Their solo albums’ lyrics.
Both John Lennon and Roger Waters are surely remarkable figures in the history of Rock N’ Roll. Both were members of influential English bands; had big roles in the successes their bands achieved; and both left their bands to start releasing their solo albums. The focus of this writing is on the similarities and differences their ideas –expressed in their solo works and their lyrics- had; for the most part their social, political, anti-governmental and anti-religion thoughts.
John Lennon
Born in 1940 in Liverpool, England, John Winston Ono Lennon formed the band The Beatles in 1957 initially named the Quarrymen. The name and the members, however, changed a few times till 1960, when the “Fab-Four” line-up was established with Ringo Starr as the drummer.
He left the band in September 1969 and started his solo career mainly in collaboration with Yoko Ono, his wife, and her band called the Plastic Ono Band. Lennon added to his reputation as an activist by writing and singing anti-war lyrics and opposing many politicians and officials in several performances of his and also a number of controversies such as his Bed-Ins. Bed-ins (March 25th till March 31st and May 26th till June 2nd 1969) were one-week protests by which the couple promoted world peace.
After a short retirement in the late 70s, Lennon released his last album Double Fantasy in 1980 produced by Ono. Soon after that, on December of the same year, he got shot by one of his fans Mark David Chapman.
Roger Waters
George Roger Waters is also born in Liverpool; but three years after Lennon. He formed Pink Floyd in 1965 along with Syd Barrett. After Barrett quit the band, David Gilmour replaced him and eventually became Pink Floyd’s leader. Nevertheless, a big part of the band’s music and its innovative stage appearances were based on Waters’ ideas.
Roger Waters left Pink Floyd in 1985 and announced the termination of the band’s career. Despite his disagreement, the other members re-started Pink Floyd a few years later and went through a long legal dispute about the rights of the songs and other issues related to the band. However, both sides ended up having the permission to perform most of Pink Floyd’s songs prior to 1985.
Waters released four solo albums after that including Ça Ira, an opera released in 2004. He rejoined the band just for the concert of Live8 in 2005.
Lennon’s reputation as a political activist escalated mainly during the Vietnam War. However, the influence of Bob Dylan (whom he met the first time in 1964) played a significant role in change of Lennon’s attitude towards writing lyrics and his musical and super-star figure. 1969’s song “Give Peace A Chance” gained the awareness of the media and American politicians; it quickly became the anthem of anti-war movement protests. Followed by that, Richard Nixon’s administration struggled to silence Lennon by trying to deport him from America on the ground of his drug convictions in Britain.
Lennon, however, did not leave the United States and continued performing with Ono, as well as other radical and anti-war musicians like Phil Ochs and Stevie Wonder in several concerts.
The 1972 album Some Time In New York City, contained lyrics objecting sexism (“Woman Is The Nigger Of The World”), police inhumane and racist actions (“Attica State”), the British brutal policy in the Northern Ireland (“Sunday Bloody Sunday”) and many other political and social issues. It is signified as an important political piece of music throughout the history of Rock N’ Roll, particularly during 70s.
In a phrase from “Attica State” Lennon says:
“Come together join the movement,
Take a stand for human rights,
Fear and hatred clouds our judgement,
Free us all from endless night,…“
Waters’ political ideas were not dominant in Pink Floyd’s early works. Instead, it was experimentalism – both in lyrics and music-, which denoted Floyd in late 60’s. Yet, in 1973s Dark Side of The Moon, Waters openly criticised social and political situation of that time. The lyrics censured the materialism of the western world as a result of human’s greed (particularly in the song "Money") and scorned the –in Waters’ opinion- messed-up world politics and lifestyle of their time. Later, influenced by George Orwell’s book Animal Farm, Waters referred to many ordinary people as “Sheep”, led by “Dogs” and “Pigs”.
