Roger Waters
English musician, co-founder of Pink Floyd (born 1943) / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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George Roger Waters (born 6 September 1943) is an English musician and singer-songwriter. In 1965, he co-founded the rock band Pink Floyd as the bassist. Following the departure of the songwriter, Syd Barrett, in 1968, Waters became Pink Floyd's lyricist, co-lead vocalist and conceptual leader until his departure in 1985.
Roger Waters | |
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 Waters at Newport Folk Festival, 2015 | |
| Background information | |
| Birth name | George Roger Waters |
| Born | (1943-09-06) 6 September 1943 (age 80) Great Bookham, England |
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| Years active | 1964–present |
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| Spouse(s) | List
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| Website | rogerwaters |
Pink Floyd achieved international success with the concept albums The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977), The Wall (1979), and The Final Cut (1983). By the early 1980s, they had become one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful groups in popular music. Amid creative differences, Waters left in 1985 and began a legal dispute over the use of the band's name and material. They settled out of court in 1987. Waters's solo work includes the studio albums The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking (1984), Radio K.A.O.S. (1987), Amused to Death (1992), and Is This the Life We Really Want? (2017). In 2005, he released Ça Ira, an opera translated from Étienne and Nadine Roda-Gils' libretto about the French Revolution.
In 1990, Waters staged one of the largest rock concerts in history, The Wall – Live in Berlin, with an attendance of 450,000. As a member of Pink Floyd, he was inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. Later that year, he reunited with Pink Floyd for the Live 8 global awareness event, the group's only appearance with Waters since 1981. He has toured extensively as a solo act since 1999. He performed The Dark Side of the Moon for his world tour of 2006–2008, and the Wall Live tour of 2010–2013 was the highest-grossing tour by a solo artist at the time.
Waters incorporates political themes in his work and has drawn controversy for his views, mainly his views on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. He called for the removal of the Israeli West Bank Barrier and supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. He has likened Israel to Nazi Germany and described its treatment of Palestinians as apartheid. He has dismissed accusations of antisemitism against him as a conflation with anti-Zionism.