"Taiwan is part of China, if you don't understand this, it means that you don't understand history, go read and study seriously!"
Last week, a short video by British rocker Roger Waters angrily snuffed out CNN reporters.
In the video, in the face of the reporter's intentional misdirection, Waters has a serious look and retorts article by article.
For rock fans, however, this is not surprising.
In the 1960s, it was the rocker and his teammates who rode the beaters' frenzy to weave psychedelic notes and deconstruct the mainstream of the grotesque. Waters's exit from the circle also allowed the name that has already resided in the history of rock and roll, Pink Floyd, to re-enter people's vision with his post-war memories.
Roger Waters, founder of pink floyd, angrily at CNN. Source/SCREENSHOT OF CNN INTERVIEW
Style of rebellion and adventure
In the 1960s, while the BBC radio was still playing jazz and pop songs repeatedly, Pink Floyd followed a wind and embarked on his own musical adventure.
The wind is blowing from the other side of the Atlantic. At that time, the smoke of World War II had basically faded, and the economic development of the United States was on the right track. However, while people hurried through the financial streets, they also fell into a spiritual trough in the imbalance between economy and culture.
Economic affluence and ideological emptiness tore apart the American youth who grew up in this period. The "dignified, false, hypocritical, narrow world", as well as the rigid, rigid but noble patriarchal culture, have become a thorn in their side. At this time, a kind of black folk music born in the 1930s, blending rhythm and blues, country and west, adhering to the original rhythm and shout, with a personality and liberation rock that was very different from classical music, became a sharp sword in the hands of American youth.
In 1955, with the release of the movie "Blackboard Jungle", the theme song "Day and Night Rock" crossed the ocean and came to The United Kingdom. British workers' culture has provided new growth space for music from afar, and the Beatles, which embody the ideas of Liverpool's young workers, have been the first to break out of the shell, and since then, rock and roll have blended with deeper socially sensitive issues, and in the form of heavy singing groups, it has become a corner of British youth culture.
In 1966, four young men studying architecture in London — Richard Wright, Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Sid Barrett — formed pink floyd, whose name was inspired by the blues singers Pink Anderson and Floyd Consel, as if it were Pink Floyd's farewell to tradition.
Group photo of two generations of Pink Floyd. Source/IMDb
Soon after their debut, the band set their sights on unspeakable areas of the city. Arnold Lane, the band's first single album, tells the story of a transgender man. The grotesque theme was soon boycotted by the BBC and private radio, but fans quickly topped the uk's top ten, while Freud was immersed in the production of his new album The Enemy of The Breaking Dawn.
In the 1960s, a kind of hedonism that was bred in rock and roll gradually emerged, with the name of "psychedelic culture" and penetrating into all aspects of mass cultural life. In 1964, the Beatles first introduced guitar noise to the single "I Feel Good", followed by the use of Indian instruments in the performance, and the rise of bands such as "Birds" and "Recruits" intensified the transformation of rock and roll, and a musical style that pursued the ultimate sensory experience gradually took shape.
Known as "psychedelic rock," the genre is at its core a hallucinogen-like musical experience, often characterized by intense instrumental performances mixed with noise, elusive speed, and distinct stream-of-consciousness lyrics, which carved out a new direction for rock and roll during this period of early American rock and roll decline.
In the 1970s, inventions such as electronic synthesizers came out one after another. Since then, Pink Floyd has also begun a new exploration. In 1973, they released The Dark Side of the Moon and found a new answer. It's a record created by musician Roger Waters that attempts to tell the story of life's trivia that the light can't illuminate. Sound effects such as heartbeats, sirens, alarms and other sounds are mixed in rock and roll, interspersed with familiar and grotesque life scenes between the audience. The melody is mixed with philosophical lyrics – "Money, it's a sin, it's distributed fairly, but don't touch it in my pocket, money, they say so, it's the root of every evil today, but if you ask for a raise, they're absolutely not willing to give you an extra point... ", a little bit of life to outline the face. In the noise, people seem to fall into the grotesque scene of note weaving, and it seems that they are in the world that is no longer familiar.