Having lost his dad in the WWII, he based the lyrics of their 1979’s album on his childhood. The Wall abstractly is about the sad way in which an individual’s attitude, behaviours and actions would evolve and change in a society manipulated by pro-war, power-hungry and corrupt officials and politicians.
In his last album as a member of Pink Floyd, he directly opposed Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Menachem Begin, Leonid Brezhnev, and many more.
After splitting from Pink Floyd, Waters expressed more of his anti-government, anti-religion and anti-media opinions in his lyrics; whereas Pink Floyd’s lyrics mostly kept articulating an abstract view of life, people’s correlations and many of other non-political issues.
Waters and Lennon came from the same country and the same city. They were born almost the same time and both were interested in left-wing politics; Lennon donated the Trotskyist Workers Revolutionary Party (Wikipedia, accessed May 2007) and Waters was a self proclaimed socialist strongly influenced by Karl Marx. All these, especially their political views, resulted in similar orientations of their lyrics.
Many of the “political-music” fans adore Lennon and Waters because of their anti-war and pro-liberty attitudes. Despite being expressed in different time periods, both of these artists’ messages mostly objected acts of the American and British governments. Nixon, Thatcher, Mao Zedong, Chiang Kai-shek and many of other officials who were criticised by Lennon and Waters were Republicans, Conservatives, dictators, military generals and typically right-winged politicians.
It is notable that Lennon’s early solo lyrics were quite similar to Beatles’ lyrics in structure. Many of those were initially written by both McCartney and Lennon but even the lyrics of Lennon/Ono Plastic Band more or less had “Beatlish” formations; particularly the simple arrangements of the songs and the phrases. Like many of Beatles’ songs, Lennon’s solo works were based upon simple and (excluding few exceptions) major chord progressions.
The same principal existed in early solo works of Roger Waters. As the main lyricist of Pink Floyd, he obviously kept his way of writing and applied it to his solo works. In fact, the Floyd album The Final Cut practically is done predominantly by Roger Waters; he did not even let Gilmour and Richard Wright (the keyboardist) to play and sing in many of album’s tracks. With similarities to many Floyd songs, Waters tended to directly “name” the individuals who he used to criticise.
However, in the media, Roger Waters was not as controversial as John Lennon. He was never threatened by deportation, never convicted for drug-problems and for the most part no one attempted to assassinate him.
Waters’ lyrics opposed issues and particular individuals in more direct means. Lennon had to apologise when in 1966 he said “We’re more famous than Jesus”. Roger Waters released albums in a time that phrases like “Fuck your God, your Lord, your Christ” (“Judith” from A Perfect Circle, Mer Der Noms. 2000) were openly broadcasted in media. Lennon’s (actually, Ono’s) song “We Are All Water” in “Some Time In New York City” starts with the phrase –as one of their most direct and clear statements- “There may be not much difference between Chairmon Mao and Richard Nixon if we stripped them naked”. In the song “Leaving Beirut” Waters –as one of the few examples of him being straight-forward towards politicians- refers to George W. Bush and says “Oh George! That Texas education must have fucked you up when you were very small”.
Overall the explicitness of Waters’ lyrics is more than Lennon’s; not just in terms of the expression of their political ideas, but also when they criticised religion. The song “Imagine” became a controversial tune of Lennon just because of the sentence “Imagine there’s no religion”. He had to attend many interviews and re-explain many of his opinions as a result of the effects of that song. In contrast –and without facing any major problem- Waters says “God wants sedition, God wants sex, God wants freedom, God wants Semtex” in the song “What God Wants”.
On the other hand, the fact that Waters’ reputation as a solo artist was brought to him almost a decade after Lennon’s, notably affected their career and differentiated the way each of them expressed his thoughts. The major issue of Lennon’s time was the Vietnam War and the conflicts of the USSR and the US; whereas Waters faced the Falkland wars, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Bosnian war, the Gulf War, Tony Blair and George Bush’s –again, in Waters’ opinion- unjustified decisions , and finally the Iraq War. All these in addition to the social changes in the western world –mainly the United Kingdom - somehow changed the theme of Waters’ lyrics in the course of criticising materialism, daily-life of youngsters, television and many more social issues. Lennon was more focused on his personal problems with Nixon’s administration and the anti-war movement of 70s.
