Roger Waters was the main lyricist for the classic British rock band Pink Floyd. He, along with Syd Barrett, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright, formed the band in 1965 and released their first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn in 1967. In 1968, Syd Barrett was replaced by guitarist/singer David Gilmour. He and Gilmour were the main creative forces behind the albums Meddle, Dark Side of the Moon, and Wish You Were Here; Waters eventually became the primary songwriter, being the driving force behind Animals, and The Wall as well as the sole songwriter of The Final Cut. Waters became well-known for being an intense perfectionist and his controlling nature alienated the rest of the band. The Final Cut, released in 1983, was essentially a Roger Waters solo album "performed by Pink Floyd" as the credits stated. This would be the group's last album with Waters. David Gilmour decided to carry on with Pink Floyd and Waters, believing that Pink Floyd was a "non-entity" without him, sued the rest of the band to retire the Pink Floyd name. His lawsuit ultimately failed, and Pink Floyd released three more studio albums and two double live albums, without him.
The feud between David Gilmour and Roger Waters lasted for decades, and it wasn't until Live 8 in 2005 that they finally decided to set their differences aside and perform a brief set for the charity gig. This would be the last time that Pink Floyd would ever perform together in their "classic" lineup. Shortly after the show, there was much speculation that Pink Floyd would get back together for a full reunion tour, but Gilmour ultimately nixed the idea, stating that although the Live 8 gig was fun, the rehearsals were not.
Much to everyone's surprise, Gilmour and Waters reunited once again on July 11, 2010 for a charity performance for “The Hoping Foundation,” an organization that supports Palestinian refugee kids. At Ronnie Scott’s club in London, the duo performed four songs together: “To Know Him Is to Love Him” (a cover of the old Teddy Bear’s song), “Wish You Were Here,” “Comfortably Numb,” and finally (after a special request) “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2.” Once again, just like after the Live 8 Reunion, speculation began regarding future reunions. No official Pink Floyd reunion has yet been set, but Gilmour did promise that he would join Roger Waters for one show on his 2010-11 “The Wall” tour, performing “Comfortably Numb.” Gilmour fulfilled his promise on May 14, 2011 in London.
Waters has so far released the following solo albums:
* Music from The Body soundtrack with Ron Geesin(1970)
* The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking (1984)
* When the Wind Blows soundtrack with contributions from other artists as well (1986)
* Radio K.A.O.S. (1987)
* The Wall: Live in Berlin (1990)
* Amused to Death (1992)
* In the Flesh live (2000)
* Flickering Flame: The Solo Years, Vol. 1 (2003)
* Ça Ira (Opera) (2005)
*Is This the Life We Really Want? (2017)
*Igor Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale (2018)
*The Lockdown Sessions (2022)
Breathe
Roger Waters Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Don't be afraid to care.
Leave but don't leave me.
Look around and choose your own ground.
Long you live and high you fly
And smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
And all you touch and all you see
Run, rabbit run.
Dig that hole, forget the sun,
And when at last the work is done
Don't sit down it's time to dig another one.
For long you live and high you fly
But only if you ride the tide
And balanced on the biggest wave
You race towards an early grave.
The opening lyrics of Roger Waters's song "Breathe" from the album "The Dark Side of the Moon" remind us to take a deep breath and live life without fear. The next line has a deeply meaningful message; it encourages us not only to care about ourselves but also to care about others around us. The idea is that we should all choose our own ground and live the life we want to live without worrying about others' judgments. It is only natural that as we live, we will inevitably come across both happy and sad times. The lyrics suggest that we should embrace them all equally since they all represent a natural element of life.
The next verse highlights a rabbit whose only purpose in life is to dig holes and forget about the sun. The rabbit's purpose is a metaphor for people who continuously work without rest or play, caught up in fulfilling demanding tasks without ever taking time to enjoy life. Roger Waters speaks of the importance of keeping a balance in life, chasing the biggest wave while being balanced enough not to fall off. The song finishes with a melancholic note, as Waters warns that life is short, and we should utilise the most of the time we have, and we should be ambitious and live life to the fullest.
Line by Line Meaning
Breathe, breathe in the air.
Inhale the essence of life and take it all in.
Don't be afraid to care.
Do not fear showing affection or concern for others.
Leave but don't leave me.
Go if you must, but the thought of you leaving breaks my heart.
Look around and choose your own ground.
Observe your surroundings and find the place that suits you best.
Long you live and high you fly
You have a long journey ahead of you, and the skies are the limit.
And smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
You will experience joy and pain in equal measure throughout your life.
And all you touch and all you see
Everything you come in contact with or witness is an integral part of your existence.
Is all your life will ever be.