Pink Floyd's innovation was also an adventure, and they always felt that the boundaries of rock and roll could be wider. Classical interludes, folk songs and even classical Chinese poetry, any element can be placed in the rock space by them. Of course, not all of these explorations have been successful, and even individual albums have had mixed reputations. The Polish scholar Marcin Linzter, looking back on the representative orchestras of Western music history, said of Pink Floyd: "Although they did not have the ability to fully control large-scale works, they always had ambitions. At the very least, the records they record are worth collecting not only for rock fans, but also for classical music lovers. ”
The confusion of personality and the breaking of walls
Confusion is another characteristic of Pink Floyd.
This trait was born in a special post-war British society. In the mid-20th century, Britain, struggling to get out of the mud of the post-war period, turned a new page. Behind the collapse of the empire, the rise to power of the Labour Party and the basic establishment of the welfare society – behind the appearance of a seemingly steady recovery , are rifts that are secretly growing.
On the one hand, the pressure on the economy has never faded. After World War II, Britain began to face huge war debts, and the supply of raw materials and basic foodstuffs continued to be scarce, which also made the first Labour government have to face a social picture of economic contraction and bleak development prospects. On the other hand, contradictions and crises also develop quietly in society, as described by Phil Cohen, a scholar who is well versed in this situation: "The cultural space of the working class has disappeared, and various cultural contradictions have emerged frequently, such as the contradiction between the traditional working-class way of life and the new consumer hedonism; The contradiction between the ideal of the 'bourgeoisization' of the working class and the reality that the lives of the majority of workers are in fact still not improved ... ”
British youth growing up in this period faced both post-war social changes and new problems – unemployment, shifts in moral standards, poverty, economic depression... Pink Floyd's creator, Roger Waters, is one of them. His father, Eric Waters, fought and joined the British Communist Party during World War II, but unfortunately died in a Nazi bombing campaign. Waters, who lost his father at an early age, had a not-so-pleasant childhood and, like many of his peers, fell into confusion in a chaotic social situation.
"I lament that I was a world war-era child, but not just Waters, many children have lost their fathers, many people have lost important things, and we only think about profit and forget about the rest."
To this end, Waters delivered his mind to rock and roll, which became the band's most representative album, "The Wall of Puzzles". The album consists of 26 songs, continuing through a non-stop melody, piecing together the ups and downs of a rock star's life from ignorant babies to fallen youth. This was once a portrayal of the life of Little Waters, and it may also be the present moment that many Waters are facing. Children who have lost their fathers cannot find a guide to growth, and can only build a high wall to block communication, even if it is to tear it down, standing in the chaos and whirlpool of society, where should young people go?
Album "Wall" theme poster
Sociologist Willis once did an anthropological study. By tracking the lives of 12 boys from working-class British families, he found that education became a rigid web: "It tells students that the middle class can gain their status only because they can pass the exams." "Within the school, and even in the social class is firmly fixed," disciplined, hard-working students will gain middle-class or even higher status, and students who do not love to learn and rebel against authority can only enter the field of manual labor with lower incomes." ”
Waters wrote in the album's theme song, "Another Brick on the Wall," "We don't need education, we don't need mind control, we don't want to be black satirized in the classroom, and teachers stay away from the children." Hey! Teachers! Stay away from the kids! These are just another brick on the wall..."
In the film "Labyrinth", director Alan Parker transformed music into the language of the lens. In this film, which has no complete plot or even dialogue, he portrays a scene in which students dressed in the same clothes line up to go to the abyss and are stirred into meat sauce in turn. Pink Floyd's voices echoed in unison, and they chanted, "We don't need education, we don't need mind control... ”
The call to break the wall was answered. After the album was released, not only did people start singing, but the children of a London choir even took the initiative to contribute to this popular single, which caused the resentment of then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Still, Pink Floyd continued to sing "The Wall" at concert after concert.
This is the voice that Pink Floyd is trying to make, and it is also the voice that people who are hidden in the post-war time and trapped under the chaotic cultural shell are trying to make.
The division and rebirth of the band
After years in the rock music scene, the flamboyant personality became Pink Floyd's business card, and it also brought many divisions and tears.