Having a look at the careers of John Lennon and Roger Waters, and especially the way they promoted their political ideas and views, notes many important facts which apply to numerous lyricists in different time periods. World politics is always changing and evolving. Apparently there are many principals in common between different politically-active musicians but their methods of expression necessarily change during the time. John Lennon became one of the leaders of anti-war movement of America in the 70s and his controversy escalated to a level in which when he got assassinated, the incident arose more controversies. (Many people believe that his murder was an FBI conspiracy). Roger Waters, regardless of having more advanced and complex political messages in many senses, lives like many other musicians. His appearance in media –as one of the biggest sources of information- is not comparable with Lennon’s. Lennon’s music was banned to be played in many radio stations in America but Waters’ anti-media songs are produced and promoted by Sony, one of the biggest corporations in the entire music industry.
Despite all these facts, the main point is that no matter what necessities the time has, or what makes money, there still would be musicians expressing opinions that many governments or politicians would not like, even if they supported the records for the sake of the profits.
Here are the lyrics of two of Lennon’s and Waters’ hits; Imagine (from Lennon’s 1971 album with the same title) and Waters’ “Too Much Rope” from his 1994 album Amused To Death:
.
Imagine
Composed by John Lennon
Produced by John Lennon and Yoko Ono
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
.
Too Much Rope
Composed and produced by Roger Waters
When the sleigh is heavy
And the timber wolves are getting bold
You look at your companions
And test the water of their friendship
With you toe
They significantly edge
Closer to the gold
Each man has his price Bob
And yours was pretty low
History is short the sun just a minor star
The poor man sells his kidneys
In some colonial bazaar
Que sera sera
Is that your new Ferrari car
Nice but I'll think I'll wait for the F50
You don't have to be a Jew
To disapprove of murder
Tears burn my eyes
Moslem or Christians Mullah or Pope
Preacher or poet who was it wrote
Give any one species too much rope
And they'll fuck it up
And last night on TV
A Vietnam vet
Takes his beard and his pain
And his alienation twenty years
Back to Asia again
Sees the monsters they made
In formaldehyde floating 'round
Meets a gook on a bike
A good little tyke
A nice enough guy
With the same soldier's eyes
Tears burn my eyes
What does it mean
This tear-jerking scene
Beamed into my home
That it moves me so much
Why all the fuss
It's only two humans being
It's only two humans being
Tears burn my eyes
What does it means
This tender TV
This tear-jerking scene
Beamed into my home
You don't have to be a Jew
To disapprove my murder
Tears burn my eyes
Moslem or Christian Mullah or Pope
Preachers or poet who was it wrote
Give any one species too much rope
And they'll fuck it up
- References:
Ahlkvist, John A. October 2001. “Sound and Vision: Using Progressive Rock to Teach” Social Theory Teaching Sociology, 29 (4): 471-482
Denselow, Robin. October 1990. “When the Music’s Over: The Story of Political Pop” Popular Music, 9 (3): 388
Harry, Bill. 2000. John Lennon Encyclopaedia London: Virgin.
James, David.1989. “The Vietnam War and American Music” Social Text, 23: 122-143.
John and Yoko's Montreal bed-in. (Video Recording) The CBC Digital Archives Website. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
“John Lennon”, Wikipedia
Lennon, John. 1981. Give Peace A Chance. LP Record. EMI-Odeon.
Thomas Erlewine, Stephen. “John Lennon; Biography” All Music Guide website.
A Perfect Circle. 2000. Mer Der Noms. CDRom. Virgin Records US.
Waters, Roger. 1992. Amused to Death. CDRom. Sony.
William Ruhlmann, “Imagine; song review”, All Music Guide website
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