Every experience and interaction shapes the person you are and will ultimately become.
Run, rabbit run.
Do not rest on your laurels or become stagnant, but continue to push forward.
Dig that hole, forget the sun,
Become so consumed with your work that you forget to appreciate the beauty of life.
And when at last the work is done
When you have accomplished your goals or reached the end of your life, look back without regrets.
Don't sit down it's time to dig another one.
Do not become complacent, but continue to strive for more and set new goals.
But only if you ride the tide
To achieve success, you must be able to navigate the ups and downs of life.
And balanced on the biggest wave
Find a sense of equilibrium and stability amidst the chaos of existence.
You race towards an early grave.
If you do not find balance and purpose in life, it will pass you by and you will die unfulfilled.
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
Written by: DAVID JON GILMOUR, RICHARD WRIGHT, ROGER WATERS
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@QUIX4U
@rogerwaters
As a musician - don't you just LOVE the single "strum" of a guitarist's fingers across a steel guitar.
JUST ONE movement.
That makes all the differently tensioned wires, resonate at the same time AT FIRST.
Yet - that one (single) strum, will appear to lift & fade, get stronger & weaker - each time the frequencies act together, or opposite any other frequency, as some work together then against all others, the longer the sound is heard.
Why is that you think?
I'll let you know this. (as a sound technician and as an industrial electrician).
EACH WIRE is resonating exactly perfectly, slowly decaying until they again come to rest.
It's the harmonics, and additions / distractions that they force upon any other wire, while all are resonating.
Then there are the echoes, that each wire is imparting upon the area around the guitar.
Bouncing frequencies off different objects such as walls and each other, until all wires have ceased vibrating.
At no point, will the sound ever be the same - from one instant to the other, as all vibrate at different frequencies as they all decay.
It's the same with songs / sounds - played in a band, as all frequencies generated add & subtract from all other sounds around them.
Some you (the musician who strummed once) can hear easily, others you assume aren't there - but they are at full loudness.
All wires on a guitar are tensioned differently, creating a world of different vibrations (and thus emanate different frequencies)
It's those frequencies that change as you listen.
ALL work against something as they continue to emanate & vibrate, adding to the apparent loudness or echoes, as well as removing some or completely wiping others away.
I knew this as a 12 year old back in 1965 when I learnt all about generated electricity using an old 1956 Electricians Handbook - (as I was learning about audio waves and thus their electricity properties).
When I was 12, one winters afternoon, I pulled a slightly stuffed Philips tape recorder out of the local community tip/dump, and set about cleaning parts and using it to "play with audio frequencies" as I recorded the results on 7" open reels.
I soon discovered that one SHOULD NOT drop glass valves onto the shed floor when cleaning them, as glass and concrete hate each other.
I also soon discovered that I couldn't fix the unit - no matter what I tried.
BUT - in doing this - discovered the harmonics between different frequencies, when they intermingle and add / subtract their loudness from each other.
My (hand-me-down) 1956 NZ Electricians Handbook, never told me about vastly different frequencies - but it did tell me about mains electricity and the fact that it is given to customers, in the usual way of 1 or 3 phases.
240v AC worked well as a single phase frequency.
It hated being co-joined to any other phase, especially 3 phase 400 v AC systems.
Co-joining any of the three single 240v AC phases with any of the three 400v AC phases was also trouble.
But how can that be, as all arrived into the old shed via the same 3 overhead wires?
I learnt - that various voltages hate each other, BUT - that single phase CURRENTS, be they 240 v or 400 v - also HATED each other.
It's because they appear at totally different timed (on a circular 360 degree circle) stages, within a generator's phase pattern.
It's exactly the same with LIGHT.
When the Colour TV's made an appearance in NZ around the same time, the THREE colours, could NOT be run off the same wires, as each had different frequencies.
BUT - there is the SAME properties, between LIGHT / ELECTRICTY and AUDIO.
The only difference being that they are at different places along the entire RADIO FREQUENCY SPECTRUM, except of course, NZ Electricity being set at 50 Hz.
The USA electricity frequency is DIFFEENT to NZ which is why their clocks display the wrong time, when powered off our 50Hz.
AH - to me the penny was dropping.
With voltages being mostly controllable, & frequency being completely different in audio TONES, that had to be the clue as to why AUDIO complicated itself, when a guitar was strummed ONCE.
I spent my entire life, understanding snippets of Electricity generation and frequency converters etc., along with how different LIGHT colours could be made with altered strengths of each colour (in a colour TV), and that one cannot simply connect TWO channel supply wires together, to create MONO from standard stereo (without losing something and stuffing the frequencies between them) - that when I finally found what I discovered in that old TAPE recorder circuitry, in 1965, I understood that audio was merely LIGHT at a much lower frequency band, and that electricity for all it's uses, was fixed at just ONE frequency band.
