subject: Roger Waters Tickets : Waters Endorses Rotosound Jazz Bass 77 Flat-wound Strings [print this page] George Roger Waters is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. He was a founding member of the progressive rock band Pink Floyd, serving as bassist and co-lead vocalist. Following the departure of bandmate Syd Barrett in 1968, Waters became the band's lyricist, principal songwriter and conceptual leader. The band subsequently achieved worldwide success in the 1970s with the concept albums The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall.
Although Waters' primary instrument in Pink Floyd was the bass guitar, he also experimented with synthesisers and tape loops and played rhythm guitars in recordings and in concerts. Amid creative differences within the group, Waters left Pink Floyd in 1985 and began a legal battle with the remaining members over their future use of the group's name and material.
The dispute was settled out of court in 1987, and nearly eighteen years passed before he performed with Pink Floyd again. It is estimated that as of 2010, the group have sold over 200 million albums worldwide, including 74.5 million units sold in the United States.By September 1963, Waters and Mason were losing interest in their studies and they moved into the lower flat of Stanhope Gardens, owned by Mike Leonard, a part-time tutor at the Regent Street Polytechnic.
Waters, Mason and Wright first played music together in the autumn of 1963, in a group formed by vocalist Keith Noble and bassist Clive Metcalfe.The group usually called themselves Sigma 6, but they also used the name the Meggadeaths. Waters played rhythm guitar and Mason played drums, Wright played on any keyboard he could arrange to use,and Noble's sister Sheilagh provided an occasional vocal accompaniment. In the early years the band performed during private functions and rehearsed in a tearoom in the basement of Regent Street Polytechnic.
When Metcalfe and Noble left to form their own group in September 1963, the remaining members asked Barrett and guitar player Bob Klose to join.By January 1964, the group became known as the Abdabs, or the Screaming Abdabs.During the autumn of 1964, the band used the names Leonard's Lodgers, Spectrum Five, and eventually, the Tea Set.Sometime during the autumn of 1965, the Tea Set began calling itself the Pink Floyd Sound, later, the Pink Floyd, and by early 1966, Pink Floyd.
By early 1966 Barrett was Pink Floyd's front-man, guitarist, and songwriter.[33] He wrote or co-wrote all but one track of their debut LP The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, released in August 1967. Waters contributed the song "Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk" (his first sole writing credit) to the album.However, by late 1967, Barrett's deteriorating mental health and increasingly erratic behaviour, rendered him "unable or unwilling" to continue in his capacity as Pink Floyd's singer-songwriter and lead guitarist.
Working with Barrett eventually proved too difficult, so in early March 1968 Pink Floyd met with managers Peter Jenner and Andrew King of Blackhill Enterprises to discuss the band's future. Barrett agreed to leave Pink Floyd, and the band "agreed to Blackhill's entitlement in perpetuity" with regard to "past activities". The band's new manager Steve O'Rourke made a formal announcement about the departure of Barrett and the arrival of David Gilmour in April 1968.
Waters' primary instrument in Pink Floyd was the electric bass guitar. He briefly played a Hofner bass but replaced it with a Rickenbacker RM-1999/4001S, until around 1970 when he switched to Fender Precision Basses. First seen at a concert in Hyde Park, London in July 1970, the black P-Bass was rarely used until April 1972 when it became his main stage guitar and as of 2 October 2010, the basis for a Fender Artist Signature model.
Waters endorses RotoSound Jazz Bass 77 flat-wound strings.Throughout his career he has used Selmer, WEM, Hiwatt and Ashdown amplifiers but has recently settled on using Ampeg for the last few major tours, also employing delay, tremolo, chorus, stereo panning and phaser effects in his bass playing.
Not only a bassist and vocalist, Waters experimented with the EMS Synthi A and VCS 3 synthesisers on Pink Floyd pieces such as "On the Run", "Welcome to the Machine",and "In the Flesh?" He played electric and acoustic guitar on Pink Floyd tracks using Fender, Martin, Ovation and Washburn guitars.
He played electric guitar on the Pink Floyd song "Sheep", from Animals, and acoustic guitar on several Pink Floyd recordings, such as "Pigs on the Wing 1 & 2", also from Animals,"Southampton Dock" from The Final Cut,and on "Mother" from The Wall. A Binson Echorec 2 echo effect was used on his bass-guitar lead track "One of These Days".
