Roger Waters Albums
Roger Waters recorded some excellent albums during his solo career. The best two are probably Amused to Death and The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking. You can view a complete list of Roger Waters solo albums done outside of Pink Floyd in the NPF Pink Floyd Albums section.
About Amused to Death
Amused to Death is a concept album by former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters, released in 1992.
Amused to Death further explores Waters’ disillusionment with modern Western society, focusing specifically on the influence of television and the mass media. The album was inspired by the book Amusing Ourselves to Death, a critique of television and its related culture by Neil Postman.
Like every studio album Roger Waters has done since The Dark Side of the Moon, Amused to Death is a concept album. This one is organized loosely around the idea of a monkey randomly switching channels on a television, but explores numerous political and social themes, including critiques of the First Gulf War in “The Bravery of Being Out of Range” and “Perfect Sense”, in which famed sportscaster Marv Albert narrates a war as if it were a basketball game, and a massive choir sings their “global anthem”:
Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking Info
The album concept is about a man’s midlife crisis and how he dreams of committing adultery, among other things. The album takes place in real time from 04:30am to 05:12am. Its cover prompted controversy for featuring a rear-view nude photograph of the model Linzi Drew. In some regions, the album has been released with this picture censored.
In 1978, Waters played demos of this album and The Wall to his band mates, who decided that they preferred The Wall, although their manager Steve O’Rourke thought that Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking was better. In the end it was decided that The Wall would be a Pink Floyd album and, following his split from the band, this became Roger Waters’ first solo album.
Gerald Scarfe created all the graphics and animation for the album and its supporting tour; Fisher/Park created the stage and props. Scarfe had drawn caricatures of all the band members for the tour programme, and the caricature of Roger (that he nicknamed “Rog”) had a long snout like a dog; Scarfe therefore created a character of a Dog in the image of “Rog” and named him Reg. Reg became the main character of the story and stage animation of the Pros and Cons of HitchHiking tour.
In 1984, Waters went on tour to promote the album with Eric Clapton as part of the backing band. The first half of the concert contained Pink Floyd numbers, while in the second they performed the whole album. Some of the music on the album uses melodies also found in the Pink Floyd songs “In the Flesh”, “Mother” and “The Fletcher Memorial Home”. Lyrics from “5:11am (The Moment of Clarity)” are used in The Wall film, along with lyrics from “Your Possible Pasts” (from The Final Cut).