Which means - they all "ACT THE SAME" in an ANALOGUE analogy - thus I was able to DECODE many different channels of audio - from the standard THREE in any recorded stereo music (three phases of electricity being the same THREE colours of light meant there were three basic audio channels (at a minimum)
See.?
The mind set of an Electrician (now) by trade, and a self taught Audio technician - meant I knew in 1965 all those years ago - that I had the answer - which no one else in the world knew of, that of decoding accurately MANY MULTIPLES of audio channels, from a basic three of audio.
The same any electrician can rewire electric motors, from single phase multiple poles, into multiple phased motors (each with a single pole).
It's just electricity working in LIGHT, as audio.
Once I had that down pat - I used the formula for light in a TV set (the colour charts thereof) to get the basic COULOUR renderings of each audio channel.
236 visible differences (I think) in a TV set, being the same number of colours in a computer monitor screen - on ONE colour alone.
Multiply that by three, then by the AREA formula of surround sound, (on one floor plane) then by all 360 degrees of a spherical ball, to get OH LORD 67.77 MILLION possible audio channels.
From a simple 2ch stereo recording.
Now do you see - what I can HEAR when "Floyd" recorded the wall.!!!
C'mon - you can't eat your pudding, if your meat isn't in all these "sector/planes", flying everywhere at random (as echoes of harmonics) - across an auditorium.
@QUIX4U
@rogerwaters P.S: Please never believe the hype, of ONE channel of BASS, near the front of your TV, in any DIGITAL sound system
In reality - BASS is merely another of the full frequencies available in each of the MANY analogue (decoded) surround sound audio channels.
C'mon, if out in the jungles of the world, wild animals all round AT NIGHT, which way should you run - if you hear a LOW BASS Lion Roar ?
Do you turn around and RUN AWAY from the light - or towards the light, or zig-zag
By (haphazardly) RUNNING ALL OVER THE CAMPSITE, BLUNDERING HERE AND THERE, TO CONFUSE THE LION ?
No - you use your ears to triangulate where the sound came from (eyes closed is best) then run in the opposite direction.
In any of my ANALOGUE decoded surround sound systems, I used ONE bass with each channel (if I could) or at least one every three channels.
Thus in the wee test / demo set-ups I did here for YouTube back in the 2,000's
I always had at least THREE, or as I had in my slightly "over-the-top" mega system (just because I could) - I ran 25 channels with SEVEN bass.
Outputting the sound across 64 speaker cabinets (within & without) that I fed a mere 88 speakers - all the different voice coil electric currents.
ALL decoded from an old 1970's home dubbed tape, that YouTube said i couldn't use, so I audio swapped the audio - some useless YT Anthem, to make it appear the same.
(I used my old 10 channel VU meter-board that I'd made in 1965, and covered the master circuitry (thereof), with a new plastic terminal box, so that no one could discover my ANALOGUE secret.
What the EAR hears the brain doesn't understand, until the EYES see something completely different, (using a "home made" TEN WAY VU "metering board, which allows me (& thus you) the many multiple flashes of each channel it covers, OUT OF SYNC (and thus not a single feed to the lights), being fed with the active VOICE-COIL currents that the speakers themselves use, that allow the speakers to produce sound.
https://youtu.be/Ub0S8eTijrA
Anyone can PLAY an instrument to create sound.
(Good, bad - or utterly useless as I can), but it takes an inventor (Patented I am) to build a 10 way VU metering board, to help organize, stage position and level control many different ANALOGUE audio speaker channels, even if they are not all represented of a 25.7 PLUS ONE - audio system - with 88 speakers running (differently).
One can easily see (and hear) not only inside a fixed space, but a long way away OUTSIDE, the multiple aspects of audio - played correctly, all at the same time.
@vardanaslikyan4015
Пинк Флойд это Свободный Космос для каждого из нас.Обажаю на все времена...
@AhmadYahyaIraqiBassPlayer
Doyle Bramhall is a fucking underrated musician !
@Timothay2
My favorite guitarist hands down, he's a beast
@dzibba
Why do you think so? He used to play with Waters and Clapton and it's a greeeeaaaaaat honor
@colonelrobertshaw9170
Ahmed Yehya .underated ? By Who ?
@ethnicleanserberg7975
Wonderful
@nvsnevespecasespeciais
Sempre perfeito, muito bom , loko demais
@Chadcristn
Excelente ...!!!
@fanincept
My brother got the guitar lessons. Me I had to learn piano! Neither one of us play our instruments any longer though.
@sc6155
Give it another go! :)