Roger Waters

Roger Waters (/ˈɹɒd͡ʒə ˈwɔːtəz/) is a British singer-songwriter born on 6 September 1943 in Great Bookham, Surrey. In 1965, he was one of the founders of the rock band Pink Floyd, where he initially served only as bassist (and occasionally singer). Following the departure of principal singer and songwriter Syd Barrett in 1968, Waters became the band's lyricist, one of its singers alongside David Gilmour and Richard Wright, and its conceptual leader.

Pink Floyd subsequently achieved immense international success with the concept albums The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), Wish You Were Here (1975), Animals (1977) and The Wall (1979). By the early 1980s, the band was one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful acts in popular music—by 2013, Pink Floyd had sold over 250 million albums worldwide. However, due to creative differences, Waters left the group in 1985 and initiated a lengthy legal dispute over the use of the band's name and songs. The members finally reached an out-of-court settlement in 1987.

Waters' solo work includes the studio albums The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking (1984), Radio K.A.O.S. (1987), Amused to Death (1992) and Is This the Life We Really Want? (2017). In 2005, he created Ça ira, an opera translated from the libretto by Étienne and Nadine Roda-Gil about the French Revolution.

In 1990, Roger Waters organised one of the largest rock concerts in history, The Wall Live in Berlin, which drew an audience of 450,000. As a member of Pink Floyd, he was inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. Later that year, he reunited with his Pink Floyd colleagues David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright for the global awareness event Live 8, marking the band's first appearance with Waters since 1981. Touring extensively as a solo artist since 1999, he performed the album The Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety during his 2006–2008 world tour. His 2010–2013 The Wall Live tour was, at the time, the highest-grossing tour in history for a solo artist.