Any Colour You Like - Pink Floyd - Live 1974

I just was listening to this in my car for the first time, and heard this bass playing, and all I'm thinking is.... what the hell... that's not roger waters on bass. the fill line he does in the first half is complex, around the middle he hits harmonics in cool ways...and I'm absolutely NOT dismissing roger as a bassist.... but I never have ever heard him play either of those lines at all like that, and even the tone doesn't sound like his hard picked right hand that we're so used to.

IF that is roger playing, then it is absolutely the greatest playing of his that I've ever heard, and I'm duly impressed and happy to hear it from him!

However, it makes me wonder if it is a sub for the bass part and Roger is playing something else... just because it is so alien to how he normally plays... I'd think it was david on bass but he is most likely on guitar LoL. Is roger on rhythm guitar or something? Or IS that Roger on bass playing such beautiful elegant stuff?

I have always enjoyed and looked up to Roger Waters, on bass also. But having learned that some of the more amazing bass parts were actually recorded by David in certain situations, supposedly, and that David himself really looks at Rogers' bass playing with disdain, I just sort of wonder if that is really Roger.

WHOEVER it is, it is awesome, and I love it

 

yea, you're right about the style of roger.... but it's like I was just listening to wish you were here from the same concert (or similar concert?), and the bass playing, while also really good, has roger's trademark right hand attack to it... and sounds like a precision.... where as this is just different.... could well be mixing too or just him evolving as a player.... awesome stuff regardless

 

Much of a musician's style gets left on the cutting room floor. For as long and recorded as Pink Floyd's overall history is, how well do we really know their personal playing repertoire?

 

There are only 4 instruments on this recording, there is no rhythm guitar. It wasn't until the Animals tour that Floyd brought in Snowy White, and he would play bass when Roger was doing acoustic guitar. In '74 it was just the 4 of them with background vocals and sax. Check out Ontario Canada June 28th,1975, for some tasty Roger on this tune. They were at heart a jam band and didn't play the same things every time. Roger especially. I've heard dozens of versions of this tune and he likes to change it up.

 

oh totally, I'm excited to hear him playing so well, and in the correct chords. They always were a jam band, basically until roger himself became primary songwriter when he started ensuring they were more consistent in their recreations of their albums when performing live.

But, just pointing out, compare this bass playing with, for example, live an pompei (however that is spelled LoL). You know, the parts of saucerful of secrets (I'm trying to recall from a couple decades ago when I watched it last) when I was like... why is Roger playing a major chord when the chord is minor and everyone else is playing in minor, and the album is minor?). LoL.

So it isn't that he wasn't musical or experimental in his bass playing, but he didn't have nearly the understanding of chords and harmony that david and rick had, and that sometimes came through. So that's why I had that first reaction to his playing on the 74 live recording being discussed. It's not hard pick attack playing, it isn't particularly precision bass sounding either (and I think he moved from rick to p-bass around the time that Syd was gradually being replaced by Dave), and it is just more fluid and expressive and pro bass-playerish than Roger normally played.

Please don't get me wrong. Roger is one of my bass idols. But it doesn't sound like he normally sounded. So if this is Roger on the performance in question, then I'm absolutely blown away and impressed and happy to hear him playing like this during his evolution as a player!