There is a saying, “You should never meet your heroes,” and Pink Floyd’s former bassist Roger Waters proved the point. When searching who the greatest songwriters of all time there will always come the names of the co-vocalist of the Beatles, John Lennon, and co-founder of Pink Floyd Roger Waters. These two guys are phenomenal music artists who have millions of fans.
And they both have one similarity they were successful even when they were in the band and in their solo music career. The Beatles were a senior band than Pink Floyd as they were formed and started making music four years before them and they were really sensational, they were inspiring many other artists and as a music fan, Roger Waters could do nothing but admire the Beatles.
The Beatles and Pink Floyd crossed their ways back in the late 60s or early 70s. However, their meeting would be pretty awkward. So what happened when they met that Roger regretted their meeting?
Roger Waters’ huge regret about John Lennon
Well, it is pretty well-known that as famous Lennon was, so was his ego. Although there is debate about whether the Imagine singer had an ego problem, as mentioned, many people believe that Lennon was quite egoistic.
As mentioned, Roger Waters was and still is a great admirer of the Beatles and John Lennon. He was really inspired by the Beatles because in 2015 he was in an interview where he revealed that he learned to write about his feelings from Lennon and McCartney, he said, “I learned from John Lennon and Paul McCartney and George Harrison that 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.”
However, his meeting with his idol John Lennon went terribly wrong. Back when the Beatles were recording their new album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band at the number two studio in Abbey Road studio, while Pink Floyd was there to record their debut album, Piper, At The Gates Of Dawn, at the number three studio. So, Pink Floyd was not known because they were just starting to make music back then.
And as mentioned Roger regretted their meeting. Speaking of their regrettable meeting Roger explained that both Lennon and he were snotty. Roger appeared in Marc Maron’s WTF podcast and said, “I only met John Lennon once, to my huge regret, and that was in the control room at Number 2. He was a bit caustic, he was quite snotty – so was I.”
Well, that is not how anyone would like to meet their idol. And this is one of the reasons why they say that you should never meet your heroes. Furthermore, this encounter might have fueled Roger because he was young back then and we all know how much ego we have when we are young, so I would even say that this encounter might have helped Roger become a better musician than he was.
However, even if he had some grudge against Lennon, he doesn’t have it now because no matter what happened, Lennon still is one of Waters’ favorite singers and songwriters. It is really unfortunate that John Lennon was killed only at the age of 40 years old. John was brutally shot to death outside The Dakota Apartments in New York City on December 8, 1980. Apparently, one of Lennon’s crazy fans Mark David Chapman did not like the statement Lennon made about the Beatles, “More popular than Jesus.”
Speaking of Roger, he and the frontman of Pink Floyd David Gilmour had a disagreement so he left the band and started his solo music journey.
