Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A musician best known as a co-founder of Pink Floyd, whose groundbreaking albums The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall and spectacular live shows made them ico
On the island
Eight records
There is an honesty and a truth in everything that he's done. You feel the man's integrity and passion. I can feel the hairs standing up on the back of my neck now, remembering the purity with which he hits the first notes of this song. It's extraordinarily moving and eloquent.
There is something mysterious and sort of tragically moving about this thing. I like it.
Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan maybe were the two men who allowed us to believe that there was an open door between poetry and song lyrics. And this song of his, Bird on a Wire, is so simple. You know, the couplets are so simple and so moving and so brilliant. I love it.
Not just a great song. Laurie's the love of my life and soon to become my wife. We had a thing about Chet Baker. We listen to Chet Baker all the time when we're playing gin rummy.
This was one of the records that we would listen to a lot. This is Ray Charles, Georgia on My Mind. We haven't even put it on yet. I've got goosebumps.
Bryn Terfel one day he said to me, Roger, have you ever listened to Corelli? And I went, No, who's he? The next day he came in and he gave me this. He said, this is mine, but you can have it. And I banged it in the car and I was just blown away.
The vulnerability of this woman is so moving in ways that I don't have the prose to even begin to describe it. You know, when we listen to this track, you just... it tears your heart out.
Symphony No. 5: IV. AdagiettoFavourite
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Simon Rattle
I made a movie of the Dark Side of the Moon tour that I did, and this is the music that opens that film. It's to a very, very slow-motion picture of a milk bottle flying up in the air, which is a reference to a game I used to play with the guys I stayed up all night with in Cambridge when we were hooligans.
In conversation
Presenter asks
10:07Did your mother talk to you about your father, about the kind of man he was?
She did. She spoke about him a lot because she was, a, inordinately proud of him and what he'd done. And b she felt she was always rather down on herself, my mother, and she she felt that she'd been very, very lucky to meet this man.
Presenter asks
16:40Why do you think that's taken so long [to come to those emotional realizations]?
Oh, that's a very good question. But I think it took me a very long time to understand that as a man it was okay to have power. ... I think for many, many years, because I'd grown up entirely in the company of women, my mother and all her sisters. I think I just intuitively believed that the correct thing was for for the woman to have all the power, and in consequence I involved myself in all kinds of disastrous relationships where I gave away all my power to women.
Presenter asks
24:26How did you feel about being a known person, about being a rock star, in those early days?
I think I was so fundamentally frightened in almost every possible way that I really shied away from it in a big way. So I was always that kid who only ever dressed in black and I, you know, at a party I would be found skulking in the corner, you know, and not being friendly.
The keepsakes
The luxury
Presenter asks
29:28How do you look back on that period when it all blew up in your face [with the Pink Floyd split]?
Well, it was a lot of a great deal of wasted energy. I famously thought that we should retire. And they famously didn't. ... Where people have got the wrong end of the stick as it got reported is the idea that we fought about this in court. We never went anywhere near a court.
Presenter asks
30:57How did it form your character [playing to a small audience while Pink Floyd played to 70,000]?
I think it was really good for me. ... The bit of failure is very character forming and, you know, makes you think about what's really important and what isn't.
“If that was the last time that the four of us were going to do something together, I think it was a beautiful way to underline what had been a long... and wonderful collaboration.”
“I have recurrent dreams and there's a dream that I no longer have, which was a dream that I've murdered somebody and that I'm going to get caught. And I had this dream over and over and over again for mumpteen years, until after a ton of therapy I suddenly one day realized I think it's about me feeling I'd killed my father. And as soon as I had that realization, that's it, I've never had that dream again.”
“I'm really glad that I was in that band for the 20 years I was in it and I really enjoyed it and I think we did some great work together but I had no wish to do it ever again.”