Roger Waters listened to the Beatles in college but it was the album the Fab Four were working on in the studio next to Pink Floyd in 1967 that blew Waters away. He couldn’t even wait to get home, pulling his car over to a rest area to listen to it with his “mouth hanging open” and thinking “Wow, this is so complete and accomplished,” he recalled (via YouTube). Waters discovered a new sense of freedom in his work thanks to Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and George Harrison.
He told KLCS in 2015 (via YouTube) that listening to the Beatles made him realize “it was okay for us to write about our lives, and what we felt — and to express ourselves … That we could be free artists and that there was a value in that freedom. And there was.” The Beatles may have also been inspired by the younger band. “I’m sure the Beatles were copying what we were doing,” “Peter Jenner, Pink Floyd’s manager, said. “Just as we were copying what we were hearing down the corridor.” Whether true or not, McCarney did see Pink Floyd as expanding on the Beatles’ use of studio techniques and electronics. “Floyd came in after us … and did a lot of cool experimental stuff,” McCartney recalled in an interview with producer Rick Rubin for “McCartney 3,2,1” (via X).