The first tear occurred shortly after becoming famous. Barrett, the creator of psychedelics, eventually failed to escape the temptation of drugs and suffered from mental illness. After surviving the first American tour, the team leader chose to leave. Barrett's old classmate David Gilmore took over the key baton and soon became a central figure with creator Roger Waters, pushing Pink Floyd to the glory of his life in the successive releases of "The Dark Side of the Moon" and "The Wall".
However, under the catalytic influence of the musician's personality, new tears are slowly growing.
Cover of the album Dark Side of the Moon
This time the rift appeared on Waters. Before it became popular, there was a tacit rule among the band members that no matter how they played, no one could be the leader of the band. As depicted on the cover of The Dark Side of the Moon, a beam of white light is broken down into six colors by a prism and re-melted into a beam of white light. However, after the success of "The Wall", as the main creator of the music, Waters's will was increasingly integrated into the band's creation, even surpassing the latter. In 1977, Pink Floyd's new album Animal received a mediocre response and was even questioned, with the band blaming it on "Waters wanting to lead the band, but others weren't convinced." ”
Album cover of Animals in 1977
Waters is also unhappy, "Like moving forward in the mud, we have our own ideas, so it becomes difficult to unify." Soon after, the split became a reality, Waters and other creators left the team one after another, and the musicians began to go out of different life trajectories.
In 1987, one of the creators, Gilmore, regrouped the band to form a new line-up that included drummer Nick Madsen and keyboardist Nick White, and released the album Moments of Rational Depravity.
Waters also found his way. On the one hand, he resented the continued activities of the other band members under the name "Pink Floyd", insisting that "it should cease to exist", even at the expense of going to court with his companions for this purpose; On the other hand, he continued to devote himself to rock and roll. In 1992, he tortured the Gulf War in Amused to Death, exposing the manipulation and influence of imperialism on the mass media. Since then, he has devoted much of his time to operas about the French Revolution, and his recently released album Is This the Life We Really Want?, which directly questions people's hearts and societies.
Waters's kaimai also gradually went beyond the scope of music. Talking about the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, he said bluntly: "Biden is fueling the war in Ukraine. This is a huge crime. Similarly, in the face of cnn reporters' conscious misleading and misinterpretations, he retorted to the camera one by one - "Taiwan is part of China, and since 1948, the entire international community has fully accepted this... You believe your propaganda, your rhetoric. But with Taiwan, if you don't do your homework enough, you can't talk about human rights. ”
After six years of silence, pink floyd of the new group regained the album crown with The Bell of Split, and in the face of the band's "re-appearance", Waters unexpectedly gave his own evaluation: "I think they did a great job, in a way, I should take off my hat to greet them." 」 ”
There are fans looking forward to their reunion, and the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympic Games is a different kind of response.
Pink piglet floating at the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. Source/Screenshot of the opening ceremony of the London Olympic Games
At the event, a pink fat pig floated through the air. This is Pink Freud's classic idea.
Maybe people can understand this too. Born uninhibited, happy in psychedelic, and confused, they used rock and roll to record the era they had experienced, and eventually became a part of history.
Bibliography:
Wang Xi, History of Western Music, Shanghai: Shanghai Music Publishing House: 2020.
Tao Li, Byat's Four-Part Western Cultural Movement of the 1960s, University of International Business and Economics Press, 2019
Michael Blake,Meng Dengying,Mi Ruixin. Comparison of Youth Culture Sociology of Youth Culture and Youth Culture in the United States, The United Kingdom, and Canada[M]. Beijing:China Youth Press, 2017.
You Jingbo, Popular Music Education Series A Brief History of European and American Pop Music, Shanghai Music Publishing House, 2015.
Li Wan,Hao Jia. Songs of Earth, Region and Paradise, World Rock lyrics, Nanjing: Nanjing University Press: 2012.
Cheng Gong, ed. , v. The Passion of the 20th Century Rock 'n' Roll[M]. Beijing/Xi'an: World Book Publishing Company, 2000
The Most Angry "Rock 'n' Roll Old": Roger Waters, 2017-6-6, The Paper.
The Great Pink Floyd, 2022-8-10, The Paper.