The Story Of Roger Waters Selling His Soul For Money

The Story Of Roger Waters Selling His Soul For Money | I Love Classic Rock Videos

Roger Waters in an announcement video - Roger Waters / Youtube

Rumors about selling one’s soul in exchange for anything grand are not unusual in the music industry. A great example of this is the late Robert Johnson; as a teenage blues guitarist in the 1930s, Johnson found only little success busking in his home state of Mississippi, playing on street corners and in dive bars. Because of this, he allegedly sold his soul to the “devil;” so, that future generations would benefit from his guitar riffs, licks, and style. However, he died years later, and was believed to be the first one to join the “27 Club.”

Decades after Johnson’s supposed agreement with the devil and selling out for fame, the French soft drink firm Perrier approached the British rock band Pink Floyd with an offer to advertise their new soft drink, ‘Gini,’ with a commercial photoshoot.

The band may have agreed to do a photograph for the company in exchange for payment because they were low on funds and figured the publicity wouldn’t hurt. Soon, though, they began to feel apprehensive as they became bombarded with commercial sponsorship flyers at every one of their shows. The band felt they were sacrificing something by participating in these photo shoots. Later on, they would regret the decision of getting extra bucks for being a sell-out.

For that reason, Roger Waters wrote a song entitled, “Bitter Love,” which expressed the tragic fate of commerciality in exchange for pride. Since the band had been feeling this way ever since they accepted the offer from the French corporation, Roger wrote about selling his soul for fame in the song. Pink Floyd, however, chose not to release the track and instead moved on from their deep disappointment.