and acoustic characteristics that is sure to fascinate Pink Floyd aficionados. However, the book is no simple listener’s guide. Rose’s comprehensive treatment also offers insightful interpretation of the historical, political, and cultural contexts of this enormous body of work. The end result is a thoughtful book that integrates musicology, music theory, and anthropology to offer a thorough and holistic look at Waters’ recordings.

Kate Einarson

The music of Pink Floyd, in the iterations that were both groups—the early Syd Barrett-led group, and the later group with Roger Waters as principal songwriter—has always been worthy of serious consideration: artistic, popular and academic. The same of course can be said of Roger Waters' music after he left the band in 1985. Phil Rose, with some measure of a fan's interest and sensibility, but more so with the carefully-conceived and deeply-researched approach of a scholar, has done exactly that. This book is not the first full-length scholarly work about Pink Floyd. It is, however, the first to examine and analyze the full measure of the body of work that is Roger Water's contribution to his art, and which explains how such an idiosyncratic artist, with such a coherent, powerful and evolving vision and set of stories to tell, attained such massive, global success.

Thom Gencarelli Gencarelli

With great precision and insight, Phil Rose provides us with an analysis that ranges from a detailed examination of popular music and lyrics as they relate to psychology and biography, aesthetic issues, and the realities of the recording industry, to broader issues concerning culture and counterculture, capitalism and commercialism, and the social impact of media and technology. You don't have to be a Pink Floyd fan to appreciate what is accomplished in this study.

Lance Strate

Phil Rose reveals the meticulous attention that Pink Floyd—largely Roger Waters and David Gilmour—lavished on crafting the new art form in such albums as Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall. The reader will be surprised to discover the intellectual depth which rock and roll can achieve while remaining good, solid music.

Dr. Eric McLuhan

Phil Rose has undertaken a rigorously thorough, yet eminently readable, exegesis of the lyrics, music and, where appropriate, accompanying imagery from Pink Floyd’s and Water’s live performances.... As is the case with the best scholarly explorations of complex material, Rose’s analysis continually spins off into revealing discussions of other works of art and larger societal issues that Waters alludes to or directly references in his and Floyd’s work. The resulting book is extremely enlightening and will reward even the most ardent Pink Floyd/Rogers Water fan with its insights, permanently altering and enriching all subsequent listening to this extraordinary body of work.

Rob Bowman

Roger Waters and Pink Floyd: The Concept Albums will be required reading for any serious Pink Floyd fan.

Explorations In Media Ecology

Rogers Waters and Pink Floyd: The Concept Albums represents a welcome and focused effort to examine something the author finds largely missing in popular commercial culture.... [F]rom the start the reader encounters an in-depth and assured investigation of the musical dimensions of this remarkable group.

Canadian Journal of Communication

Through music, lyrics and imagery, Pink Floyd became a clarion call for social change and personal experimentation into the darker regions of our collective, late-20th century consciousness; leaving a cultural and musical legacy as complex as the turbulent times in which the group was formed. Fortunately, Dr. Phil Rose has crafted a thoughtful analysis of the artistic magic and personal mania of this visionary group, going far beyond a fan-based biography to provide a scholarly framework of understanding that incorporates elements of philosophy, psychology, cultural and communication studies, music theory and the science of recording technology. Highly recommended for Pink Floyd fans and all those interested in the intersection of music and popular culture.

Edward E. Tywoniak